Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 111

POV: Damian

I stood in the vast, empty auditorium, a king in a freshly conquered but worthless ruin. Kael, my Beta, stood a respectful distance away, the fallen data slate still lying by his feet. He was waiting for an order. An explosion. A command to rally the troops and declare all-out war. He was waiting for the Alpha he knew.

But that Alpha was gone. In his place was something colder, something hollowed out and filled with a chilling, singular purpose.

I turned away from the screen, my movements stiff and robotic, and walked out of the auditorium without a word. The celebratory music from the Vance Capital gala pulsed faintly through the walls, each beat a mocking reminder of my humiliation.

Back in the suffocating silence of my penthouse suite, I began to pace. The initial shock—that raw, physical sensation of the world dropping from beneath my feet—was beginning to recede. It was being replaced by something else. Not the soul-crushing regret I had become so accustomed to. Not the dull ache of loss.

It was a feeling I hadn't truly felt in three years. A hot, possessive, and utterly clarifying rage.

It was all her.

The brilliant strategy. The global empire built from shadows. The devastatingly precise attacks. The queen who had brought me to my knees. It was all Seraphina.

And it was all mine.

That thought struck me with the force of a divine revelation. This magnificent, terrifying creature named Siren was not some stranger. She was a work of my own creation. It was the crucible of my neglect that had forged her strength. It was the pain I had inflicted that had sharpened her mind to a razor's edge. She had been my Luna. Her power, her brilliance, her very essence was inextricably tied to me. She was the most valuable, most dazzling asset I had ever possessed, and she had been stolen from me.

I stopped pacing and stared at my reflection in the dark, floor-to-ceiling window. My face was a pale mask of fury.

My strategy formed, clear and simple in my mind. She had left me because she thought he was stronger, more refined. I would prove her wrong. I would demonstrate a power so absolute, so overwhelming, that Killian Vance would look like a child playing with toys. I would remind her of the thrill of standing beside a true predator.

And to do that, I needed the perfect lure. I needed to stoke the one fire that no female, no matter how powerful, could ever truly extinguish.

Jealousy.

I thought of Sylvie. The woman I had once foolishly mistaken for a goddess, now reduced in my mind to her proper function. She wasn't a partner. She wasn't a lover.

She was a pawn. And she was perfect.