Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 124

POV: Seraphina

Returning to Aethelgard felt like coming home to a fortress of tranquility after a brief, brutal foray into a past warzone. The arbitration victory was a significant strategic win, cementing our position and weakening Damian's, but the emotional cost of the confrontation had been higher than I had anticipated. The memory of his desperate, pleading eyes, and my own cold dismissal, left a bitter aftertaste.

A few days after our return, as a sense of normalcy was beginning to settle over the island, an encrypted message arrived for me. It bypassed the usual corporate channels, routed directly to my personal terminal. The sender's seal was one I recognized instantly, though I had never received a direct correspondence from her before. It was the crest of the Vance family Matriarch, the formidable and famously reclusive Lady Isold Vance, Killian's grandmother.

With a sense of intrigue, I decrypted and opened the letter. The prose was elegant, the tone warm and personal, yet every word was imbued with the shrewd, political mind of a woman who had successfully guided her own powerful family for over fifty years.

She began by congratulating me on the victory at the arbitration, not as a business partner, but as a proud elder observing a promising younger talent.

*My Dearest Seraphina,* the letter began.

*News of your triumph in Argentis has reached even my quiet corner of the world. Killian has told me for years of your strategic brilliance, but to see it wielded with such precision and grace on a stage like that is another matter entirely. You have proven yourself to be everything he said you were, and more. You have faced the dragon of your past and emerged not only unscathed, but victorious. I am immensely proud of you.*

My breath caught. To be praised by a woman of her stature was humbling. But the letter's purpose, I soon realized, was not mere congratulation.

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