Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 128

POV: Damian

Hope was a foreign country. On Aethelgard, it was a budding flower. In the dark, stifling hotel suite that had become my world, it was a forgotten word. My defeat at the arbitration hearing had been absolute. My subsequent attempts to harass Seraphina's assets had been countered with a casual, devastating efficiency that had left my corporation bleeding and my authority in tatters.

I had failed. Every strategy, every gambit, every pathetic attempt to claw my way back into her mind had been a miserable failure. I had spent weeks in this self-imposed exile, drinking too much, sleeping too little, staring at her face on data screens until her features blurred into the mocking visage of a goddess.

My team had presented me with a dozen new plans. Logical, sound, strategic plans for economic recovery and a slow, dignified retreat from this disastrous personal war. I had rejected them all. They didn't understand. This was never about business. This was about possession. This was about reclamation.

This morning, I had woken up with a new, terrifying clarity. The clarity of a man who has lost everything and has only one final, desperate move left to make. Logic had failed. Strategy had failed. Intimidation had failed. There was only one path left. Not as an Alpha. Not as a rival. But as the man she had once loved.

I would go to her.

I would strip myself of all pride, all power. I would sail to her island fortress, not as a conqueror, but as a supplicant. I would throw myself at her feet and I would beg. I would show her the raw, bleeding wound in my soul where she used to be. I would make her see my pain, my regret, my endless, suffocating love for her.

She was strong, yes. But she had a heart. I had broken it, but it was still in there. And if she could just see me, truly see the wreck I had become without her, she would not be able to turn me away. She couldn't. It was my last hope. My final, desperate gamble.

***

The quiet rhythm of life on Aethelgard was shattered by a sound no one had heard since the island's activation. It wasn't the low, routine chime of a supply ship entering the port, but the high-pitched, piercing shriek of the island's highest-level intrusion alert.

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