Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 140

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POV: Seraphina

Damian's yacht, a black scar on the pale morning sea, grew smaller and smaller until it was just a speck, and then it was gone. He was gone. The man who had been the sun and moon of my world, and then the black hole that consumed it, was finally, truly gone.

As his ship vanished over the horizon, the roar from the crowd on the pier finally began to subside. The furious, cathartic shouts faded into ragged sobs, then into a heavy, exhausted silence. The storm of their grief had passed, leaving in its wake a community of survivors, standing together in the quiet, grey morning, bound by their shared scars.

I remained at the end of the pier, long after most of the others had begun to drift back toward their homes. The cold sea breeze whipped strands of silver hair across my face, but I didn't feel it. I felt hollowed out, empty. A part of my soul, the part that had been defined for so long by the fight against him, had sailed away on that boat, leaving a strange, unsettling void behind.

He was gone. So what was I now?

"Seraphina."

Killian's voice was a low anchor in the vast silence. He had been standing a respectful distance away, giving me my space, but now he walked slowly to my side. He didn't touch me. He didn't have to. I could feel his presence, his quiet strength, his unspoken concern.

But I could also feel the wall between us. The act of destroying Damian, of dredging up every last ounce of hatred and pain to use as a weapon, had forced me to lock down my own heart. The fragile, budding trust I had begun to feel for Killian had been a casualty of that war. I had retreated so far back into my fortress of ice that I wasn't sure I knew the way out anymore.