Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 143

POV: Seraphina

While one life was being brutally unmade in the Blackwood lands, another was slowly, miraculously, returning to the light on Aethelgard. In the three years since my father had fallen, the medical center had been a place of quiet, desperate hope. Today, it was a place of subdued, complicated joy.

The bio-stasis pod was gone. My father, Marcus Thorne, was awake. He was sitting up in a comfortable bed, the pale island sunlight streaming in through the large window, illuminating the silver in his hair and the new, weary lines on his face. He was thin, his powerful frame diminished, but his eyes—his kind, intelligent eyes—were clear and lucid for the first time in an eternity.

When I walked into the room, his face broke into a weak but radiant smile. "Sera," he whispered, his voice a dry, unused rasp. "My girl."

I rushed to his side, taking his frail, trembling hand in mine. "Dad," I said, my own voice thick with an emotion I couldn't name. It was joy, relief, and a profound, heartbreaking sorrow, all tangled together.

The reunion was a bittersweet thing. The lion had returned, but his claws and his roar were gone. The years of medically-induced slumber and the lingering effects of Fenrir's poison had taken their toll. The Vance doctors had been clear: his mind was his own, but his body was a shadow of its former self. His connection to his wolf was severed. The great Alpha wolf that had been a part of him his entire life was now just a silent, sleeping memory.

The roles we had played our entire lives were now, irrevocably, reversed. He was no longer the towering shield who protected me from the world. I was now his guardian.

In the weeks that followed, I became a fixture in the rehabilitation wing. I cleared my schedule, delegating all but the most critical decisions to Jax and my senior team. My most important project was now my father.

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