Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 144

POV: Seraphina

A period of strange, quiet normalcy settled over Aethelgard. With Damian a ghost in his own lands and my father's slow, steady recovery a source of gentle hope, it felt as though the world was finally holding its breath. The frantic, desperate energy of survival was giving way to the calm, steady work of building a future. The alliance with Vance Capital was stronger than ever, our joint ventures flourishing, our shared power a formidable shield against the rest of the world.

Killian and I had fallen back into our comfortable rhythm, but the unspoken things that now lay between us had changed the texture of our interactions. The memory of his coat on my shoulders, the shared vulnerability after the storm, his grandmother's knowing words—they were all there, a quiet hum beneath the surface of our professional partnership.

This fragile peace was shattered by a message from a world away.

We were in the war room, finalizing a trade deal, when an alert chimed on Killian's personal terminal. It wasn't the usual blue notification of a standard business communication. It was a searing, pulsating crimson, a color I had never seen on his system before. The seal that flashed on the screen was that of the Vance Matriarch, but it was overlaid with another, more ancient sigil—the symbol for a Code Omega emergency, the highest possible alert level.

Killian's easy-going demeanor vanished in an instant. His face became a mask of stone as he quickly opened the encrypted file. I watched as his eyes scanned the text, his jaw tightening, the muscles in his neck cording. The calm, unflappable Alpha I knew was gone, replaced by a man confronting a crisis of unimaginable gravity. For the first time since I had met him, I saw a flicker of something that looked like cold, dangerous fury in his eyes.

He closed the file, and the room was plunged into a tense silence.

"What is it?" I asked, my own heart beginning to beat a little faster.

He looked at me, his gaze distant, his mind clearly already thousands of miles away. "A family matter," he said, his voice clipped and tight. "An internal issue that requires my immediate attention."

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