Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 32

POV: Seraphina

The lie was sent, the die was cast. Now I had forty-eight hours. Two days to understand what was wrong with my body and to do it without alerting the monster sleeping down the hall. Every doctor, every healer in the Blackwood pack, was loyal to Damian. Going to them was unthinkable; it would be a confession. My secret would be his before the examination was even over. My mind, foggy with pain and exhaustion, raced through the possibilities, discarding each one. There was no one here I could trust.

No one here.

My eyes snapped open. There was one person. One last loyalist, cast out but not broken. Martha.

I scrambled through my belongings, my hands searching for the small, pre-paid burner phone I had set aside for this exact kind of emergency. A ghost phone, untraceable, with only one number programmed into it. A number Martha had pressed into my hand on the day she was expelled, her old eyes filled with a promise of unwavering loyalty. "If you ever need anything, Luna. Anything at all."

My fingers, slick with a cold sweat, fumbled with the small plastic buttons. The phone rang once, twice, a lifetime of suspense in each electronic chirp. Then, a click.

"Hello?" Her voice was hesitant, cautious, the voice of a woman who had learned to fear the unexpected.

"Martha," I whispered, my voice a dry, cracking rasp. "It's me. Seraphina."

An hour later, I was a shadow moving through the silent, sleeping halls of my own home. Dressed in the coarse, scratchy wool of a servant's uniform, my hair hidden under a drab cap, I was invisible. I slipped past the snoozing guard at the service entrance, my heart hammering against my ribs, and out into the pre-dawn chill of the loading dock. A large, battered-looking truck was idling, its engine a low rumble in the quiet air. The driver, a young man with Martha's kind eyes, simply nodded at me, his expression grim, and opened the passenger door.

I climbed in, sinking into the worn seat. He didn't say a word, just put the truck in gear. I huddled deep in my seat as we rumbled past the main gates, the guards waving us through without a second glance. Just another delivery truck. Just another nobody.

The truck smelled of industrial soap and clean linen as it carried me away from my prison and toward an unknown, terrifying truth.