Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 53

POV: Seraphina

The silence was my only weapon, and I wielded it relentlessly. Days blurred together in my gilded cage. Damian's visits became more infrequent, his anger curdling into a frustrated, simmering contempt. He couldn't break me with questions, so he tried to break me with reminders of my own supposed worthlessness.

"You should be grateful," he sneered one evening, standing in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the hall light. "You are the Luna of Blackwood. A title that gives you everything. You are a Thorne by birth, but you are a Blackwood Luna by my grace. That is the only title that gives you value. Without me, without my name, you are nothing."

He left me alone in the encroaching darkness, his words echoing in the silence. Nothing. The despair was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs. The darkness in the room deepened, merging with the darkness in my soul, and it pulled me under, back to a time when I had given everything to prove I was something.

The memory hit me with the force of a physical blow. The scent of pine and fresh blood. The sound of Nico's terrified, high-pitched whimpers. It was three years ago.

We were ambushed. On a diplomatic trip to the northern territories. A rival pack, their eyes glowing with hunger and desperation. Damian fought like a demon, a whirlwind of fang and claw, but he was outnumbered. I was trying to get Nico to safety when I saw the rival alpha sink his claws deep into Damian's back as he shielded our son. Damian went down with a roar of pain, a gaping wound in his side, and at the same moment, a stray arrow, tipped with silver and poison, struck Nico in the chest.

As their heartbeats grew stronger, my own grew weaker. I watched in my mind's eye as my magnificent silver wolf, my other half, my primal strength, began to fade within my mindscape. Her light dimmed, her powerful form grew translucent, and with a final, mournful look, she curled up and fell into a deep, seemingly eternal slumber.

The memory receded, leaving me gasping for air on the cold floor of my prison. I had saved them. I had sacrificed the core of my being, the very source of my shifter strength and instinct, for the man and the child I loved.

And the man I saved had just told me I was nothing without him. The crushing, unbearable irony was a weight far heavier than any prison door.