Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 54

POV: Seraphina

My days settled into a grim routine of silence and observation. But something had changed since the memory of my sacrifice had resurfaced. The crushing despair had been replaced by a cold, hard ember of rage that burned steadily in the hollow where my heart used to be.

Sylvie still visited, her taunts a daily ritual designed to remind me of my failure. "Nico was asking me to teach him how to set snares today," she said one afternoon, filing her nails with a bored expression as she sat in the only comfortable chair in my room. "He said he's so much happier now that he has a real mother to look up to. Someone strong, who can teach him how to be a warrior."

As she spoke the words, I felt it. It wasn't my own weary, human anger. It was something else. A faint, primal flicker deep within my mindscape, like a sleeping beast stirring in its cave. For the first time in three long years, an instinct that was not my own, a wave of pure, possessive fury, made its presence known. It was gone as quickly as it came, but it left an echo of a growl in the back of my consciousness. Mine, it seemed to whisper. He is mine.

My only point of contact with the outside world was a young maid named Elara. She was new, barely a woman, with wide, frightened eyes that reminded me of a trapped fawn. The first time she brought my meal tray, she trembled as she set it down, refusing to meet my gaze. But as she turned to leave, she pressed something small and warm into my hand under the cover of the tray. It was a freshly baked bread roll, still warm from the oven.

One evening, as I sat by the window, I watched the guard change. The incoming guard was clumsy, dropping his spear with a clatter. And deep within me, the sleeping wolf stirred again, a flicker of contemptuous amusement in its spectral eyes.

The beast was waking up.