Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 59

POV: Seraphina

The message came in the dead of night. Elara risked everything, slipping past a sleeping guard to press the tiny, folded piece of paper into my hand. My fingers trembled as I unfolded it. The coded message was from Jax, and it was brutally short.

"Fenrir is moving. Full-scale mobilization. He's not disciplining, he's annihilating. Father knows. He's arming the elders. They intend to die defending the ancestral caves. I am pinned down. Cannot intervene in time. I'm sorry."

The world tilted and fell away. Fenrir. The Ironfang Alpha was a butcher, a monster who reveled in slaughter. And Damian had just unleashed him on my home. On my father. My mind conjured an image of my proud, stubborn father, standing with the old wolves of his pack, preparing to make a final, hopeless stand against a tide of savagery.

My carefully constructed walls of ice, my silent endurance, my cold, simmering rage—it all shattered. A raw, primal terror, a daughter's love for her father, ripped through me, obliterating everything else.

I didn't think. I just ran.

I threw myself against the locked door of my prison, screaming, pounding my fists against the heavy oak until they were raw. The guards, startled, fumbled with the key. The moment the door was open a crack, I shoved my way through them and sprinted down the silent, moonlit halls.

I found him in his study. He was standing by the window, looking out at the night, a glass of wine in his hand. He turned as I burst in, a flicker of surprise in his eyes, which quickly turned to a smug, satisfied smirk. He thought my spirit had finally broken.

He was right.

I fell to my knees at his feet. The cold marble of the floor was a shock against my skin. I did the one thing I had sworn I would never do again. I begged.

"Please," I sobbed, my voice cracking, my hands clutching at the hem of his trousers. "Damian, please. Don't do this. Not Fenrir. He'll kill them all. He'll slaughter them."

His eyes darkened. "You will please me, wife. Like you used to. Show me you remember your duties. And maybe, if you perform them well enough, I'll consider letting your father live to see another sunrise."

His words were not a request. They were the terms of a hostage negotiation. And in that moment, looking into the eyes of the man I had once loved, the man who was now offering to trade my father's life for a night of my submission, I understood.

He wasn't a man anymore. He was a monster.

The tears on my face dried instantly. The terror in my heart froze, solidifying into a block of pure, black, unforgiving ice. The flood of desperate love for my father was consumed by a tidal wave of pure, absolute hate for my husband.

I met his gaze, and the woman who had been crying at his feet was gone forever.