Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 6

POV: Seraphina

The response from my brother was a single, encrypted word: "Acknowledged." It was all I needed. The countdown had begun. My heart beat a steady, cold rhythm against my ribs, each thump a tick of the clock.

My newfound resolve was tested just hours later. I was in the library, pretending to read, but my senses were strained, listening. Damian's Beta, Elias, entered Damian's office across the hall. The heavy oak door was left slightly ajar, a careless oversight.

"Alpha, a formal protest from the Silver Crescent council," Elias said, his voice tight with protocol. "Regarding the suspension of the silver-infused healing herbs."

There was a rustle of thick, expensive parchment. I pictured the official pack seal, the carefully worded plea from my father's elders. It wouldn't be a letter of anger, but of diplomacy, of desperation. An appeal to reason.

Damian's response was a low, contemptuous chuckle that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. I saw a flicker of orange light from under the door, and a moment later, the acrid scent of burning paper and wax wafted into the library. He was burning it. As if it were trash. He was burning my family's plea for mercy without even granting it the dignity of a proper refusal.

"Send a message back to the Thorne family," Damian's voice was cold, laced with the casual arrogance of absolute power. "This is the punishment for disrespect."

The message was brief and brutal. It detailed the direct consequences of Damian's embargo. A border patrol had been ambushed by rogues. Without the fast-acting, silver-infused herbs to treat the deep, venomous scratches from their poisoned claws, two of the warriors were in critical condition. One of them, a young wolf named Kael, wasn't expected to survive the night. He was only nineteen.

The abstract cruelty of Damian's political maneuvering suddenly had a face and a name. Kael. A lanky, smiling boy I'd watched grow up, who had just presented his first carving to the elders last spring. Now he was dying. Dying because my husband needed to prove a point. The punishment for disrespect wasn't a trade sanction.

It was a death sentence. I stared at the screen, the name Kael burning into my retinas as if branded there by a hot iron.