Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 62

POV: Seraphina

The news of the feint reached the citadel like a poisoned dart. A scout, his face pale and his flank bleeding, gasped out the report to my father in the command tent. Fenrir's main force was a distraction. A smaller, elite contingent of his most vicious killers was racing towards the ancestral caves in the northern hills. Towards the she-wolves, the elders, and the children. Towards my history and my pack's future.

A chilling silence fell over the tent. Every warrior present knew what this meant. It was a trap. A vile, dishonorable ploy to lure my father away from the main defense, to split his forces and leave the citadel vulnerable.

My father stood over the tactical map, his face a mask of stone, but I knew the agonizing war that was raging within him. To stay would be to hold the citadel but condemn the defenseless. To go would be to walk directly into an ambush, risking his own life and the lives of his best warriors. It was a choice between strategy and soul.

For my father, there was never really a choice.

"Elias," he said, his voice a low, steady growl that betrayed none of his inner turmoil. "You hold the wall. Do not let them take the gate, no matter the cost."

He strode out of the tent, his silver hair a beacon in the smoky twilight, a dozen of his finest warriors falling into formation behind him. They moved like ghosts, melting into the shadows of the forest, a silver streak of desperate hope on a suicide mission.

I watched him go from my prison, the news delivered by a weeping Elara, and I felt a grief so profound it was a physical agony, a tearing in my chest, as if my own heart were being ripped in two.