Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 80

POV: Damian

The search was called off at sunrise. My warriors were exhausted, wounded, and demoralized. The trails were cold, the scent was gone. She had vanished as if she had dissolved into the morning mist.

I sent the men back to the manor, back to the world of order and duty, back to Sylvie and the life I had so carefully constructed. But I remained. I stood alone in the clearing, the rising sun casting long, mournful shadows through the ancient stones. The battlefield was quiet now, the bodies of the fallen a grim testament to the night's brutal work. The air was cold and clean, but all I could breathe was the ghost of her presence, the memory of her final, indifferent gaze that had judged me and found me wanting.

I walked to the altar, my bare feet silent on the blood-stained stone. I ran my hand over its cold, rough surface, where she had lain, where she had unmade herself, and in doing so, unmade me. The hollow ache in my chest was a constant, physical presence, a phantom limb that would ache for a lifetime. The silence in my soul, where the steady, familiar hum of her spirit had always been—a presence I had ignored, resented, and ultimately taken for granted—was a vast, terrifying emptiness. It was a void I knew would never be filled.

My mind was a maelstrom of confusion. I replayed the last few months in a frantic, desperate loop, trying to pinpoint the exact moment I had lost control. How had it come to this? I never wanted to hurt her. Not really. I never wanted to see her family's lands burned and her father broken. These were punishments, the necessary actions of a strong Alpha to correct a disobedient Luna. Weren't they?

But why did I need to correct her so brutally? Why did her quiet defiance, her refusal to be the smiling, docile mate I expected, provoke such a visceral, violent rage in me? The orders had come from my mouth. The blockade, the tacit permission to Fenrir… they were my commands. But standing here, in the cold light of this catastrophic dawn, I couldn't fully grasp the reasons why. I had wanted her to bend to my will, to stay by my side. But why? Was it simply because she was my Luna, a beautiful and valuable asset to my reign?

The thought felt thin, unsatisfying. It didn't explain the searing agony of the broken bond. It didn't explain the profound, soul-deep terror I'd felt when I thought she was lost to me. I had believed I was asserting my dominance, but the raw, possessive fury felt like something else now. It felt like the desperate, clumsy rage of a man terrified of losing something he couldn't bear to live without, and destroying it in the process.tude of a king in an empty castle.

I had won a meaningless war, and in doing so, I had lost my soul.