Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 81

POV: Damian

The ride back to the manor was a silent, humiliating procession. I rode at the head of my defeated guard, the morning sun feeling like a harsh, interrogating glare on my skin. The usual pride I took in the disciplined formation of my warriors was gone, replaced by a raw, gnawing shame. We were not a returning war host; we were a pack of beaten dogs, tails tucked between our legs, sent running by a ghost.

As we passed through the grand gates, the entire estate seemed to be holding its breath. Servants scurried out of our path, their eyes fixed on the ground, a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity radiating from them. They could smell the failure on me, the stench of my authority being so thoroughly and publicly undermined. My home, my fortress of absolute power, now felt like the stage for my greatest disgrace.

I dismounted, throwing the reins to a terrified stable hand without a word. I didn't go to the war room. I didn't go to my study. I walked, my steps heavy and deliberate, to the small, cold guest wing where I had last imprisoned her. The room was clean now, scrubbed of any trace of her, but her phantom presence was a crushing weight in the air. I stood in the center of the room, closed my eyes, and reached inward, a desperate, foolish act of a man refusing to accept the amputation of his own soul. I searched for the bond, for the faintest echo, the faintest whisper of her presence in the universe.

There was nothing.

It wasn't a weak connection or a distant one. It was a perfect, absolute void. A spiritual black hole where a part of me used to be. The silence was so profound, so complete, it was a physical sensation, a pressure in my head, a hollowness in my bones.

My orders were not the commands of a rational Alpha. They were the frantic, futile screams of a man trying to outrun the silence in his own soul.

My second-in-command, Elias, took a hesitant step forward. "Alpha… if the bond is truly gone…"

"Find her!" I roared, slamming my fist on the grand strategy table, the force of the blow cracking the ancient oak.