Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 85

POV: Damian

Sleep was a luxury I could no longer afford. The nights were the worst, when the duties of the day faded and I was left alone with the screaming silence in my soul. I spent the hours before dawn in my study, the only light coming from a single lamp, illuminating the chaos that my life had become.

On my desk, next to a half-empty bottle of whiskey, lay her wedding ring. It was a cold, constant accusation. Around it were stacked the reports from my spies and trackers, a mountain of paper that all said the same thing: nothing. She was gone. Utterly, completely gone. I knew the search was futile. She hadn't just crossed a border. She had crossed into a place I could never follow.

Just as the sky began to lighten from black to a bruised, sullen purple, Elias brought me the latest dispatch. It was not a tracker's report. It was a formal communique, delivered by a rider from the Silver Creek pack.

I broke the seal, my hands unsteady. The message was short and to the point. Alpha Valerius of the Silver Creek pack, a minor but strategically important ally, was formally withdrawing his allegiance from the Blackwood Alliance. His reasoning was stated in cold, diplomatic language: "In light of the recent, aggressive actions taken against the Thorne family, an esteemed and ancient line, we can no longer in good conscience remain allied with a leadership that employs such dishonorable and tyrannical methods against its own sworn partners. We fear for the stability and integrity of the entire region under such volatile command."

I let the parchment fall from my fingers. It was the second one this week. The whispers of my "tyranny," which I had dismissed as the whining of the weak, were becoming a roar. The foundation of the alliance I had worked my entire life to strengthen was beginning to crumble, the stones loosened by my own hand. The seeds of my own cruelty were bearing their bitter fruit.

This was not a tragedy that had befallen me. This was a sentence I had passed on myself.

This permanent, aching void, this crushing solitude—this was my punishment. And it was one I had more than earned.