Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 89

POV: Killian

I stood on the deck of the Odyssey, the sea breeze cool against my face, and watched the gray, industrial port grow larger on the horizon. This was a place of utility, not beauty, a fittingly discreet location for a meeting of this magnitude. For months, I had been moving pieces on a chessboard from half a world away, all based on a single, brilliant document and the intriguing, desperate messages of a man trying to save his sister. Now, I was about to meet the mind behind it all.

The strategist who called herself ‘North Star Logistics'. The woman her brother called Seraphina.

I was not a man given to flights of fancy, but I couldn't help but feel a keen sense of curiosity. I had imagined her a hundred times. A stern, older woman, perhaps, a seasoned political player with ice in her veins. Or a sharp, ambitious upstart, hungry for power. The mind that had conceived of a plan to systematically dismantle the most powerful werewolf alliance on the continent had to be something remarkable.

My yacht docked with a soft bump against the weathered pier. I saw them waiting. A tall, formidable man with the unmistakable air of an Alpha warrior—Jax Thorne, no doubt—and beside him, a woman.

My first thought, as I saw her, was that I was mistaken. This couldn't be her.

She was devastatingly beautiful, but it was a fragile, ethereal beauty. She stood on the windswept pier, a slender figure wrapped in a simple, dark coat, the wind whipping strands of her long, silver-blonde hair across her face. She looked like a creature of moonlight and sorrow, a spirit of the sea who might dissipate into mist if the sun were to shine too brightly. She looked breakable.

But then, as if feeling my gaze, she lifted her head and looked directly at me. And in that moment, my initial impression was shattered. Her eyes—a pale, clear gray, the color of a winter sky—were not fragile. They held no plea, no sorrow, no weakness. They were calm, cold, and possessed a startling, unnerving depth. It was the gaze of a survivor, of a queen who had walked through fire and emerged not burned, but forged. I knew, with an absolute certainty, that the fragile exterior was a beautiful lie. Beneath that delicate, porcelain shell resided a spirit of pure, unbreakable steel.

She considered the word, her head tilted slightly. And then, the impossible happened. The corner of her mouth, which had been set in a firm, emotionless line, curved upward in a smile. It was a small, faint thing, as fleeting as a flicker of winter sunlight, but it was real. And it transformed her face, giving me a glimpse of the breathtaking woman she must have been before the world had tried to break her.

"Siren," she repeated, her voice a low, melodic whisper. "I like it." She met my eyes, her own now holding a new, sharp glimmer of self-possession. "From now on, you may call me that."

In that moment, on that gray, windswept pier, Seraphina Thorne died, and Siren, the queen of her own making, was born.