Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 249 - Then bring back my daughter

The timing of it had been practical, nothing more. Bryan’s hunger had announced itself somewhere between walking through the hospital entrance and the first ward, and Seraphine had looked at Damon with the quiet, wordless appeal of a mother who was trying to be in two places at once and needed someone she trusted to handle the second one.

Damon had gone without complaint, and the arrangement had been simple enough: Voren would drop him at the packhouse, Damon would collect his own car, and he’d bring Bryan back once the boy had eaten something. Clean, easy, sorted.

Voren had returned to the hospital expecting to find things roughly as he’d left them.

What he found instead was Seraphine’s voice, sharp, strained, carrying Damon’s name, and the specific quality of that voice told him everything before he’d fully cleared the doorway.

Inside his mind, Bloodfang had already made his assessment. ’He has to die.’

The thought arrived with a clarity that left no room for interpretation, and Voren’s body moved before the rational part of him had finished processing the scene.

Voren crossed the floor and hit Ravyn in the face, and this punch had nothing measured about it. It landed with the full, unfiltered weight of everything Bloodfang had decided in the half second before it happened, and it was considerably heavier than what Daisy had received out on the track.

Ravyn’s head snapped back. He staggered, one hand coming up to his jaw and staying there, pressing against the pain while his wolf worked furiously to repair what it could.

The healing came but it took a moment, and in that moment, he stood there with his eyes glassy and his jaw throbbing and looked at Voren like he was trying to remember where he was.

"Voren." His voice came out rough, disbelieving. "What have you done?"

It was a violation. Any Alpha in any territory understood that attacking another on their own pack grounds wasn’t just a breach of manners.

It was an offense that carried real consequences when it was crossed and yet, Voren felt absolutely nothing about it that resembled regret.

there

Seraphine’s mind, Marsha made her final declaration. ’You need to leave and

didn’t disagree. Whatever patience she had brought

out sounding exactly as hollow as they were. "That’s all I wanted.

came out loud and raw and absolute, the kind of sound that doesn’t build up to itself, just arrives all

remaining vials, the bottles still waiting to be administered, hit the floor and shattered, glass and liquid spreading across the linoleum in a sharp, ringing cascade, and Seraphine was already

done here." She removed her doctor coat and threw it on the floor,

Doctor Raymond out of the adjacent ward at a near jog, his face arranged into

the room. Voren standing with that particular stillness, Ravyn holding his jaw, Seraphine moving toward the exit, and

voice came out carefully. "Luna

bed along the far wall and landed on Daisy,

her. "What happened

corner of Seraphine’s mouth lifted, more like the involuntary acknowledgment of something that would have been funny under any other set of circumstances,

worn to the gym because getting the cure into these patients had felt more urgent than anything else, and now the remaining vials were in pieces on the floor and she was walking out and the whole morning felt like something that had been dismantled before it

then all at once, and then impossibly,

authority was gone out of it, and what was left was something

She didn’t answer him.

the entrance

since dawn. The wind moved through the trees in long, leaning gusts, bending the branches at uncomfortable angles, and the rain was already

in a low, continuous rumble that felt less like weather and more like

her shoulder, and the offer came out quiet and matter-of-fact, without any performance