Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 279 – Marigold A.

The words landed somewhere deep in Seraphine’s chest and twisted.

"How old is she?" The question came out before she had fully decided to ask it, her voice dropping into that careful, controlled register she used when she was holding something fragile together from the inside.

Her mind was already moving, pulling at threads, lining things up, refusing to let hope run too far ahead of logic.

The one thing she had asked the moon goddess for, the single thing she had carried like a stone in her pocket every single day, was to find her daughter before the full moon.

But after what happened with all the children she rescued during the Santiago ordeal, she wasn’t going to fall apart over a phone call. No, she wasn’t going to do that to herself again.

"Her records say she’s five, but Sera, her hair reminds me of Alpha Ravyn."

The breath that moved through Seraphine was slow. Her daughter would be turning seven in a few months but then again, there could be a mistake with the date.

Perhaps she should go and look out for that birth mark Kylie told her about. Besides, Seraphine had never once turned her back on a child, and she wasn’t starting today.

"Okay." Her voice steadied. "Let me get clearance from my boss and I’ll head over. I’m leaving now."

She was already on her feet before the call ended.

✦••┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈••✦

Leon looked up from his desk when she pushed the door open, and his eyes moved immediately to her face, reading it quickly and accurately.

"Leo." She kept it short. "There’s a child at Whitfield’s Private hospital who needs me. Can I take my last hour? I’ll cover it tomorrow, first thing."

He looked at the surgical schedule on his screen, the list that was never quite as short as either of them would like, and then back at her. Whatever he saw in her expression settled the question faster than any argument could have.

hand once. "Just

you." She

hit the stairwell, Corvine picking

air. "A child needs help, it’s a complicated case. I’m going to Nicole’s

silence on his end lasted exactly one second. "Nicole." Corvine’s voice grew stern, that particular careful flatness dropping over

a five-year-old girl,

time before he responded. "Call me when you’re done.

flagged down a car

looking out the window without seeing any of it. She had already talked herself down from the edge of

was, whoever this child was, she was going in as a doctor. That was all. That was the only thing she

the entrance like she had been watching the street for the last ten minutes. The moment she spotted Seraphine she was already moving, cutting across the lobby with the urgent energy of someone who had been waiting

her, steering her toward a cluster

a dramatic flair that Seraphine did not have the bandwidth for right now.

eyes moved across the faces in

"Callum?"

out of place on a grown man that it would have been funny under different circumstances. He had filled out since she last saw him, looked steadier somehow, the particular tension that used to live around his eyes

careful, measured. "Yeah. We can talk later

Pack business. Human ears everywhere.

him one small nod

to the hallway but the energy inside

beside the child’s bed, her bright red hair catching the overhead light, her whole

know what to do. You have to come. Please,

to the

in a way that felt almost deliberate, like sleep rather than crisis. Her lashes were dark against her cheeks

was exactly as Nicole described them. Her long, curly black hair was a storm of midnight waves, a crown of untamed beauty that made her

steady, growing stronger with every

child in her life, but she needed to find the birth