Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 280 – Mommy

"Voren." His name came out of her mouth before she could decide whether to say it. "What are you doing here?"

She heard the confusion in her own voice and hated it, that slight unsteadiness that gave away the fact that she was genuinely thrown.

Her eyes stayed on him a beat longer than they should have, searching his face like the answer to a question she hadn’t fully formed yet.

His brows pulled together, that familiar tightening moving through his expression. He looked at her the way someone looks when they have walked into a room expecting to find it empty. "I could ask you the same thing."

The disbelief in his voice was real. As far as he knew, she belonged to Leon’s hospital, to a theatre, her own schedule. Her being here made no sense from any angle he could find.

Nicole had come in behind him and was now standing just inside the doorway doing absolutely nothing to pretend she wasn’t watching all of this with complete attention.

Her eyes moved between them, quick and sharp, her mind clearly running fast trying to assemble something from all the pieces that weren’t adding up.

She had already picked up on the strangeness of it, the red-haired woman referring to the child as hers, and the father being her fiancé’, and yet anyone who knew anything about Voren Ashkael knew there was no fiancée. No woman. Nothing even close to that. It didn’t fit.

The curiosity got the better of her before she could talk herself out of it. "Mr. Ashkael," Nicole said, tilting her head slightly toward the red-haired woman who had followed Voren and was standing behind him. "Is she your fiancée?"

woman answered before Voren’s mouth had even opened, her voice smooth and unhesitating in the specific way of someone who had already decided what version of events was going to be presented. "He’s Mari’s father." A small pause, perfectly placed. "And I’m her

Voren said nothing.

the statement like it was furniture in his way and crossed the room

exactly where

girl, the way she should have the moment she walked in, without

jaw. Up close, standing within feet of Voren, the resemblance wasn’t something you could talk yourself out of. It was just there, plain and

bed at the red-haired woman without softening it. "You should

the girl’s legs, one hand reaching out to smooth it. "I know. I

the other side of the bed and the three of them, Voren standing, Jasmine sitting, the child between them, arranged themselves into a picture that looked complete. Looked

cold and heavy

it, picked it up, and put it straight back down. This was not her business.

she walked in here that the odds were not in her favor. She had

the file she had set on the bedside table. "I have

"Daddy."

a child coming up through layers of sleep into a room that wasn’t familiar. But it was enough

by something so unguarded it was almost startling to watch. He leaned over the bed, one hand already finding the girl’s, pulling her

here, sweetheart." His voice came out quieter than Seraphine had ever heard it. "I’ve