Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 281 – The code

The word dropped into the room like a stone into still water.

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Even the background noise of the hospital corridor seemed to cut out completely, leaving behind a silence so complete and so sudden that it had weight to it.

Seraphine’s file slipped from her fingers, but she didn’t move, didn’t speak. Her eyes stayed locked on the little girl’s face, and she stood there, going through every detail the way she did when she was looking at a scan that wasn’t adding up. Slowly, carefully, refusing to jump to the conclusion that was sitting right in front of her.

The girl looked like Voren. Not in the vague, generous way people described resemblances to be polite. In the specific, undeniable way where you could line up the features one by one and find them. The jaw. The shape of the nose. The way her brows sat, slightly heavier than you expected on such a small face.

But those eyes.

Wide and blue and sitting in that face like they belonged to someone else entirely.

Seraphine’s chest tightened because she could swear that from certain angles, the girl looked like Ravyn or maybe, she was hallucinating because she desperately wanted Marigold to be hers.

She thought about Ravyn again, the time from when they were younger, about the years before Voren had cut his hair short and come back from the city looking like a different version of himself.

Back then, standing next to each other, the two of them had been close enough in appearance that people occasionally confused them. Same bone structure. Same height. Same darkness in their coloring.

Marigold had Voren’s everything.

shade Seraphine saw in the mirror every single morning. The headache was getting out of hand but her mind refused to

expression pulling tight in the specific way of someone trying to close a door before anything else could walk through it. "Mari." Her voice was firm, carefully measured. "She’s

Jasmine with the particular patience of a child who has already decided they are right and is simply waiting for the adults to catch

is my mother," she said, clear and steady, like she was correcting a mistake in a math

she reached her hand out toward Seraphine. No hesitation. No uncertainty. Just a small open hand extended across the blanket as if

knew that. She could see it. Whatever this was — a dream, a child’s imagination, some strange pull that had no rational explanation, didn’t mean what

her feet moved forward

She just did. And the warmth that moved up through her palm and spread into her chest was

was her child because she had labored that night and woke up

hair back from Marigold’s forehead and tucking it gently

softer than she intended.

of absolute childhood certainty, the kind that hasn’t learned yet to doubt itself. "The

went very

his daughter’s back, went completely still. His grip tightened slightly, and something moved behind his expression that he closed off before it

much was visible. Whatever was happening in this room, he