Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 293 - You looked at me like you’d never seen me before

"Meaning what, exactly?" Seraphine didn’t turn around to face him. Her voice came out flat and careful in that way people get when they already know the thing they’re about to hear is going to hurt pretty bad.

Voren didn’t hurry through it. He let the words sit there and settle properly.

"The first time I came to the city, I was there to learn everything. Business stuff, investments, how to actually build something that would last a long time. You were so excited when I left. You had this whole list of requests."

A low breath escaped him, something caught between a laugh and a sigh. "Buy me this, bring me that, don’t forget the thing from that one store over there." His hands slowed down in her hair.

"I spent four whole years out there, away from the pack, learning all I could, building up my life, stacking everything together. Starting businesses that would actually mean something real for us. That’s what I was planning for your eighteenth birthday. Everything I was doing, all of it, was for after that point."

Seraphine stayed quiet. She wasn’t moving an inch.

"And then?" she asked, her voice low and controlled. But her hands had curled tight into the fabric of his shirt in her lap.

"And then something happened." His voice didn’t break but it got a lot heavier. "And by the time it did, Marigold’s mother was already there in the picture."

out for a memory she couldn’t quite grab, like pressing your hand against thick glass and

whispered. More to herself than to him. "Why does it feel like someone just took

slowly. He didn’t answer her right away. He just looked at the back of her head, at the curve of her shoulders, at the way she

used to hurting quietly without making a big scene

and something that looked almost like firm resolve, all of it moving

said. "All of it. From the very

a heavy question for so long that the weight of it had just become a normal part of

I want to know everything there is

leaned back against the headboard, his eyes fixed up on the ceiling, and started telling the story from the very beginning, the way you

city was pretty short. Just a few months, that’s all it was." His voice stayed

your gifts. I’d been thinking about you nonstop while I was out there, picking out stuff you requested and more, actually excited to see the

got back, you looked at me like you’d never seen me

and came up with nothing, just this blank wall where the whole moment should have been. But deep in her gut, she knew he wasn’t making any of this up. There was no act in his voice at all. Just the flat tone of someone laying out facts