Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 297 - She was never going to be you

"She was a model," Voren explained, his eyes back on the ceiling. "That’s actually how I crossed paths with Stanley in the first place.

He was the one I paid to keep tabs on her and make sure she stayed safe whenever she wasn’t around me. He ran in those same circles, so it just made sense to handle it through him."

Seraphine took all that in without saying much. Stanley. Another link she hadn’t known about before, another part of the picture she didn’t realize she was right in the middle of. No wonder Voren had dodged her question earlier when she asked how they knew each other. It all tied back to another woman in his past, and a human one at that.

She kept turning the photo over in her mind. Coco James. A woman who had her face, her eyes, her hair dyed to match, living a life that basically revolved around Voren’s hurt and everything he’d lost.

"Where is she now?"

Seraphine kept staring up at the chandelier, letting the full weight of it sink deep into her chest. It felt like this slow, quiet crumbling of a hope she hadn’t even fully admitted to herself until right now.

She had really wanted Marigold to be hers. That was the quiet faith she’d been holding onto. She had hoped that just this once, the moon goddess might finally answer the deepest wish in her heart.

The feeling had been there from the very first second that little girl looked up at her with those gorgeous blue eyes and called her mom.

huge inside her. Even though the age didn’t quite add up, she had brushed it off as some mix-up with whoever had found her or whoever Corvine had handed her daughter

whole story, she could feel that secret hope getting smaller and smaller, folding in on itself like something left out

She had always been pretty good at

she now? Coco," she asked

we’re not together anymore. Haven’t been for a long

Marigold’s mother, she should have some right to be in her

and clear, no shake in her voice, even though the

of her mind, she made a quiet note to herself that she would

real blood connection. And if there was even the tiniest chance, she needed to know for sure. She’d make time to look for little things like birthmarks too, anything that couldn’t

he spoke made it sound like something he’d thought about so many times that

fell apart between us. Because the real problem was never her. It

you, but think like you and feel like you. I’d try to push her toward medicine or starting some kind

that just wasn’t who she was. She loved being on the runway. She took life easy and relaxed in a way I couldn’t understand

warm and attentive and everything. But the second cameras or other people showed up, I

surprised that any woman in her right mind would treat Voren like that. She knew she had done the same thing once, judging from the videos she saw on Voren’s phone, but since she didn’t have those memories,