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Chapter 20
publish date:
2026-05-16 23:12:51
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The Alpha's Regret Came Too Late Chapter 25
Chapter 25ANNABELLAThe officiating elder, a woman named Hazel who had performed pack ceremonies for thirty years, called the assembly to order as the last of the daylight left the sky.I moved to my position at the front of the room.The ceremony began.Hazel spoke the ritual words—the formal acknowledgment of the bond, its history, the nature of what was to be dissolved. The language was old, older than most pack customs, carrying in its cadences the weight of something the Ancient Wolf Clans had understood that modern packs had largely forgotten. I listened to it and let it move through me and did not flinch.Then came the moment.Hazel looked at Antonio first, as protocol required. The Alpha spoke first in rejections—it was his right, as the one who had found the fated mate, to initiate."Alpha Antonio Greenwood," Hazel said, her voice carrying through the silent hall, "do you come before this gathering of your own free will, to dissolve the bond between yourself and your chosen
The Alpha's Regret Came Too Late Chapter 24
Chapter 24ANNABELLA"Then why—" He reached out and his hand found my face, his thumb against my cheekbone, the gesture that had undone me the first time and continued to undo me despite every instruction I had given myself. "Why are you so determined to leave?""Because you're determined to let me go," I said. "And I've spent my whole life waiting for people to decide I was worth keeping. I'm done waiting."His hand stilled against my face."That's not—" he started."Antonio." I turned my cheek into his palm for just a moment, allowing myself that much. "You told Christiana I'd be taken care of. That the program gave me a future. Those were kind thoughts. They were genuinely kind. But they were the thoughts of someone arranging a departure, not reconsidering one.""And if I'm reconsidering one?"The question sat between us, soft and enormous.I looked at him for a long time. At the face I had memorized without meaning to, the darkness of his eyes in the low light, the line of his jaw
The Alpha's Regret Came Too Late Chapter 23
Chapter 23ANNABELLA She nodded once, satisfied in the way of someone who had delivered a message and could now leave its consequences to the recipient. She turned and moved back down the stone path toward the gate with those slow, deliberate steps."Gertrude," I said.She paused but didn't turn."Why does it matter to you?"A brief silence. "Because I have been watching this family for forty years," she said, "and I would like, before I am done watching, to see it get something right."Then she was gone.I stood in the cold garden for a long time after that, holding the clipboard with the Institute application and the small card with her name on it, watching the robin work at the frozen grass with patient, undiminished focus.Don't perform the rejection.I folded the card and put it in my coat pocket and went inside to make breakfast.---I thought about it. Of course I thought about it—I was not capable of receiving that kind of information and setting it aside cleanly. It moved th
The Alpha's Regret Came Too Late Chapter 22
Chapter 22ANNABELLA The Seer found me in the garden.I had gone there early, ten days before the Moon Rite, when the February morning was still dark at the edges and the frost had not yet melted from the grass. It was one of the habits I had developed over years of living in a house where solitude required effort—the garden before anyone else was awake, the cold air and the smell of dormant earth and the particular quality of silence that existed before a day officially began.I was reviewing the Institute application on a clipboard, my breath misting in the cold, when I heard footsteps on the stone path behind me. They were slow and deliberate, the steps of someone who was not sneaking but who was also not in any particular hurry, and I turned to find a woman I had never seen before standing at the garden's iron gate.She was old. Not in any vague, polite sense but genuinely, remarkably old, the kind of age that announces itself in the total architecture of a person—the deep-carved
The Alpha's Regret Came Too Late Chapter 21
Chapter 21ANNABELLAHe looked at me. I looked back. We held that for a moment."I'm not able to make an accusation against my fated mate based on circumstantial evidence," he said.There it was. Clear and honest and exactly what I had expected."I know," I said. I kept my voice steady, because I had known this was coming and I had made my peace with it three hours ago in the conference room while I was still putting together the documentation I was going to bring to him anyway. Because he deserved to know. Because I deserved to have said it. "I knew that's what you'd say."Something moved across his face at that. "Annabella—""It's alright." I stood, gathering the documents from his desk. "I'm not asking you to take action. I just wanted you to know what I believed, and why." I managed a small, composed smile—the kind I had been manufacturing for two years and which still required, in this particular moment, more effort than it usually did. "The program is restored. The Silverpine pu
The Alpha's Regret Came Too Late Chapter 20
Chapter 20ANNABELLA I thought about the key. I thought about who moved through the pack house with the freedom of someone who considered it entirely their own territory, who had spent months watching me work and noting where I worked and who had every reason in the world to want the thing I was building to fall apart before I could take it with me when I left."I have my suspicions," I said carefully.Marcus was silent for a moment. "Do you want to name them?"I thought about Christiana's voice on the back stairs. *I don't think you see it because she's subtle about it.* I thought about the irony of that—being accused of subtlety by the person who had just executed the most precisely targeted act of sabotage I had ever witnessed. She was not wrong that I was subtle. Neither was she."Not yet," I said. "Not without more evidence than I currently have.""Alright." He closed the log document. "For what it's worth, my team and I are entirely satisfied that this was not your doing. We'll
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