All Chapters of The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

146 Chapters

0111: Thirty Lashes At Dawn

Lisa's POVI took my time getting dressed for dinner.The black dress. The silver earrings Benjamin gave me for my birthday four years ago — I told myself they matched, and left the other reason where it lay. Hair up, the way he used to like it. I caught myself in the mirror with one earring half-fastened and stayed there a second longer than I meant to. I could take them off. There was no reason to wear the one thing in the whole scheme that had nothing to do with winning. I fastened the second one and didn't look again.I wasn't dressing for Cole. Cole was a door I was walking through to get somewhere else. I was dressing for the woman I needed to be by the end of the night — composed, and finally on the winning side of a thing I'd been quietly losing for months.Cole was already at the table when I got there. He stood, ordered the wine, asked about my day. He played the beloved dinner companion as well as I played mine."I have something for you," I said, once the wine was poured.

0112: My Plea Changed Nothing

LISA'S POVI ran.The Alpha House sat dark except for his office. I didn't knock. He was still at the desk when the door gave under my hand."Benjamin. Please." It came out thin, breathless — I didn't recognize it as a voice I'd built for exactly this. "Thirty lashes. I'll be scarred for it. Lily—""Lily won't be there. I made sure of that."The one mercy, and he'd taken even the arranging of it out of my hands. "Then let me beg you properly. I'm begging you."He didn't lift his voice. "It's not in my hands anymore.""You're the Alpha. One word from you." I reached for the certainty that had carried me through harder rooms than this and felt it land and die in the space between us."I asked the council for justice. They gave it.""Seven years, Benjamin. Before Alice. Before any of this." Soft now, wounded, not demanding. "My marriage ended. I came back with nothing, and the one thing I still had was knowing you'd never let anyone put their hands on me like this. I'm not asking you to

0113: The Alpha Let It Happen

LISA'S POVThey came before the sky had any color in it. Two guards, looking all serious but not unkind. “We have been asked to fetch you to the square,” One of them said.I nodded and lifted both hands towards the one with the bond. “I’m ready,”He placed the silver bind around my wrist and took a step back. One checked the binding at my wrists twice and drew it tighter the second time, though I hadn't moved. Neither of them spoke past what the job required. I kept my chin level while they worked, the way I'd have kept it at any dinner, any council table, any morning in Benjamin's kitchen. Let them carry nothing back off my face worth the telling.They walked me to the square with my wrists bound in front, not behind — a mercy, or only the paperwork of one. The pack had already gathered along the edges, more of them than the hour deserved, coats pulled close, breath going to fog.I looked for the one face that would have made it bearable and caught myself mid-search: she was still

0114: Justice That Shattered A Child

BENJAMIN'S POVThe first crack of it went out across the yard.Dawn hadn't come up yet, and the square smelled like frost and somebody's early woodsmoke. I told myself I'd come because the council said I had to. Not because some part of me needed to watch it. I didn't quite buy it even while I was saying it.Lisa stood tied to the post in the middle, her back bare. The enforcer lifted the lash. Nobody in the crowd made a sound.Thirty strokes — my sentence, my justice — and I was going to stand there and watch every one land like a man who'd earned the right to.Then something broke loose at the edge of the crowd. Small. Quick. A blue coat cutting between grown adults who should've been faster than her.Lily.Two nurses were supposed to have her. Cora, and a second one planted by the far door, both of them there for exactly this. She'd gone straight through the pair of them like they weren't even standing there.The second lash came down. She saw it land."Mom!"The whole yard went st

0115: He Sat Outside The Door

ALICE'S POVMorwen told me before I had the chance to find out on my own. Lisa was getting thirty lashes, at dawn, in the square. But that’s not the part that had me worried . I heard Lily had slipped past the nurses and seen part of her mother’s punishment before Benjamin got to her.I'd wanted the truth out. I'd wanted him to stop protecting Lisa but not like this. I hadn't wanted this public show of punishment.I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about the murmur of the onlookers from the square. I made it as far as the archive before my legs decided for me. The stairs down were narrow and cold, the dehumidifier in the corner grinding away in the quiet, the way it had for months, filling its tank with water nobody ever remembered to empty. Down here nobody expected anything of me — it was just old paper, dust, a room built to hold records and ask no questions.A stack of intake files sat on the corner table, half-sorted, my own handwriting on the top folder from a week that fe

0116: He Was Already There

JOHN'S POVMorwen found me in the corridor after rounds. She didn't ask how I was doing. She never did."You've been distracted all week. Win it or let it go. Don't drag it through my clinic.""Working on it.""Good. Dr. Watson needs colleagues who are present. Not men competing for her attention like she's a prize." She walked off before I could answer that either.I tried it on the next patient — slowed myself down, made myself look at the boy in front of me instead of the door behind him. It worked for about four minutes before everything crashed on me again after his mother said Alice's name, asking when Dr. Watson would be back on rotation, and I lost the thread of my own sentence, mid-word.I crossed the compound slow after that, the morning grey and cold. A supply cart rattled past near the courtyard, one wheel squeaking bad enough that a groundskeeper called out for someone to oil it. Near the council hall, Benjamin was walking with Callum, head down, moving the other way, no

0117: She Knew I Was lying

Lisa's POVI don’t know how long I was passed out for but I woke up on my bed, the pain was the first thing my mind registered. Thirty strokes, handed down with the council's full weight behind them — I didn't have to move to remember that, but I moved anyway, testing it, the way you press a bruise just to feel it answer. Halfway onto my side I stopped. The sheet had dried to my back where it never should have. So I lay flat and looked up at the ceiling until the worst of it eased off, and let yesterday come back the way it had happened — the square, the post, the crowd, and Lily's scream cutting through all of it like the one true thing in a day I'd built out of lies.A soft knock, and then Lily didn't wait for an answer. She came in with a tray held so careful in both hands — toast burnt at the edges, tea gone pale because she'd pulled it too soon, bandages stacked crooked on top like she hadn't known where else to set them. She'd done all of it herself. nine years old, and she'd

Author's Note ️

To all my amazing readers, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your incredible support!A very special shout-out to [Tummy], [J D], [Byron Prewitt], [Penny Brannon], [Diana Bizousky], and everyone else who took the time to leave comments. Reading your thoughts and reactions makes every chapter worth writing.Thank you to everyone who voted with gems, left five-star reviews, added this book to your library, and kept coming back for every update. Your support motivates me more than you know.If I missed your name this time, please know that I appreciate you just as much. Every read, comment, gem, review, and share helps this story grow.I hope you'll continue this journey with me because the best is yet to come!With love,Flying Dove ❤️

0118: I Won't Run Quiet

Lisa's POVBy midmorning, I slowly made myself get up. Moving slow helped a little. Rather than focus on my pain, I decided to fold the laundry that had sat in the basket for two days now, one piece at a time, stopping whenever my back pulled tightly. I heard the door bell ring the first time and ignored it.“Mom? Someone is at the door,” Lily called.For a mom I thought it was Benjamin or that goody two shoes Callum but when I looked, it was a delivery man holding a package by the door. — there were supplies I'd ordered before any of this situation I was currently in, back when I still believed the morning in Benjamin's kitchen was going to end in something other than a public square and getting punished. “I’m coming, sweetie.”“Are you Ms. Lisa Scott? I have delivery for you,”I nodded mutely and he handed me a pen. I signed for it standing very straight so the delivery man wouldn't catch anything on my face, and shut the door before he could ask.Lily read on the couch nearby, gla

0119: I Let Her Walk

BENJAMIN'S POVI had exactly four reasons to be near her door before breakfast, and I'd found every one of them before the sun was even up. Check the clinic roof. Carry the vaccination records over myself instead of handing them to someone who'd pass them off in under a minute. Ask Morwen whether the children's ward needed anything, and let the asking take the long way — past Alice's door right where I was sure she’d see me.Real work, all of it. First morning I counted the reasons together instead of one at a time, and saw what they added up to. I lay there and didn't reach for a fifth. That was the only thing I decided before I got up, and it was harder than anything waiting for me at the council hall.Her plant sat on the kitchen sill where the morning light could reach it. She'd kept it in her study back when she still lived here; I moved it out after, told myself the study got no sun.I filled a cup at the tap and watered it, the way I did every few days. She knew I still had it.

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