All Chapters of The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

146 Chapters

0130:Dead In My Place

ALICE'S POVCallum came back an hour later, carrying a folded note and a thin folder instead of his notebook. "The Alpha asked me to give you this."The folder held a copy of his order — clinic secured, investigators assigned, evidence preserved. The note was three lines, no signature.I know you didn't do this. I'm not stopping until everyone else knows too. Stay safe.I opened my desk drawer to put it somewhere safe, and stopped. The blue mug used to sit in this drawer when I wasn't using it — Benjamin's replacement, the one he'd quietly left for me weeks ago. It wasn't there now. It was in an evidence bag somewhere, in pieces, tagged and logged, the last thing he'd given me turned into proof of how a child had died. I laid the note in the empty space where it used to sit and closed the drawer."Thank you," I said."He's not going to stop. You should know that.""What happens now — the investigation?""The examiner's report should be back by morning. Once we know exactly what was i

0131: I Keep Seeing Her

ALICE'S POVThe floorboard outside my door groaned, slow and deliberate, and every muscle in me went tight.I'd been awake anyway. Sleep wasn't coming — every time I shut my eyes I got Lily reaching for the mug, the same three seconds on a loop, and no amount of lying still made it stop. So when I heard the first creak, I knew it was not the house settling. It was more like someone shifting their footing right outside, on the other side of the wood.Don't open it for anyone you don't recognize by voice first.I slid off the bed as quiet as I could and took the heavy flashlight off the nightstand. Not much of a weapon. But it was better than my bare hands.Another sound came through, just a faint scrape, someone adjusting where they stood again. Whoever had measured that poison for me hadn't finished. I was as sure of it as I've ever been sure of a fever before the thermometer said so. I set my thumb over the switch, took a grip I could swing from, and put my back to the wall beside t

Author's Note

Hey everyone 💛Quick but honest update: exams start next week, and I need to fully focus, so updates will pause until August 1st.I don't take your support lightly. School is how I'm building my future, but you guys are a big part of what keeps me going while I do it — every read, every comment, every vote. You've made this more than just a story to me, and I hope it's more than that to you too.I won't be updating, but I'll be thinking about this story (and you) the whole time. Same characters, same world, waiting for me on the other side of exam week.While I'm gone — what part of the story are you most excited to get back to? I'd love to read your guesses about what's coming next 👀See you August 1st. Wish me luck 🤍

Author's Note

Dear amazing readers,I'm finally back! ❤️First of all, I want to say a huge thank you for your patience while I took a short break from updating. I had an important exam to write, and your understanding meant more to me than you know.To everyone who wished me good luck and told me you'd still be here when I returned—thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your kindness, encouragement, and support kept me motivated throughout.Now that the exam is behind me, I'm excited to announce that daily updates throughout August are officially back! I can't wait to continue this journey with all of you and share everything that's coming next.Thank you for reading, commenting, voting, and believing in this story. I hope you'll enjoy the chapters ahead as much as I enjoy writing them.Let's make August an unforgettable month together! ❤️

0132: Guilty Without Proof

Benjamin's POVI came to the council chamber straight off Alice's walkway. I'd watched her door until the sky went grey and I didn't bother hiding where I'd spent the night. Let them see it. A man's choices ought to cost him something out in the open, and I'd rather they read the price off my face than sit there guessing at it.The council was already seated when I got there — elders down both sides of the long table, Sorin near the head with her hands folded, Aldric beside her giving away nothing, Marcus at the window with his arms crossed tight. They'd called it for sunrise, before the pack was properly awake. You don't gather a council at first light to weigh evidence. You gather it that early to decide something before anyone can object.I didn't sit. I stood at the head of the table and gave them facts and nothing else: the broken mug, the spilled tea, the timeline, Lily found in Alice's office, Alice doing compressions when Morwen reached her, no forced entry, no witnesses."Th

0133: Worth The Price

BENJAMIN'S POVThe meeting ended without a vote. It ended divided, and the division came out into the corridor after me.Marcus caught me there with Harris a step behind him — Harris, who stood at my father's side before he stood at mine, who has never once broken with an Alpha of this line, and who wouldn't lift his eyes to me now."You said words in there you won't get back," Marcus said, not unkindly, a man laying out fact rather than making a threat. "Half that room walked in trusting your judgment as the pack ruler. You came in having sat outside her door all night like a hound on a porch, and then told them you'll set the whole pack's fear aside for one woman who doesn’t even want you back. Some of them will forgive that. Some of them won't, and they'll remember which morning it was." He waited for Harris to say something. Harris studied the floor tiles. "I hope she's worth what she's costing you. Because she is costing you something, and you ought to at least know the price wh

0134: The Attempt Missed

Benjamin’s POVI didn't indulge her in it or have a response just to make her feel heard. Whatever version of the past she was holding onto, correcting it wouldn't have done either of us any good, and she wasn't really talking to me."Lucian. Lily." She stopped and swallowed. "Both gone. I keep thinking there was a version of this where I did one thing differently, and she's still eating toast in my kitchen, complaining I forgot the cereal." She pressed her hand flat to the desk, hard, and held it there until it stopped shaking, then took it back into her lap. Whatever the rest of that thought was, she kept it.I let her sit in it. I didn't touch her, and I didn't tell her that Alice had knelt on that floor counting compressions until Morwen had to peel her wrists off the girl, because grief doesn't weigh effort against outcome. It just goes looking for somewhere to land.Then, for half a second, the wreck of her face held too still — the wet in her eyes didn't fall, didn't blink. It

0135: Calculated For Alice

John's POVThe third test turned the sample a deep, wrong blue. I sat back on the stool and looked at it a long moment before I let myself believe what I was looking at.I'd seen that color once before, in a lecture hall years ago, described by a man who told us he hoped none of us would ever meet it outside a jar. A refined neurotoxin. Not something pulled out of the ground, not something steeped from a plant by a woman with a grudge and a garden. Something made — in a room with locks on the door and a journal on the shelf, by hands that knew the work.It had taken two failed runs and most of the night to get there. I ran it a third time not because I doubted the second, but because a doctor who clears the woman he loves on a sloppy test hasn't cleared her at all. He's handed the next sharp person a reason to hang her twice.Benjamin came by in the dark hours, both times, and both times I told him the same thing: not until I'm certain. He didn't push. He looked at the lamp still burn

0136: Child Killer Note

ALICE'S POVThe rock came through the window a little after four, and the sound it made going through the glass wasn't the sound I expected. Not a crash. Something flatter than that, and more final, like a plate dropped on stone, and then the long thin noise of the pieces finding the floor.I was at the desk in the consult room with a stack of patient files I'd read the same page of four times, and I didn't move for a good few seconds. I just sat there and looked at the thing lying in the middle of my floor with a paper wrapped around it, and understood that my afternoon had a before and an after now, and that ten seconds ago I'd been sitting in the before.The note was tied on with a bootlace. Three words in block capitals, pressed so hard the pen had gone through the paper in two places.CHILD KILLER. LEAVE.I read it twice, which was once more than it needed, and then I put it in my coat pocket instead of on the desk, because I didn't want it lying face-up in a room people walked i

0137: Never Truly Alone

ALICE'S POVJohn came by at eight with two plates under a cloth and the news that Morwen had threatened to bring them herself if I sent them back."She doesn't make threats," I said."She does now. She's been making them all day. She threatened Barry with a filing cabinet this afternoon and I don't fully understand the mechanics of it, but he apologized."He set the plates down on the small table and didn't ask how I was, which was the kindest thing anybody had done for me since this whole incident happened."Thanks for bringing this over. They look delicious." Drake took one of the plates off him without asking whose it was and ate standing by the shuttered window, shoulder against the wall, watching the path through the gap in the curtain.We got through most of the meal without saying much. Afterward John didn't leave, and neither of them made a thing of it — he took the armchair, and Drake carried the second chair over from the desk and set it down at an angle by the door where nob

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