All Chapters of The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

234 Chapters

0148: Ten Minutes Missing

JOHN'S POVThe clinic opened the morning after the hearing, and the first thing anybody said to me was about it."Three people asked when Doctor Watson's coming back," Morwen said. "Two wouldn't be seen by me at all. They're sitting out there anyway, so they'll change their minds by eleven." She set a chart down. "And four of them wanted to know what she said in that chamber. I told them to ask an elder.""What did they hear she said?""That she was sorry. And that she wouldn't give a name." Morwen looked at me over the top of the desk. "The second one's gone round this compound faster than the first."She testified for three hours yesterday while I stood outside a room they wouldn't let me into, and I haven't been able to get to her house anymore, because a doctor carrying a case file is exactly who those men have been told to keep off that doorstep. She'll have eaten nothing since. She'll have gone home and reorganized a cupboard instead without watching TV or doing anything else.I

0149: The Wet Entry

John’s POV "When you came back and there was a new name in the book. Was the ink still wet?"She sat with that, hands flat on the desk, wanting to give me an answer she didn't have, and I made myself sit there and watch."I never looked," she said. "It was a visitor's name in a visitors' book. Why would I look."The log had been in the evidence box six days and I'd been through it forty times. Out it came again.Twelve entries on that page, eleven of them dry and a little faded, because that's what ink does in a warm room. The twelfth — nine ten in, nine thirty out, the name that doesn't exist anywhere in the pack records — is darker than the eleven above it.Not by much. You wouldn't catch it unless you'd tried everywhere else first."It's the same pen," Morwen said. "It's the pen that lives on that desk.""I know.""So it means nothing.""It might mean that entry is younger than the ones above it.""Younger by how long?""That's the part I can't give you." I slid it back in the sle

Author's Note

A huge THANK YOU to some of my amazing readers who have been showering my books with comments, reviews, gems, and so much love. 💖 Your support means more than you know, and every notification from you puts a smile on my face.This week's special shout-out goes to:🌸 Jeanine Myer🌸 Phylease Sams🌸 TNF🌸 Sharon Logan🌸 Christine Brayton🌸 Anice Coe🌸 Allison Greene PalmerThank you for reading, cheering me on, and being part of this journey. I truly appreciate each and every one of you. ❤️To everyone I couldn't name this week, I see you too. Thank you for your unwavering support, your comments, your reviews, your gems, and for being part of this incredible journey. I appreciate every single one of you. 🥰📚Thank you all for making this dream possible. ❤️

0150: Still Not Free

ALICE'S POVI organized my medical bag before I remembered I wasn't allowed to treat anyone.The instruments were clean. They'd been clean for days. I took them out anyway — stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, otoscope — and laid them along the desk in the order I use them during an exam. Then placed them back in the bag. Then my own shelf: bandages by size, syringes by gauge, the little of it I keep in this house. The list of what's in that bag didn't need rewriting. I rewrote it anyway.It kept my hands busy so my head didn't have to sit still. Didn't have to land on Lily's hand reaching for the desk, or Lisa's voice in that chamber, or the name that came up when Harris asked who wanted me dead.The window was open. Outside, the compound got on with its morning — children near the fountain, warriors in the training yard, somebody two houses along running a mower before six.Then a voice went up, a child's, high and frightened.Somebody get a doctor right now!Another, further off, alr

0151: She Did Not Return

JOHN'S POVCora was supposed to be in the clinic at seven. Ten past, she wasn't. Twenty past, I walked the front path end to end twice and found nobody on it, and I quit pretending she'd only been running late.The page was still open on my desk and my coffee had gone cold.7:00 — Cora. Alone. No notes.Last night she stood in my doorway with something she clearly wanted to tell me. It was all over her face. She opened her mouth twice and stopped both times, and I told her to come back in the morning and do it properly, because what I wanted was a chair, a shut door, and Morwen at the table with a pen.I got the chair. I got the shut door. Now, I don't have Cora.Morwen came in at ten to eight, hung her coat on the peg, and stopped beside the supply cart."That's still not done.""No."Her hand stayed on the handle of it. Cora restocked that cart before anybody else was through the front, every working day for six years, and Morwen stood there a while before she said anything else."Wh

0152: They Found Something

BENJAMIN’S POVCallum came in without knocking at half past ten, straight from the clinic, coat still on."Cora Maren didn't come to work this morning. Marlow's runner went up to the house. It's empty.""She's grieving. That child died on her floor and she's been in that building every day since. People need a day.""Her front door was unlocked.""Then she's careless, or she's ill, or she's sitting in somebody's kitchen being talked to." I had the patrol schedule in front of me and I didn't stop reading it. "John can spare a nurse for a morning. Tell him to send somebody up at noon and let her come in when she's ready to come in—""The bed's made and hasn't been slept in. Her coat's on the hook in the hall. Her shoes are by the door."I stopped reading.Her coat was on the hook?A woman doesn't walk out into cold like this with nothing over her shoulders, and she doesn't line her shoes up at her own door and go off into the dark.Whatever this was, it wasn't a woman who'd packed and g

0153: I Was Wrong

LISA'S POVI set out two plates before I caught myself. Put one back in the cupboard. The toast was cold by the time I remembered it was there.Elena knocked at ten. She's come every few days since Lily died and she never asks whether it's a good time, which is the kindest thing anybody does for me now."You're eating," she said, looking at the plate."A little."She sat down without being asked. Then: "Have you heard about Nurse Cora?""I heard she didn't come in yesterday.""She's missing, Lisa. The house was open. Her shoes were still inside the door." Elena's hands closed around her cup. "They've had search parties out since midday. Quietly — nobody's supposed to be saying it, and everybody is.""That's why there were men on the eastern path.""That's why." She looked at me over the cup. "You spoke to her. At the hearing. What did she say to you?""She said she was sorry." I gave the pause its proper length. "I thought she was offering condolences.""And was she?""I've no idea. S

0154: Pendant In The Mud

ALICE'S POVThe figure came one step out of the trees and stopped. It stayed there long enough that I understood it wanted to be seen. Then it went back into the dark.I didn't call the guards.I stood at the window with my hand on the curtain and worked out the cost. Two men through the trees with a lamp, nothing to show for it, same as last time. By morning it'd be in the council report — the doctor under protection, seeing things in the dark again. Marcus would find a use for that. Every ruling Benjamin had made about me would be worth less than it already was.So I shut off the last light and went to bed.I was up at six. Hair pulled back, shower, the same coffee in front of the same window, watching the pack move without me. Eight days now.Nobody came at seven.At half past I asked the guard if there'd been word from the Alpha's house. No word. At nine I asked again. He said he'd find out. He came back at half past and told me it was in hand.My coffee went cold. I put the kettl

0155: Only One Walked Away

BENJAMIN'S POVJohn was in my office before I got to it, and the pendant was already out of the bag and lying on the map.Silver wolf on a broken chain. Somebody had tried to fix that chain once and made a bad job of it."Riverbank," Callum said. "Beyond the eastern patrol route, half into the mud at the water's edge. One of the trackers caught the light off it.""How long had it been there?""Not long. No tarnish, no weathering.""That's Cora Maren's." I turned it over with one finger. "That mended chain. She's worn it every day I've seen her.""It proves she was at that river," John said. "It doesn't prove one thing more than that, and I'd rather nobody in this compound started saying it does."He'd been up most of the night and it showed. He'd brought two more things with him too, laid out in the right order — that's what makes him worth listening to."I've been asking the wrong question since Wednesday," he said. "I kept asking who saw what in the corridor. Yesterday afternoon I s

0156: Eleven Days Later

LISA'S POVI dreamed about the honey stall.Regular Saturday, market packed, Lily hanging off my sleeve and pointing at the one with the wooden dipper — the one the old woman always let her taste. In life I said no. We were late and I still had bread to get and I said no, sweetheart, not today.In the dream I said yes. That's all it was. I said yes, and she got up on her toes with her mouth open, and the old woman put the dipper down for her, and I woke up in the dark with her laugh still going in the room.Eleven days. She's still lying in that building.Outside, the compound was holding its breath when I went out. Warriors heading off in twos toward the eastern path. Men leaning on the fence by the training ground who should've been working. Conversations that stopped half a second late as I came past, and picked up again once I'd gone by.I heard three versions before I got to the market. That Cora ran because she'd done it. That somebody took her. That she knows who put it in that

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