All Chapters of The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

JOHN'S POVAt six in the morning, I was down on the floor of Alice's office with my shoulder against her desk, walking it eight inches off the wall, because I'd run out of places to look that an ordinary man would look.At this point, I had to look at things, not as a doctor trying to prove the innocence of the woman he loves but as a detective solving a murder case.I noticed an imprint on the floor where a piece of folded paper was. Down in the gap between the desk leg and the skirting, pressed flat, wet at some point and dried out again.The stain had gone through it in two places and taken the ink with it. It had been there since that morning, or it had been there since March, and the room wasn't going to tell me which.What was left readable was six words out of what might have been thirty.after morning rounds don't tellIt has no name. No date. Not my handwriting and not Alice's, and I had five months of both to set it against. I sat on that floor with it a while before I got u

ALICE'S POVThe man Callum sent stood on my step in the dark and handed me both pieces of it in one breath. He didn't come in for either."Your confinement is lifted as of tonight, Doctor. The Alpha's order, and it's got nothing to do with anything found today.""And what was found today?""Cora Maren. In the eastern woods, this afternoon. She's dead, and there was a letter with her."I had a hand on the door frame and I left it there."What did the letter say.""I don't know that, and I wouldn't tell you if I did. I was told to say it plainly and not make a speech of it, so that's what I've done. The Alpha's in the hall at eight."He walked back down toward the road, where the other one was waiting. They both turned their heads when I came out onto the step. Neither one moved to stop me. That was all of it.No paper. Nobody signing anything. I stood in my own front garden in the cold, allowed to be there, and there wasn't a place in this territory I wanted to go.The hedge along the

BENJAMIN'S POVMarcus had his hand out for it before I was through the side door."Give it to the clerk. Let him read it out. It carries better from a man with no stake in the thing.""I'll read it.""Then read all of it, Alpha. They've had four days of you telling them the investigation continues, and there is not one person on those benches who believes that means anything."The hall was full in a way I'd never once seen it full — every bench taken, men standing shoulder to shoulder down both sides, more of them packed into the doorway who couldn't get in and stayed anyway. Somebody's baby started up and got carried out. The door banged. The whole room turned to look at a door.Alice was in the second row on the left where Callum had put her. Coat still on. Hands in her lap.I went up and I didn't sit down."Four days ago a woman from this clinic did not come to work," I said. "Today she is dead. She was found buried in the eastern woodland, and there was a letter with her. I said i

LISA'S POVI was awake before first light, and the first thing I did was open the wardrobe, tomorrow they put my daughter in the ground and somebody has to decide what she wears.The white one is still hanging there, embroidered at the sleeves, the hem left unfinished because she'd grown two inches in three months and I kept promising to take it to the seamstress. I never did. Now I never will.I ran a finger along the stitching, crooked on one side where she'd begged for the needle herself, her hands too small to hold the line straight, and I told her it was beautiful.I meant it.I folded the dress, put it back, and shut the door on it. Then I picked out what she'd be buried in instead — the blue one with the flowers, the one she chose herself and nobody argued her out of. She had it on the last time she waved at me, both arms up over the schoolyard fence.I sat on the edge of the bed a long while before I could get a proper breath. The house doesn't make a sound anymore. It hasn't

John's POVThe door swung shut behind me and the bell was still going somewhere behind the hill.I should've gone to the meal. That child deserved every person who ever loved her sitting in one room, eating off the same table, telling each other what she was like, and there'll be people at that table tonight who remember the doctor didn't come.I went past the chairs somebody had shoved back against the wall, past the appointment book still open on the page where they'd crossed the whole day out.Morwen was already down the corridor. She had the clipboard and the pen, and she'd put her coat on the back of the door instead of hanging it up, which is what she does when she doesn't intend to be talked out of something."You don't have to do this today," I said."Neither do you."I put my hand on the sheet and stood there a second, and then I took it back off her."Then let's begin."We didn't say much for the first hour. Morwen wrote down every word in that flat steady hand of hers and n