All Chapters of The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

BENJAMIN'S POVThe man I put on the clinic came up to the house before it was dawn, four nights of nothing to report, and reported it anyway."Lights on past midnight every one of them, Alpha. Back room. Doctor Marlow.""He works late.""He does." He turned the page over in his hand and never once looked down at it. "Elder Aldric came down on the second afternoon and was inside about an hour."I set my cup down."And Cole been in twice. Once at the front, once at the market end with Marlow out in the road talking to him." He stopped. "And Doctor Watson was still in that building at eleven on two of the four.""Anything else?""No, Alpha.""Then go and sleep."I sat at that desk after he'd gone, the evidence bag in front of me and the sun still not up. Four nights. A council elder, a Shadow Moon Alpha, my doctor and my physician, all of them in and out of that building, and the man I posted to keep them breathing had just given me a better account of my own investigation than any of th

John's POVI had everything out on that worktable before the Alpha Benjamin was halfway up the path.Cora Maren's report. My own sketches from the postmortem, both wrists, drawn in a hand I could barely hold steady that first night. The little envelope with the thread from under her left index nail, no longer than a grain of rice. And now the cloth off the branch, out of its bag and flat under the light.Morwen came in with two pairs of gloves and set one down beside me."You're building the board again.""I'm comparing."She pulled hers on and took the other side of the table without waiting to be asked.The cloth first. Dark blue wool, heavy weave, the kind that goes into a coat a man means to keep ten winters. The edges had gone rough and furred after a week of weather on a branch, and mud had dried hard into one corner.Then the thread, under the lens. Same blue — the exact same blue, and I've looked at that thread more times in three weeks than I've looked at my own hands. Set th

JOHN’S POVBenjamin came into my clinic at twenty past nine with Callum a step behind him and Drake a step behind Callum, and I had a young warrior's ankle in both hands at the time.Morwen got to me first."They're in your office. All three.""Then they can be in my office another four minutes."I finished the wrap. I told the boy to stay off that foot for three days, to come back if the swelling climbed past the bone. He said yes. He will not do it. They never do.Then I went through.Benjamin was at the window. Callum had the door. Drake had put himself against my bookcase with his arms crossed, and the sealed pouch with the blue cloth in it sat on my desk where somebody had set it down and nobody had touched it since.Benjamin did not spend any time getting to it."We've missed something.""Go on.""One of the young ones on the search. Barely two years on patrol." He came off the window. "He told Callum there was soap under the herbs on that cloth. Floral. Almost nothing left of i

ALICE'S POVMy journal was still on my desk, right where I'd left it. That's the only reason I was at the clinic at ten past six that morning.There was a study in it on muscle recovery after a shift, and I'd been too tired the night before to walk back for it. I told myself it would still be there when I get back.Six o'clock, then. The sky was barely up. Nothing moving across the whole compound except a man carrying feed down toward the paddock.The two guards on the perimeter nodded me through."Early start, Doctor." One of them said."Forgot something." I replied, walking ahead.The waiting room was dark. Reception empty, chairs still stacked where the night girl leaves them. I noticed the light in John's office was still on.Of course it was. That man had slept at that desk twice this month, and I'd told him about it but I guess he won’t quit until someone send him home by forceI went up those stairs putting the words together for the third time. Four steps from the top, and my

BENJAMIN'S POVI shut the clinic at seven that morning and put four wolves on it, and not one of them was there to keep patients out. They were there in case somebody came back to finish the job they started on John.The rest of that morning came at me in pieces. Reports carried in quiet and handed over quiet, evidence bagged and signed for, a widow at the barrier who wanted to know whether the doctor was dead. I told her he wasn't and watched her decide whether to believe it. The smell wouldn't come off me all day.Alice hadn't left him.Through the glass I could see the whole of it — her chair pulled around to the side of the bed, two fingers laid on the inside of his wrist, Morwen on the other side changing dressings and putting a light in his eyes every quarter hour, writing down what it did. Steady hands. The same hands that had been inside him at six that morning were putting in a line straight at eleven.I've seen those wounds, and I've seen how much blood came out on that floo