All Chapters of The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

234 Chapters

0196: Suspicion Is Not Proof

Benjamin’s POV She'd changed her scrubs. There was still blood under her nails, in the beds, where it goes and stays. Her eyes went along the desk — the cloth, the notes, the sleeve with the confession in it — and then up to me."Tell me the truth.""Alice—""Nobody attacks John over medical records." She came another step in. "That man has no enemies. He has no rivals. He has nothing anybody in this territory would want except what he knows."Callum looked at the floor."Somebody tried to kill him for what was in his head," she said. "So what is it you are not telling me?"I looked at Drake. I looked at Callum.She'd been accused in an open chamber, shunned in her own market, and still trusted with the pack's children inside the week because there was nobody else. Called a murderer to her face, and she got up the next morning and unlocked that door anyway."Everybody out except Callum and Drake."The room emptied. I waited for the latch."We no longer believe Cora Maren killed Lily"

0197:He Was Waiting

LISA'S POVThe market was busy by half past eight when I finally made myself walk into it. Sitting in a house wondering how much they knew was how a person got caught not knowing enough.Five weeks I've walked into every room in this territory knowing more than the people standing in it. That was gone, and a woman who has to guess is a woman who gets caught guessing.So I went out.I went through the market slow, same as always, taking the hands that were held out and thanking the people who said Lily’s name.The baker's wife was putting her loaves out.That woman has known me nine years. Her Elsie and my Lily were inseparable from the time they could walk.I picked up a rye loaf. "How is Elsie? I haven't seen her at the schoolhouse.""She's fine." A smile came up and stopped a good way short of her eyes. "Just a cold. Nothing to it.""Tell her the marigolds are still going. She's welcome up there any time she likes.""I will." Her hands kept moving the whole time. "Thank you, Lisa."

0198: Caught In The Lie

BENJAMIN'S POV"I asked where you were going."She got a small laugh out, the kind you give somebody who's misread a harmless thing. "I'm only going to stay with family for a few days. I should have said. It's all been—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Since Lily. I needed to get out of that house.""Which family.""My aunt.""The one at River Stone.""Yes." Too quick, and she heard it herself. "Aunt Celia. You've met her.""She died six years ago."Her face came off for half a second. Then she put it back on, and I watched her do it, and that's a thing I'll be seeing for a long time."My cousin. I meant my cousin." One hand came up to her forehead. "I haven't slept properly in a month. Things come out wrong."She got no help from me. Silence is the only tool I own that can't be argued with afterward. She shifted the weight of the pack. Her eyes went to the tree line and came back to me and went to the tree line again."Benjamin. I have done nothing wrong.""I haven't accused you of anything.

0199:Walls Closing In

LISA'S POVNobody laid a hand on me the whole walk in. No chains. No grip on my elbow. No two warriors marching me through the middle of the compound where everybody could get a look. Just Benjamin's back in front of me, down a corridor I've walked a hundred times.Every light in the meeting room was on. Long table down the middle. Benjamin put his hand out at a chair."Please sit."Please. That was worse than anger. Anger I could manipulate. Anger I could cry against and make people uncomfortable. Politeness meant control. Politeness meant he didn’t need to shout because he already had everything he neededI sat slowly. My hands were shaking. I folded them in my lap where no one could see.Callum stood near the window, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. Drake leaned against the far wall, watching me the way a wolf watches a deer that’s wandered too far from the herd. His eyes never left my face.There was an empty chair at the table. Four chairs. Four men. But only three we

0200: Under Guard Until The Council

ALICE'S POVThey put John in that room and shut the door on me, and I spent the next forty minutes in a corridor listening to the sound of voices without one word in them.Those doors are old oak and a hand thick. You get tone off them and nothing else. Even with my werewolf ability, it was still useless.Benjamin, level from start to finish. Drake, quieter than Benjamin and worse. And Lisa. Hers rose and fell the most. Defensive first. Then the crying. Then something sharp and fast that I've never heard out of that woman in nine years.Then nothing.Then a longer nothing.So I walked. Up that corridor and back down it, past every Alpha this pack has ever had, hung in a row in their frames.Benjamin's father is the last one before the doors. That man and I knew each other. He made Benjamin marry me when I got pregnant with Lucian and never asked me a second time whether I could carry the Luna responsibility. He was fair and he was hard and he didn't have one soft word in him.Five wee

0201: That's Not Enough

Alice’s POV I left the room and walked through the Alpha House. The guards nodded as I passed. The hallways were quiet. The sun was beginning to set outside the tall windows, painting the floors in shades of gold and amber. I found Benjamin on the veranda, standing alone at the railing, staring out over the pack village.I walked up beside him and didn’t speak. The village spread below us. Children were being called inside for dinner. Smoke rose from chimneys. A patrol wolf crossed the square with his radio crackling softly. Ordinary life. Continuing.“How much of this have you been carrying by yourself?” I asked.Benjamin didn’t answer immediately. His hands were resting on the railing, his knuckles tight. “All of it. Since the day Lily died.”“That’s not what I asked.”He was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned toward me. Not as Alpha. Not as the man who’d interrogated Lisa with calm, measured questions. As Benjamin. The man I’d married. The man who’d stood by me when the pack t

0202: What I Left In That Cabinet

LISA'S POV"Until this investigation is finished, you are forbidden to leave Blue Moon territory."Benjamin said it in a level voice, in front of six witnesses, with no charge attached anywhere in it, and every man in that room knew exactly what it meant before he'd finished speaking. Very politely put. I'm a prisoner in a house with good linen on the bed.I stayed where he'd left me, in the middle of the room, looking at the door long after it closed.My hands wanted the strap of my bag. There was no bag to want. Callum had taken it off my shoulder in the corridor, before we even got to the stairs, and he'd done it so pleasantly I nearly thanked him.This wasn't how tonight was supposed to go. By now I should have been four hours into the southern woodland, far enough that no patrol here could pick up my trail by sunrise, far enough that Benjamin's reach stopped meaning anything at all. Instead there was a locked door, and two women posted under the window.So I made myself breathe,

0203: Sufficient Cause

BENJAMIN'S POVCallum stopped me eight feet from the chamber doors, the whole council already seated on the other side of them."One thing before you go in.""Say it.""She asked for the council herself. First thing this morning, to the woman on her door, and she asked twice so it would be written down properly." He kept his voice under the wood. "Wants to be heard in front of the elders."She wasn't asking for time. She was asking for her own house back, and somebody to speak for her. Lisa Scott had asked for the one room in this territory where every word out of her mouth goes down on paper forever."You don't like it," Callum said."No.""Do we hold it back?""We can't hold it back. She asked in front of a witness, and the witness wrote it down." I put my hand on the door. "She knew that before she opened her mouth."Then we walked in.The chamber was full. Long oak table down the middle, the crest cut deep into the wood and worn shallow at the near end where three generations of h

0204: Nothing To Say

LISA’S POVI heard boots outside my door at ten past nine. My hand was on the frame before I decided to stand.Then the lock shifted. Then one of the female guards from the courtyard stood by the open door, her hand still on it."Lisa Scott. The Council is ready to hear you."For a breath and a half I thought about saying no. What would they do — come in and take me by the arms, walk me down four flights with my heels dragging past every warrior in this house. Yes. They would.I stood and put my dress straight. My hands took longer to settle than the dress did."I'm coming."Two of them fell in beside me, one at each shoulder. Close enough to be there. Far enough that nobody could call it a hold. Nobody said a word on the whole walk, and those corridors have never been that long in nine years of coming here.Then the doors. They opened and every voice inside stopped at once, and every face in the room came round to the same place.Five elders behind the long table. Benjamin in the Alph

0205: She Denied All Of It

ALICE'S POVI was in the break room at half past eleven, restocking a cabinet that didn't need restocking. The refrigerator hummed. The clock ticked against it. Nothing else in that building made a sound.Four boxes of bandages went from one shelf to another. Then I stood there and looked at them like they might tell me something.They wouldn't let me into that chamber. Witnesses, council, and people directly concerned with the investigation — three categories, and I fit none of them, and I'm the woman the whole thing started with. So I spent the morning in a corridor with my arms wrapped around myself. Paced it. Looked in on John twice. Put the medicine cabinet in order three separate times.When the doors finally opened, I was standing right there to watch them walk her out.She didn't look at me.That's the part I haven't been able to set down all day. No hate in it. No triumph. Nothing thrown at me across the hallway. Her face had gone still, like somebody had taken the performanc

...

19 20 21 22 23 24

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP