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Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

234 Kabanata

0081:The Mark On Her Neck

BENJAMIN’S POVI went down to the clinic to find her. Morwen told me she'd already left — gone off with John — and she didn't know where the two of them had got to.So I waited at her door instead. I had something to say to her, and somewhere in that long day of scrubbing blood off my own jaw I'd made up my mind I wasn't going to lose my nerve before I got it out.She came back near midnight, right after Alec sent a message to let me know he saw her in town and if I knew about it. I had the smell of him on her before I even looked at her face —I already knew she let another man have his hands all over her, plain as anything to a wolf's nose, and mine had never once spared me a single thing it could tell me.Then I saw the mark on her neck.Small. Faint pink love bite that was barely there. The kind of mark you'd only catch if you knew just where to look, and I knew exactly what had left it.The bond came up under my skin and leaned toward her, not asking one thing about what I wanted.

0082: The Wall Paid For It

ALICE'S POVBenjamin had already walked away by the time I made myself stop touching the mark on my neck.The kiss with John hadn't meant much — or it had meant something, but a clean kind of something, with none of the weight I dragged around in Blue Moon. No ghosts. No bond. No thirty days sitting on every word I said. That was the whole point of going. I'd kissed John back because for one evening I'd wanted to be a woman who could choose the easy thing and not have it cost her anything and I’m not sorry for it.Benjamin's voice when he said those words earlier stayed with me longer than I wanted. Not the jealousy underneath — that was there too, close to the surface, barely held. It was the steadiness. He hadn't shouted. He hadn't accused me of anything I could argue with cleanly. He'd just named the real shape of what loving me would cost, and walked off before I could tell him it wasn't fair to ask that of anyone. Some small, worn-out part of me agreed it was exactly fair, beca

0083: Something Shifted When He Left

ALICE'S POVNine days left.I'd started counting before I got out of bed — the number just sitting there before coffee, before I'd even brushed my teeth. Nine days until the council's window closed, and I still didn't know what I'd put in the box marked answer.John's kiss sat between us, neither of us naming it since the morning after. He and Benjamin hadn't said a word to each other since the festival — a cold, careful orbit, both of them circling me instead of each other. I was tired of being something two grown men took turns being careful around.The clinic was busy enough that I didn't have much room to think about any of it. I was grateful for that.Lily showed up just after the lunch rush, slipping in through the side door the way she usually did, a folded piece of paper held against her chest like something precious."I made you something," she said, holding it out before I'd even fully turned around.A blue wolf, drawn in careful, uneven crayon, standing beside a smaller fig

0084: Even If She Leaves

BENJAMIN'S POVAldric had the morning's papers squared in front of him before I'd even cleared the doorway, and he didn't look up — not until I'd dropped into the seat across from him."This isn't on the agenda," he said."It is now." I sat without looking at him. "I want a permanent endowment for the pediatric screening program. Structured so no future council can touch it. Not this one. Not the next ten."Aldric set the pen down, slow. "In Dr. Watson's name and not yours or the pack?.""In the program's name." I held his eyes. "Her work — whatever happens between her and me doesn't get a vote in it. I don't want this tied to my title, my marriage, or what kind of mood I'm in on a given day. I want it tied to the children it's already saved."He looked at me a long moment — the look he got when he was deciding whether to push or let a thing stand."This is unusual," he said. "Permanent endowments outlast Alphas. Outlast councils. You're aware of what you're asking — this can't be und

0085: Smiled At Him

ALICE'S POVMorwen told me before Benjamin did.She mentioned it the way she mentioned everything—a fact dropped between two others, requisition forms in one hand, the news in the other."The endowment passed council yesterday. Permanent. Irrevocable, even if a future council wanted to undo it." She set the forms on my desk. "He drafted it himself. Wanted it tied to the program, not to anything personal."Not a gift, then.I took the forms and didn't say so. It would outlast the thirty days, whatever I decided—even him, if it came to that, the work going on no matter what I did with the rest of my life. That sat somewhere flowers wouldn't have reached.I nodded and went back to the chart in front of me. My hands weren't quite steady doing it. I didn't look at them long enough to be sure why.I moved through the rest of the day differently. Nothing I could have named, if anyone had asked.I lingered a beat too long in the clinic corridor when I caught sight of Benjamin at the far end, d

0086: Planting Seeds In The Dark

Lisa's POVJohn was alone in the supply room off the clinic — which was the only reason I came at all. He was restocking gauze, working it onto the shelf harder than the shelf had done anything to deserve."Pushing harder isn't going to turn her around," I said.He didn't look up. "If you are here to give unsolicited advice again then please don't.""You don't have to take it. I only watch." I leaned into the doorframe, easy, like I had all afternoon to give him. "You fought for her in front of everyone. Threw a punch, even. And she still tracks him across a courtyard like he's worth keeping an eye on."He set the gauze down — harder than it needed setting — and turned to face me. "That's not your business.""It's the whole pack's business by now. They all watched you hit your rival at the festival." I tilted my head, gentle as anything. "I'd have thought that settled something. It didn't, though. *Did it.*"He didn't answer. He picked up the next roll and went back to stacking, and h

0087:The Son I Failed

BENJAMIN'S POVAldric was three minutes into a toast about boundary cooperation, and I was using every word of it as cover for not thinking about the hand on my arm."You're tense," Lisa said quietly, leaning in."along been a long day, Lisa""I noticed." Her thumb traced once over my sleeve. "Lily's been asking about the supply route again. The one near the eastern outposts. She wants to walk it with her class next month and I told her I'd ask you directly instead of going through the council.""I'll look into it.""Thank you." She didn't move her hand. Pulling away over a conversation about a school trip would've looked stranger than leaving it there, so I let it stay and called that the reason.Across the hall Alice sat with John, a glass of wine in front of her she hadn't touched once. I noticed the wine before I noticed anything else. Her face didn't change. Then her shoulders dropped half an inch — small, deliberate, gone before John would've caught it.She leaned toward him and

0088: Memorial Tree

ALICE'S POVThe tree was younger than I'd expected. An oak, slim but sturdy, planted on a ridge that caught the wind from every direction.Small wooden wolves hung from the lower branches on bits of twine — a dozen of them, maybe more, each one carved rough, each one different."I make a new one every year," Benjamin said. "On the day.""You carve them yourself.""Badly." He touched one, and the twine swayed. "I still sit here when it rains. I don't know why. I just don't want him to be alone in it."I looked at the wolves turning on their twine and didn't say anything for a while.Then I told him the truth instead."I wasn't at the funeral," I said.Benjamin went still."I was too broken to be there. I let Drake and Damian and David handle everything — the arrangements, the service, all of it. I couldn't make myself go."My voice came out steadier than I'd expected, for what it was carrying."I kept thinking, if I didn't see him like that — still, not moving — then some part of me co

0089: Humming Again

BENJAMIN’S POV"You're humming."I stopped."I'm not.""You're humming. Loud enough I heard it from the hallway." Callum set the patrol log down. "You haven't hummed since—"He didn't finish. He didn't need to.I'd slept. All the way through, no dreams I could remember, and that hadn't happened in longer than I wanted to admit out loud."Morwen wants a supply audit before the next screening wave," I said. "I told her I'd come by this morning.""That's not an answer.""It's the only one you're getting."---Alice's office door was open when I got to the clinic. She was already talking before she looked up. "Morwen, do you have the—" She stopped when she saw it was me."I need the growth chart from June," she said. "Caleb's follow-up is at nine.""I have it in my office.""Then go get it."So I went and got it. When I came back I set the chart down on the corner of her desk, and a second cup of coffee with it — poured for no one, if I'm honest about it.She looked at the cup, then at me

0090: The Problem Is You

JOHN'S POVMorwen took the box out of my hands before I noticed I still had it."You've restocked that shelf three times," she said. "It doesn't need restocking.""I was counting it.""You weren't counting it."The faucet in the corner was still dripping into the bucket somebody left there three days ago. Nobody had fixed that either."Something happen?" she said."Alice laughed. At Benjamin."Morwen picked up her clipboard and started counting syringe tips instead of answering. Forty seconds went by and she still hadn't looked up."That supposed to mean something?" she said."You tell me."She didn't. Just kept counting.-----Alice came in an hour later for a suture kit. I had it down before she asked."Thanks," she said."You seem different today.""Do I.""Lighter. Less like you're bracing for something."She reached for the kit. Her hand stopped halfway, unsure of itself for a second, then closed around it. "Benjamin brought me coffee this morning," she said. "Black. No sugar.""I

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