All Chapters of The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Chapter 11 FLASHBACK The cell block was quiet that night, quiet in the way it only got after the guards finished their rounds and the girls too tired or too broken to fight had finally stopped crying into their thin blankets. Callie sat with her back against the cold stone wall, knees pulled to her chest, when a voice spoke from the shadows beside her. "You're new." Callie flinched, expecting another blow, another fistful of hair. But the woman who spoke didn't move closer. She just sat there in the dark, thin and hunched, her breathing rough and rattling. "I don't want trouble," Callie whispered. "Neither do I." The woman shifted, and a sliver of moonlight from the small barred window caught her face. She was older, maybe thirty, with deep lines carved around tired eyes and skin gone gray from sickness. "Name's Mira." Callie didn't answer. "You don't have to talk," Mira said. "Just stay near me tonight. Those girls won't bother you if you're sitting with me." Callie hadn't un

Chapter 13The trouble started three days later, over a comb.Callie hadn't meant to take it. She'd found it in the same forgotten drawer as the hairpin, tucked behind some old scarves, nobody used anymore, she recognized it, it was the comb her mother, had given her before Rowena return all those years. It was pretty, carved wood inlaid with small colored stones, and when Rowena came back, her mother had asked for it back, and she never heard anything about it again, because whenever saw Rowena with the comb.Maybe her mother had replaced it, deciding to get Rowena a brand new gift rather than hand me downs and forgot all about it, besides it was hers first. And in a way she was not stealing, nobody would remember it. She'd been wrong."Has anyone seen my mother-of-pearl comb?" Rowena's voice carried down the hallway that evening, sharp with worry. "The one with the blue stones. I can't find it anywhere."Callie, passing through the corridor with a stack of folded linens in her arms,

Chapter 15Two years before everything fell apart, Callie found him half-hidden in the brush near the eastern border of pack land, blood soaking through a makeshift bandage wrapped around his side.She'd gone out that morning to gather wild yarrow for her mother's tinctures, a task she did most weeks, wandering the quiet edges of the territory with a basket over her arm and no fear at all of what she might find there. She almost walked past him. He was still, too still, and for one horrible moment she thought she'd stumbled onto a body.Then his eyes opened, and he looked at her with a sharpness that didn't match how badly hurt he was."Don't scream," he said, low and even, like he was the one in control of the situation rather than the one bleeding out in the dirt."I wasn't going to," Callie said, though her heart was hammering.He was young, not much older than her, dressed in clothes too fine and too torn to make sense together, like he'd been running from something in the middle

Chapter 17The maid's name was Fenna, and she had never much liked Callie, not since the trial, not since she'd watched Rowena cry in this very kitchen two years ago while everyone whispered about what Callie had done. So when she noticed the study door slightly ajar past midnight, and heard the soft click of the old phone being dialed, she didn't hesitate long before deciding who needed to know.She found Liam the next morning before breakfast, catching him alone near the stables."I saw something last night," she said. "Thought you'd want to know."Liam's attention sharpened instantly. "Go on.""Miss Callie. Past midnight, she was in the old study. On the phone." Fenna lowered her voice, glancing around like the walls themselves might be listening. "Whispering. I couldn't hear who she was talking to, but she looked scared when she hung up. Practically ran back to her room."Liam's expression hardened into something cold and satisfied, the look of a man who'd been waiting for exactl

Chapter 19The servant's cloak she'd taken from the laundry room hung heavy and unfamiliar around her shoulders, the scene off putting, but potent enough to mask her own scent that she tried to keep hidden, even if someone came searching or tracking to track by scent, her scent would be covered up.She had the hood pulled low over her face as she slipped through the estate's side gate long after midnight, her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat, but she forced herself to keep moving, knowing she could not turn back now.She'd never walked this road alone before. Not once, not even before her arrest, when she'd always traveled with a guard or a servant trailing a respectful distance behind her, back when she was still someone worth protecting, worthy of her family love and protection.Now she walked it in the dark, alone, dressed like a servant herself, terrified of every shadow and every distant sound that made her keep looking back paranoid that she was being foll