Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Her voice trembled hard enough that the words almost broke apart. Tears streamed down her cheeks unchecked as the truth finally spilled out after years of careful silence.

She had spent so long protecting that secret that admitting it now felt like tearing open an old, infected wound and letting everything fester into the open air.

”You got what you wanted. So why’d you treat her like shit after?”

Bloodfang’s voice carried such cold, controlled fury that Noelle’s entire body went rigid. The black eyes never left her face.

Before either of them could force another answer past their pain, his gaze sharpened even further, cutting straight through them. ”And that witch. I wanna know everything about her.”

Though Bloodfang held the reins, Voren still fed him every question that needed asking. The real difference sat in how they worked.

Voren’s human mind would have taken longer, circling around fairness even when the people in front of him had already proven they deserved none of it.

Bloodfang carried none of that weight. No soft edges, no sympathy slowing the blade. He wanted every answer laid bare and he would keep cutting until nothing stayed hidden.

Noelle knew down to her bones that if Bloodfang had left her alone with Chuck right then, the abuse would have only gotten uglier.

Everything she had schemed and clawed for had never given her the life she wanted, and now, with every ugly piece of truth getting dragged out of her mouth in the middle of the storm, she could feel the carefully built world she had fought so hard to protect crumbling right under her remaining hand.

The snow soaked up her blood, the cold ate at the open wounds. And the life she thought she still controlled was slipping away faster than she could stop it.

”I realized too late that Luna Kylie wasn’t even into the prophecy anymore. The second she saw Seraphine, she liked the girl and said she’d still let her marry Ravyn even if she wasn’t a white wolf.”

Noelle’s voice shook hard enough that the words almost broke apart in the freezing air. She could still taste the bitterness that had eaten her alive the day she first understood it.

Everything Noelle thought she had locked down started sliding through her fingers like melting snow.

”It killed me that my daughter was gonna get raised by some lowly omega while the omega’s kid got to live like a beta’s daughter.”

Her voice cracked wide open. She squeezed her remaining hand into a tight, blood-slick fist until her nails dug into her own palm. The humiliation still burned inside her chest like acid.

She had looked at Seraphine and seen every single thing her own daughter should have owned, the respect, the position, the soft life, the easy comfort.

Instead, Daisy had been the one shoved aside while that omega’s child walked around with everything Noelle had wanted for her blood.

The pain in the stump of her missing arm had dulled some thanks to her wolf working overtime, but the loss itself was permanent.

Nothing would ever grow that arm back. She stared at the empty space where it used to be, at the ragged flesh and the dark blood still seeping into the snow, and fresh tears streamed down her face. The freezing air turned some of them into thin icy trails that clung to her cheeks.

”So I took it out on her.”

The words came out barely above a broken whisper. For years she had fed herself the same lies, that Seraphine deserved every harsh word, every cold look, every quiet cruelty. That she was only protecting Daisy.

Standing here now with her blood soaking the ground and half her body gone, Noelle could no longer hide from the pure ugliness of what she had done. The excuses tasted like ash.

Then, as if a desperate new thought had suddenly punched through the pain, she lifted her head and locked onto those pitch-black eyes.

”Wait, why do you even care about her? Shouldn’t you hate her guts for everything she did to you? She picked Ravyn over you, married him, and had a kid with him.”

Noelle clung to the idea with everything she had left. If she could just spark Voren’s anger at Seraphine, maybe she could still save herself.

Desperation poured out of her eyes now, raw and naked. She needed it to work, needed Voren to hate Seraphine. She needed any crack, any opening, anything that might buy her a way out of the nightmare she herself had built.

Unfortunately for her, Voren already knew far more than Noelle could ever guess. And he wasn’t even the one holding the wheel.