Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 134

POV: Seraphina

His words, filled with so many specific, verifiable details, hit me with the force of the storm raging outside. They were a bucket of ice water thrown on the roaring fire of my rage, shocking me into a sudden, jarring silence.

The Ironfang pack. The southern border. An emergency that lasted all night.

My mind, so clouded by years of pain and a certainty of his betrayal, began to race, frantically sifting through the wreckage of that time. The border crisis... I remembered it now. A vague report had circulated a day or two later, a minor skirmish that I had paid no mind to, my entire world already consumed by my own personal agony.

He was right. He hadn't been there.

And if he hadn't been there...

The memory of that night replayed in my mind, but this time with a horrifying, new clarity. I had never opened the door. I had never looked inside the guest room where Sylvie was staying. I had stood in the hallway, my heart shattering, and I had only *heard*. I had heard the sounds. A man's low murmur, a woman's soft laughter. Sounds that my grief-stricken mind had immediately, unquestionably, identified as Damian and Sylvie.

But it wasn't him. It couldn't have been.

A new, ice-cold realization began to dawn, a truth so simple and so venomous it stole the breath from my lungs. It had all been a lie. A carefully staged performance. Sylvie had not been alone that night. She had brought another man into our home, into the room next to mine, for the sole purpose of destroying me. She had known I would hear. She had counted on it. The foundation of my entire world's collapse, the catalyst for every horror that followed, had been nothing more than a cheap, cruel, and devastatingly effective deception.

***

POV: Damian

"A misunderstanding?" she whispered, the words laced with a profound, soul-deep irony that I couldn't comprehend. She looked at me, at the pathetic hope blazing in my eyes, and her own gaze filled with a pity that was more cutting than any sword.

"A misunderstanding?" she repeated, her voice rising, gaining a hysterical edge. "Damian, you colossal, arrogant fool. Do you really, truly believe that this is about a single misunderstanding? Do you think our problems began and ended on that one, single night?"

She took a step toward me, her eyes wild with a pain that had nothing to do with Sylvie anymore. "Even if that night was a lie, was the next day a lie? Were the weeks and months that followed a lie? Was it a misunderstanding when you stood by and let my own son spew insults at me? Was it a misunderstanding when you stripped me of my duties, humiliated me in front of our allies, and gave my role, my home, my entire life to her, piece by piece?"

Her voice cracked, the sound of a heart breaking all over again.

"Was it a lie when you had your men assault my family's convoy? Was it a misunderstanding when you used your power to crush my father's business, to bring my entire family to its knees? Was that all just Sylvie's fault, too?"