Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 136

POV: Damian

The world was gone. The roaring of the storm, the cold of the concrete floor, the very feeling of the air in my lungs—it had all dissolved into a meaningless, grey fog. Seraphina's final words had been a key, unlocking the last door of my ignorance and revealing a truth so monstrous it had annihilated my soul.

*Our child.*

The two words were the only thing left. They echoed in the silent, ruined cathedral of my mind, a relentless, unending funeral bell. I was a hollowed-out thing, a scarecrow stuffed with the straw of my own sins, left kneeling in the dust of the life I had single-handedly demolished.

I didn't register the heavy door groaning open again. I didn't hear the footsteps that approached. My universe had shrunk to the size of a memory I didn't have, a grief for a person I had never known.

A presence of pure, murderous rage radiated before me. Then, a hand, brutal and strong, knotted in the collar of my shirt, hauling me from the ground as if I were a sack of grain.

My head lolled back. Through the grey fog, Jax's face swam into focus. His features were contorted into a mask of such profound hatred it was barely human. His eyes were burning with a desire to kill. I almost wished he would.

He slammed me back against a stack of damp, splintered crates. The impact barely registered.

"You think this is just about the child?" he snarled, his voice a low, guttural growl that was more wolf than man. "You think that's the only life you have to answer for? The only family you destroyed?"

He shoved his face closer to mine, his breath hot with hatred. "You didn't swing the blade yourself, you coward. But you held the door open for the assassin. You sanctioned it. You let Fenrir do your dirty work, all to break my sister, to punish her for daring to defy you. You were a willing, eager accomplice to the destruction of my family, to the fall of my father."

He threw me back to the ground. I landed in a heap, the impact jarring but distant.

Another crime. Another layer of guilt. It wasn't just a sin of omission, of neglect. It was a sin of commission. I had actively, if indirectly, participated in the downfall of the man whose daughter I had sworn to protect.

This, then, was the final straw. The last piece of a puzzle that, when assembled, revealed a portrait of a monster. And that monster was me.