Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 280: Chapter 280 – Mommy

Chapter 280 – Mommy

”Voren.” His name came out of her mouth before she could decide whether to say it. ”What are you doing here?”

She heard the confusion in her own voice and hated it, that slight unsteadiness that gave away the fact that she was genuinely thrown.

Her eyes stayed on him a beat longer than they should have, searching his face like the answer to a question she hadn’t fully formed yet.

His brows pulled together, that familiar tightening moving through his expression. He looked at her the way someone looks when they have walked into a room expecting to find it empty. ”I could ask you the same thing.”

The disbelief in his voice was real. As far as he knew, she belonged to Leon’s hospital, to a theatre, her own schedule. Her being here made no sense from any angle he could find.

Nicole had come in behind him and was now standing just inside the doorway doing absolutely nothing to pretend she wasn’t watching all of this with complete attention.

Her eyes moved between them, quick and sharp, her mind clearly running fast trying to assemble something from all the pieces that weren’t adding up.

She had already picked up on the strangeness of it, the red-haired woman referring to the child as hers, and the father being her fiancé’, and yet anyone who knew anything about Voren Ashkael knew there was no fiancée. No woman. Nothing even close to that. It didn’t fit.

The curiosity got the better of her before she could talk herself out of it. ”Mr. Ashkael,” Nicole said, tilting her head slightly toward the red-haired woman who had followed Voren and was standing behind him. ”Is she your fiancée?”

The woman answered before Voren’s mouth had even opened, her voice smooth and unhesitating in the specific way of someone who had already decided what version of events was going to be presented. ”He’s Mari’s father.” A small pause, perfectly placed. ”And I’m her mother.”

Voren said nothing.

He didn’t confirm it, and didn’t push back against it either. He simply moved past the statement like it was furniture in his way and crossed the room to the bed, his full attention dropping to the small girl lying against the pillow.

Seraphine stood exactly where she was.

The words settled over her slowly, rearranging things as they went. She looked at the girl, the way she should have the moment she walked in, without the professional distance she had kept herself behind.

The thick dark hair. The particular line of her jaw. Up close, standing within feet of Voren, the resemblance wasn’t something you could talk yourself out of. It was just there, plain and obvious, like something that had been in front of her the whole time.

”Jasmine.” Voren’s voice had an edge to it, controlled but present. He looked across the bed at the red-haired woman without softening it. ”You should have called me before you brought her here.”

Jasmine looked down at the blanket covering the girl’s legs, one hand reaching out to smooth it. ”I know. I panicked. She started shaking and I couldn’t think straight, I just—” her voice dropped— ”I’m sorry.”

She settled into the chair on the other side of the bed and the three of them, Voren standing, Jasmine sitting, the child between them, arranged themselves into a picture that looked complete. Looked whole. Like a complete family.

Something cold and heavy dropped into Seraphine’s chest.

She recognized it, picked it up, and put it straight back down. This was not her business. This was not about her.

This was just another door that had opened and then closed, another lead that had gone nowhere, and she had known before she walked in here that the odds were not in her favor. She had known that. She had told herself that repeatedly on the drive over.

”I should get going.” She was already turning slightly, reaching for the file she had set on the bedside table. ”I have things I need to—”

”Daddy.”

The voice was small and soft and barely there, the particular sound of a child coming up through layers of sleep into a room that wasn’t familiar. But it was enough to stop everything.

Voren moved without thinking. His whole body relaxed, every sharp edge and cold front that he walked around with dissolving in an instant, replaced by something so unguarded it was almost startling to watch. He leaned over the bed, one hand already finding the girl’s, pulling her up gently against his chest.

”Right here, sweetheart.” His voice came out quieter than Seraphine had ever heard it. ”I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

He pressed his lips to the top of her dark hair and held her there, one large hand spread carefully across her small back, rocking her just slightly in the way that needed no instructions, the way that came from somewhere instinctive.

Seraphine watched him.

She couldn’t look away and she couldn’t explain why. It was the same softness she had seen at the pack, the same one he had used to carry her on his back, but suddenly, her headache seemed to be getting worse.

”Sera.” Nicole’s voice came from behind her shoulder. ”She’s awake. You should take another look.”

Seraphine hesitated. Voren had resources that most people couldn’t dream of — the best specialists, private facilities, doctors who answered the phone at any hour. Her being here felt like it had already served its purpose.

”She looks fine to me,” she said, and even as she said it, she could hear that it wasn’t quite as certain as she wanted it to sound.

The little girl lifted her head from her father’s chest.

Her blue eyes moved around the room the way a child’s eyes do without agenda, without filter, following whatever pulled at her attention. They crossed Nicole. Moved past Jasmine. Then landed on Seraphine and stopped.

A beat passed.

Then two.

”Mommy.”