Alpha’s Regret: The Lost Luna Returns with a Son

CHAPTER 3

I didn’t blink.

I didn’t flinch.

I stood there with thirteen hundred dollars of Italian wool on my back and three years of reinforced concrete around my heart, watching the man who had discarded me like yesterday’s news struggle to breathe.

The silence between us wasn’t empty. It was heavy, a physical entity that pushed against my chest, thick with the scent of his desperation and the ghost of every lie he’d ever told me. Roman Blackwood, the Great Alpha, the man who had stood on a dais and traded my soul for a Duvall alliance, was now standing in my lobby, vibrating with a repressed energy that felt like a dying star.

"Raina," he said again. It wasn't a greeting. It was a plea.

"Dr. Hale," I corrected him. My voice was a flatline. "If you’re here for a consultation, my assistant handles my schedule. If you’re here for anything else, the exit is behind you. Don't let the glass doors hit your ass on the way out."

He winced, a flicker of the old Alpha pride flashing in his eyes before it was snuffed out by a hollow, haunting exhaustion. He looked like he hadn't slept since the year I left. "I didn't come here to play games. I didn't come here to talk about... the past."

"Good," I snapped, my eyes narrowing. "Because the past is buried under three years of dirt. Keep it there."

He took a step closer, infringing on my space. I smelled the rain on his coat, the familiar, dark musk that used to make my knees weak. Now, it just made my stomach churn. He leaned down, his voice dropping to a low, jagged whisper that only my shifter ears could catch.

"My people are dying, Raina. It’s not a fever. It’s not the flu. It’s something else. Something targeted."

I felt the professional itch, the surgeon in me, twitch beneath my skin. But I suppressed it. "The Blackwood Pack has its own doctors. You have an entire medical wing funded by your holdings. Why are you bothering me?"

"Because they’re failing!" he hissed, his control snapping for a micro-second. He grabbed my upper arm, his fingers digging into the fabric of my suit. "Seven dead in forty-eight hours. The pups are the hardest hit. We’ve tried every shifter-specific antiviral in the book. Nothing is touching it. It’s eating them from the inside out."

I looked down at his hand on my arm. "Remove your hand, Roman. Before I have security remove your dignity."

He let go as if he’d been burned, his chest heaving. "I didn't come to you because I wanted to. I came because you’re the best trauma surgeon and infectious disease specialist in the tri-state area. You were always the smartest person in the room, even when I was too f*****g stupid to listen."

"Correction," I said, stepping back and crossing my arms. "You came to me because you’re desperate. You don't ask for help, Roman. You demand it. But here, in this building, you have no title. You have no pack. You’re just a man with a problem I’m not interested in solving."

"Raina, please," he rasped. The word sounded like it was being pulled through broken glass. An Alpha begging was a rare, grotesque sight. "Think about the children. Forget me. f**k me, hate me, let me rot… but don't let the pups die because of what I did to you."

"Don't you dare," I whispered, my voice trembling with a sudden, violent heat. "Don't you dare use my morality as a weapon. You don't get to invoke the children when you didn't give a damn about the life we were supposed to build."

The mention of children sent a sharp, agonizing image of Soren through my mind. Soren, with his blonde curls and his father’s eyes. Soren, who was safe at home, tucked away from this man’s toxic world.

"I'm not that girl anymore," I said, my composure returning like a shroud of ice. "The girl who would have moved mountains because you asked. She died the night you chose Seraphine. You're talking to a doctor who bills four hundred dollars an hour and doesn't do house calls for ex-lovers."

"It’s a virus, Raina," he said, ignoring my vitriol, his eyes searching mine with a terrifying intensity. "It’s hemorrhagic. It starts with a cough, and within six hours, they’re bleeding from their eyes. By twelve hours, their lungs have liquified. We’ve quarantined the territory, but we’re losing the fight."

Hemorrhagic. Liquified lungs. My mind immediately began running through pathogens… Ebola variants, modified Marburg, synthetic shifter-flu. The surgeon in me was already scrubbing in, even as the woman in me wanted to laugh in his face.

"Why isn't the Council helping?" I asked, my voice betraying a hint of clinical interest.

"The Council wants to burn the territory," he said, his voice thick with loathing. "They want to contain the spread by incinerating everyone inside the border. Including the healthy. They’ve given me seventy-two hours before they send in the Enforcers to sanitize the zone."

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. The Shifter Council was ruthless. If they deemed a pack a biological hazard, they wouldn't hesitate to wipe ten thousand lives off the map to save the million.

"I need your eyes," Roman pleaded. He took a step back and did something that made the remaining guests in the lobby gasp.

He dropped to one knee.

The Alpha of the Blackwood Pack, a man who knelt for no god and no king, was on the floor at my feet. He bowed his head, his broad shoulders shaking with the effort of swallowing his monumental pride.

"I will give you anything," he muttered to the floor. "My fortune. My titles. My life. Just save my pack. Save the kids."

I looked down at the dark crown of his hair.

Three years ago, I would have dropped everything to soothe him. I would have felt honored that he needed me. Now, I just felt a weary, profound sense of disgust. He was willing to kneel for his pack, but he couldn't even stand up for me when it mattered.

But seven dead in two days? If this was a synthetic virus designed to kill shifters, it wouldn't stop at the Blackwood border. Eventually, it would find its way to Silverridge. It would find its way to Soren.

I couldn't let it reach my son. And the only way to stop it was to kill it at the source.

"Get up," I said, my voice cold and hollow.

He looked up, hope flickering like a dying candle in his eyes. "You’ll come?"

"I am coming as a medical consultant," I said, my words precise and sharp. "I am not coming as your mate. I am not coming as a member of your pack. You will pay my standard consulting fee into an offshore account tonight. You will provide me with a fully equipped BSL-4 mobile lab. And most importantly..."

I leaned down, my face inches from his. I let my scent flare, not the soft, pining scent of the girl he knew, but the sharp, sterile scent of a woman who had mastered her own power.

"You will stay the f**k away from me. You will not speak to me unless it is about a patient. You will not touch me. If you even look at me with anything other than professional respect, I walk out, and you can watch your pack burn. Am I clear?"

Roman swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He looked like I’d just handed him a death sentence, but he nodded. "Clear."

"I need an hour to make arrangements," I said, turning away from him. I didn't want to look at him for a second longer. "Wait in your car. If I see you in my lobby in ten minutes, the deal is off."

I walked toward the elevators, my heels clicking like a countdown on the marble floor. My heart was racing, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of ribs.

I had spent three years building a fortress. I had built a life where Roman Blackwood was nothing but a scar I’d learned to hide with makeup and ambition. And in one five-minute conversation, he had breached the walls.

I got into the elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse. I needed to call Elara. I needed to see Soren. I needed to look at my son’s face one last time before I stepped back into the lion’s den.

I’m doing this for the kids, I told myself. I’m doing this to keep the virus away from Soren.

But as the elevator doors closed, reflecting my own cold, distant gaze back at me, I knew I was lying.

I was going back because some fires don't go out until they’ve consumed everything. I was going back to the place where I was broken, not as a victim, but as a judge.

"I'm coming back, Roman," I whispered to the empty car. "But you’re going to wish I hadn't."

The elevator chimed. I stepped out, dialed Elara’s number, and felt the weight of my past settling onto my shoulders like a leaden cloak.

I was a surgeon. I was a mother. I was a survivor.

And I was about to walk straight back into the arms of the man who had ruined me, carrying a secret that would either save him or destroy us both.

"Elara," I said as my sister picked up. "Pack Soren's things. You’re taking him to the coast tonight. Don't ask questions. Just go."

I hung up before she could argue. I had work to do.

I was stepping back into the world of wolves, but this time, I wasn't bringing a heart.

I was bringing a scalpel.