Alpha's Regret After She Kneels novel Chapter 116

(Raiden’s POV)

My thoughts are a storm I can’t escape.

I spent years convinced I didn’t love her, that I never could—but what if that was a lie?

What if I had merely built walls so high, so impenetrable, that even I couldn’t see the truth buried beneath them?

Restless, I pace my quarters, replaying the past with fresh eyes. Memories I once viewed with certainty now shift, their meanings unraveling under closer scrutiny.

Her persistent efforts to reach me, to understand me—efforts I once interpreted as manipulation—now reveal themselves as genuine devotion.

I see it now, the way she tried so desperately to bridge the distance between us, the way she never once wavered in her commitment, even when I gave her nothing in return.

The financial support she asked for—support I coldly denied, dismissing her as nothing more than an opportunist—was never about greed. It was about her father. The father she lost, the father I might have saved had I not been blinded by resentment and mistrust.

Every harsh word, every rejection, every time I chose Lila’s presence over hers—I see it all for what it was. A slow, methodical destruction of the one person who ever truly stood by me.

And now, she’s walking away.

Horace stirs restlessly beneath my skin, unrelenting in its demands. It won’t let me ignore this any longer. It growls with frustration, its instincts crystal clear where my mind remains clouded with uncertainty.

“She is ours. She was always ours.”

But I turned my back on her, and she learned to stop reaching for me.

The weight of my failure is staggering.

One memory sears through the rest, standing out with painful clarity.

Siena, standing before the council, explaining her vision for werewolf relations—an approach I dismissed out of hand, only to watch it now become the most celebrated strategy in the competition.

Her political instincts were always sharp. Her mind, always calculating, forward-thinking. She saw opportunities I refused to consider, grasped possibilities I stubbornly ignored.

And I let my pride blind me to all of it.

I sink into the nearest chair, pressing the heels of my hands against my temples. I don’t know what to do with this realization, this guilt wrapping its claws around my throat.

But one thing is clear.

I can’t let her go without telling her the truth.

The thought terrifies me.