Alpha's Regret: A Love That Came Too Late

Victoria screamed, clutching her eyes as the energy backlash sent her flying through the air before she crashed heavily to the ground.

The crowd erupted in chaos, staring at the shattered crystal ball, utterly bewildered about what could have gone wrong.

Claude rushed onto the platform and gathered Victoria into his arms, anxiously checking her injuries.

"Quick! Get a healer!" he roared, his eyes burning crimson like those of a raging beast.

Victoria sobbed heartbreakingly in Claude's embrace. "Claude, why did the spell fail? Did someone tamper with the crystal ball? My eyes hurt so much—am I going blind?"

The healer arrived swiftly, and Victoria gradually calmed down.

"What happened?" Claude finished calming Victoria and then roared at the crowd. "Who did this?"

His oppressive presence swept through the area, forcing everyone to their knees.

As panic spread, Victoria's personal attendant, Saskia Moor, darted out from somewhere and dropped to her knees with a thud.

She looked at me with a mix of resentment and a trace of inexplicable guilt.

"Alpha Claude, I know who sabotaged the spell!" Her gaze fixed on me, her implication unmistakable.

One by one, eyes filled with hatred or contempt followed her line of sight toward me.

Everyone knew that Victoria and I were the only ones with a history of bad blood.

A feeling of dread washed over me. Just as I opened my mouth to explain, Saskia pointed at me and said, "It was her, Beta Heather! This morning, I saw her enter the council hall.

"She said that if they didn't return the authorship to her, she'd destroy Ms. Victoria's life's work."

Trembling, she produced a memory crystal and projected its contents into the air.

The image showed me tearing up another copy of the manuscript and throwing the pieces into a trash bin.

I'd originally thought that if Victoria wanted to steal my achievement, she should be prepared to deal with the consequences. Never did it once cross my mind that this would become irrefutable evidence that I'd deliberately sabotaged the spell.

Claude turned to me with a cold gleam in his eyes. "Heather, do you have anything to say for yourself?"

All I felt was the ridiculousness of it all as I stood there watching this shoddy frame-up unfold.

I looked at Claude and asked calmly, "Have you verified anything? You're going to convict me based solely on an attendant's words and a few images of torn paper?"

"Silence! The evidence is right in front of us, and you still dare to quibble?" Claude rose slowly and walked toward me. "Heather, you have truly disappointed me. It seems you won't learn your lesson without punishment."

A surge of supreme Alpha authority crashed down upon me.

"Kneel," he uttered coldly. "We'll settle the matter of sabotaging the spell later. For now, kneel and apologize to Victoria."

"I didn't do it, so why should I kneel?" I retorted with a glare.

"Unyielding fool!"

My defiance seemed to enrage Claude further, and the weight of his Alpha authority intensified.

Before the crowd, I was forcibly crushed to my knees by the sheer force of his power.

"Guards, hold her head down. She will apologize to Victoria until she is forgiven!"

Ten years of battle merits I'd earned, and a body full of scars to show for it. Yet in the end, all they brought me was being forced to kneel before a thief in front of the entire pack, my head pushed down by the very wolf I loved.

Before I could react, the guards grabbed my head and slammed it against the ground toward Victoria again and again until blood seeped from my forehead.

The ground grew slick with blood. Through a haze of pain, I heard fragments of conversation between Victoria and Claude.

"It's alright, Claude. Maybe she didn't mean to do it."

"It's precisely because you're too kind-hearted that she dares to scheme against you. Keep going—are you all slacking off?"

Those were the last words I heard before I blacked out.

Something inside me died, because after that, I could no longer feel the pain.