Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever-Chapter 112 - then you have to return to the pack

The woman sounded as though she knew something Seraphine herself did not.

"Why do you say that?" Seraphine asked slowly, forcing herself to push through the discomfort long enough to speak clearly. "I need something that can handle this pain because I already know orthodox medicine doesn’t work for us."

Nessa’s eyes softened with sadness. "You’re right about that," she admitted quietly.

A heavy silence filled the room as she continued looking at Seraphine with an expression that carried both sympathy and reluctance.

"If you want the pain to stop," Nessa said after a moment, her voice calm but firm, "then you have to return to the pack."

The words seemed to settle into the air like something solid.

Seraphine stared at her, stunned. For several seconds, no one spoke.

Her mind slowly processed what Nessa had just said, the meaning settling heavily in her chest.

"No," Seraphine replied eventually, shaking her head with stubborn determination despite the pain tightening across her abdomen. "I will never go back to the pack."

Her voice grew firmer as she continued. "There has to be another way."

Unfortunately, the look in Nessa’s eyes made it clear that she did not share that hope.

"There isn’t," Nessa said quietly. "Your only options are to sleep through the pain until it passes... or return to the pack."

Seraphine’s brows pulled together as another thought suddenly surfaced in her mind.

If what Nessa said was true, then something about this situation did not make sense.

She forced herself to sit up slightly despite how uncomfortable the movement felt. "Then why are you here?" she asked, studying Nessa closely. "If the pack is the only place where this pain can be managed, shouldn’t you be there too?"

Nessa drew in a long, steady breath before answering, as though she understood that what she was about to explain carried far more weight than a simple response to a question, and the look in her eyes held a mixture of sympathy and quiet understanding that made Seraphine feel strangely exposed while lying there beneath the heavy warmth of the covers.

"Sera," Nessa began in a calm, patient voice, "every she-wolf in the city goes through the exact same thing, although most of them already know how to manage it long before it gets this bad, because before that time of the month arrives, they return to their packs and let their wolves run free for a while, and the reason we feel pain like this is because our wolves are trapped inside us when they should be out in the open air, so the pain is basically our body punishing us for keeping that side of ourselves locked away." 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The explanation settled into Seraphine’s mind slowly, the meaning spreading through her thoughts while the dull, relentless ache twisting through her abdomen refused to ease even slightly, and as the words echoed in her head she could not stop memories from rising up with them.

She remembered the nights she used let out her wolf in the pack beneath the pale glow of the moon, the forest floor soft beneath her paws while the scent of pine and earth filled the cool air, and the way her wolf, Marsha, used to surge forward with pure, wild joy as though nothing in the world mattered except the rhythm of the run and the distant howls of her packmates echoing through the trees.

Those nights had once been the center of her life. They had once meant everything.

Now those memories only carried the bitter taste of betrayal.

The pack she had trusted had turned their backs on her, and the freedom she used to cherish no longer felt like something she could reach for without reopening wounds that had never truly healed.

After everything that had happened, the idea of returning there felt less like comfort and more like walking back into a place where everyone had already decided she did not belong.

Seraphine forced a quiet breath through her nose while pressing her palm against her stomach, trying to ignore the way the pain pulsed through her body like a slow, grinding storm that refused to pass.

"So how do you handle yours?" she finally asked, her voice quieter than usual but still steady enough to hide just how exhausted she felt.

Nessa’s lips curved into a faint, knowing smile as she leaned back slightly, inhaling deeply.

"Sometimes I just endure it," she admitted with a casual shrug, "because not every month works out perfectly and sometimes life gets in the way, although when I can, I visit friends in other packs where I know I can safely let my wolf run for a while, and once that happens the pain fades almost immediately because our wolves are not meant to stay locked inside us for too long."

She paused for a moment before adding in a reassuring tone, "If you make it a habit of returning to a pack regularly, even if it is not your original one, your body will adjust and you will barely feel the pain at all, and it does not have to be the Centenary Pack either since there are plenty of other packs around the region where a she-wolf can run without anyone asking too many questions."

The information brought Seraphine a small sense of relief at first, although that feeling faded almost as quickly as it arrived when reality crept back into her thoughts.

She did not have genuine friends in other packs, not anymore.

Most of the wolves who used to know her had formed their own opinions about her after everything that happened with Ravyn, and those opinions were rarely kind or fair.

To them, she was the Luna Alpha Ravyn never loved, even when she trapped him with a child. The one who had come between him and Daisy.

The one whose name had become tied to his reputation, and without it, she was nothing.

Trusting any of them felt like stepping onto thin ice that could crack beneath her feet without warning.

"If that’s the case," Seraphine murmured while turning her face toward the wall, her voice quiet but firm despite the exhaustion tugging at her eyelids, "then I guess I’ll just endure it."