“You don’t need to do this,” I had whispered, placing my hand over his. “I can adjust. I’m used to it, the silence and all.”
But he had only smiled, that gentle curve softening the fierceness that usually clung to him as Alpha. “All these years, you lived in silence. You suffered the pain of being cut off, of being less in the eyes of the pack, of standing apart even from your own family. You endured it alone, with no wolf to confide in, no mate to lean on. I don’t want you to carry that burden anymore. It hurts me. I want to be the one who truly understands you.”
Those words had broken something inside me. The dam of grief, of loneliness, had shattered, and I had cried openly for the first time in years. He had been the first person to make me believe I wasn’t cursed, the first who seemed willing to meet me in my silence. Not even Ronan Stormclaw, whose life I had once risked saving, had bothered to learn my language. My parents never considered it either, because I was nothing more than a shadow of Nyra, a pale reflection of their favored daughter.
But now, standing in the present, watching Alpha Alaric’s fingers move with effortless grace, there was no warmth left in me. Only a cold, merciless irony. His hands, which once felt like a lifeline, now mocked me with every fluid gesture. He had taken the gift of my silence, twisted it into a mask behind which he bared his soul, not to me, his Luna, but to another woman. He had used my deafness as a shield for his betrayal.
His signs were calm, attentive, masked with the tenderness that used to make me ache with love.
“Kaia, Nyra, your sister’s birthday banquet is about to begin. We should leave now. If we’re late, the pack will gossip.”
But the spark in his eyes wasn’t for me. His wolf thrummed beneath his skin, restless and eager, as if the thought of seeing her filled him with vitality I had never given him.
A dull ache bloomed in my chest, coiling tighter with every beat of my heart. I forced a smile, the curve of my lips trembling, and gently pulled my hand away.
“Then wait for me a moment. I’ll go change my clothes,”
I said, my voice steady though my throat burned with the weight of unshed tears.