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.