After I Amazed the World the Cold Alpha Regretted

Chapter 184

The first syllables of the piano echoed softly, pulling me back to a time long past.

As my fingers traced the familiar keys, memories washed over me, vivid and haunting.

I had been ostracized by my foster parents as a child, and my only refuge was a broken piano stowed away in the dusty attic.

It was my escape, the one thing that could alleviate my loneliness when no one else was there.

On my seventh birthday, I had crept to the top of the stairs, hoping for a surprise, hoping maybe this year they would remember.

read. I saw my foster parents, arms around Alice, leading her out the door to play, laughing as they left me behind. Forgotten. Unwanted.

I had crept back to the attic with tears in my eyes and sat at the piano.

It was then that I composed my first melody.

A simple, fragile tune that whispered the only birthday wish I'd receive that day.

Happy birthday to me. That small song became my secret, a balm for the wounds I carried from my so-called family.

Later, as the years went by, my foster parents would drag me along on visits to other packs, parading me in front of strangers to show their kindness

A cruel irony, really. They would never treat me with kindness themselves, but to outsiders, they wanted to appear generous.

visit to Silvermoon stayed

upon a grand

to it, like a moth

started playing the

the first time I played it anywhere other than the

softly through the open window, carrying with it the scent

in golden light,

of that year, sitting alone and lost, overlapped with the me of this

in the melody I had composed

that I noticed a change in the air.

a look of disbelief washed

widened as if

him, only to find him staring at me

barely a whisper, but his tone was heavy, filled with an urgency that

guessed

wrote it," I said softly, "I wrote it when I was a child, on my birthday. No one else has ever heard it.

eyes. He staggered back a step as if the weight of the truth was too much to

It was

etched with regret, and I knew what

egretted

Chapter 184