99 Times Repeated, Not Once Did They Say I Love You Chapter 13

99 Times Repeated, Not Once Did They Say I Love You Chapter 13

After that, no one from the Lioraen family came looking for me again.

Maeve wasn’t sent abroad. She was thrown straight out of the Lioraen house.

She refused to accept it and turned the whole household upside down.

Once, she even worked my mother into such a state that she fell ill.

By the time I heard about it all, I had become an accomplished Alpha and had turned my focus to protecting children’s rights.

The next time I saw the Lioraens was years later, when I handled my first human trafficking case as a pack

representative. It involved nine families.

When the trial opened, I spotted my parents and Silas in the gallery.

Several years had passed since we last met. My parents had gray at their temples, and time had left marks

on them that couldn’t be ignored.

They stared at me for a long time with red-rimmed eyes. Silas had shed the sharp edges of his youth, too.

He looked older, steadier, and quieter.

But there was a gloom in the way he looked at me that wouldn’t lift, like a child waiting for a forgiveness that

would never come.

My gaze rested on them for one second.

Then I turned my full attention back to the case.

After several rounds of hearings, the verdict finally came down.

As I listened to it, my eyes slowly filled.

That was the whole reason I’d fought so hard to become an Alpha.

I wanted to take some of the weight off Seraphine, and I wanted to win justice for the families whose children had been taken, to give them at least some kind of answer for years of loss and ruin.

And somewhere in all of it, I wanted to do right by the girl I used to be.

That was why, all these years, I had quietly donated to the families of trafficking victims.

I gave to the orphanages too. Maybe some of those children were like me, with stories that hadn’t been erased yet.

As I walked out of the courthouse, I saw parents clutching photos of the children they’d found again. They talked about the agony of being torn apart, about years of searching, about an emptiness that never really

went away.

Not far off, my parents and Silas heard every word.

Their eyes were red too.

But what showed on their faces more than grief was shame.

It was sharpest when they looked at me.

My mother took a step toward me, then stopped.

Then she collapsed against my father’s shoulder and sobbed. My father lowered his head. So did Silas. None of them could meet my eyes.

I gave them one glance, cold and indifferent, as if they were strangers whose names I didn’t need to know.

Then I turned and walked away.

A crowd of reporters swarmed toward me.

“Ms. Silvanor! Alpha Silvanor, do you have anything to say about the future of the packs?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

In the end, everything I wanted to say came down to one sentence.

“I hope there’s never another stolen child.”