"Just like him," His mother spat. "That same smirk. That same look in your filthy eyes."
She used to scream at him to turn away, to cover his face, to stop looking like that man. The man who left her, who took everything, who tricked her and abandoned her with nothing but a child she didn't want. A child, she reminded every day of just how unwanted he was.
And now this boy—this half-wolf boy with a too-big heart and too-soft eyes—said he loved that face.
Soren had nearly wanted to kill him. But that hatred he held changed. For once, someone dared to say that they liked his face.
Maybe because for the first time, someone said they loved something he learned to hate.
Maybe because... He saw himself in Riven too. Not the pain, necessarily, but the loneliness. The stubborn defiance of someone who knew what it was like to be on the outside and kept walking anyway. The half-wolf who refused to cower, who chose to stand tall.
Soren didn't deny it. Not anymore.
