From Broken Bond to True Love

I jolted awake, gasping for air as if I'd been drowning. My heart pounded against my ribs as I stared into the darkness of my small apartment in Europe. Another nightmare—the third this week.

In my dream, Spencer had been calling my name, his voice echoing across vast distances. "Alice... I know you're alive... come back to me..."

I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to erase the image of his face. Even after months away from Shadowridge Pack, his presence still haunted me.

"It's just a dream," I whispered to myself. "He can't find you here."

But the bond—even broken—still whispered in the back of my mind. Sometimes I wondered if he could sense me through it, like a ghost lingering at the edges of his consciousness.

---

Miles away, Spencer Morris thrashed in his bed, sheets tangled around his legs as he fought against another nightmare.

"Alice!" he shouted, bolting upright. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead as he clutched at his chest.

The moonlight streaming through his window did nothing to calm the storm inside him. His wolf paced restlessly, growling low in his mind.

"She's alive," his wolf insisted, the certainty in its voice growing stronger each day. "I can feel her."

"No," Spencer muttered, running shaking hands through his hair. "She's dead. We buried her."

But the dreams kept coming—vivid, impossible images of Alice living in a strange place, surrounded by children. In every dream, she looked at him with those familiar green eyes, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, but always alive.

"I need to see the pack doctor again," he decided, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

---

"These dreams are concerning," Dr. Michaels said, studying Spencer's haggard face across his desk. "How frequently are they occurring?"

"Every night," Spencer admitted, his voice hoarse. "Sometimes more than once."

The doctor's brow furrowed. "And always of Alice?"

"Yes." Spencer's fingers drummed impatiently on the armrest. "My wolf is convinced she's still alive. It's... it's like he can sense her through our bond."

Dr. Michaels leaned back in his chair, his expression carefully neutral. "Spencer, the mate bond was severed when Alice died. What you're experiencing is grief—a perfectly normal reaction to losing someone you cared about."

"But what if—"

"There are no 'what ifs,'" the doctor interrupted gently. "Alice is gone. These dreams are hallucinations brought on by your unresolved feelings. I can prescribe something to help you sleep."

Spencer stood abruptly, his Alpha aura flaring with frustration. "I don't need sleeping pills. I need answers."

---

The investigation began quietly at first.

Spencer pulled the incident reports from the night Alice supposedly drowned, studying them with increasing intensity.

"Something doesn't add up," he muttered, spreading the papers across his office desk.

The witness statements contradicted each other. One rogue claimed to have seen Alice slip near the edge of the lake, while another insisted she'd been pushed.

And then there was the timing. The current patterns that night would have carried a body in the opposite direction from where they'd found Alice's "corpse."

"Where is that rogue now?" Spencer demanded, storming into Beta Thomas's office without knocking.

Thomas looked up, startled. "Which rogue, Alpha?"

"The one who claimed to see Alice fall. The one who helped retrieve her body."

"I... I'm not sure," Thomas admitted. "He was just passing through our territory that night."

Spencer's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Find him."

---

"Spencer?" Gabrielle's voice purred as she slipped into his office later that evening. "You look tense."

She moved around his desk with practiced grace, her fingers trailing along his shoulders as she began to massage the knots of tension there.

"You've been distracted lately," she murmured against his ear. "Perhaps you need a distraction?"

Her hand slid lower, but Spencer caught her wrist, his expression distant.

"I'm busy, Gabrielle."

"With what?" she asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice. "You've been obsessing over that dead girl for weeks now."

Spencer's wolf growled at the dismissive tone, and something dangerous flashed in his eyes.

"Don't call her that," he warned.

---

Across the ocean, I stepped through the doors of the rogue orphanage for the first time, my heart pounding with equal parts anxiety and hope.

"Welcome," said a woman with kind eyes and silver-streaked hair. "I'm Elena Rodriguez, head caretaker."

Her smile was genuine as she extended her hand. "We're so glad to have you join us as director, Miss Sullivan."

I took her hand, feeling the warmth of her grip. "Please, call me Alice."

Something in Elena's gaze told me she sensed my pain—not just the physical wounds that were still healing, but the deeper scars of my broken bond.

"Your wolf is still wounded," she observed quietly.

I nodded, unable to speak past the sudden lump in my throat.

"Then we'll heal together," Elena said simply, gesturing toward the sound of children's laughter echoing through the halls. "They need someone who understands what it means to lose everything and start again."

As I followed her toward the orphaned pups, I felt something stir within me—a tiny spark of purpose in the wasteland my life had become.

But even as I smiled at the children's eager faces, I couldn't shake the feeling that somewhere across the ocean, Spencer was getting closer to discovering my secret.