Still His 108_Shattered Bonds: A Second Chance Mate

Chapter 108 

 Audrey’s Point of View:

 The stone in my pocket pulsed again, but I was already moving.

 Monica’s voice echoed in my thoughts, shaky and disbelieving: “I saw her. I swear.”

 I didn’t allow myself to hope. Hope had teeth. Hope could rip you apart if it proved false.

 But Iran.

 The courtyard bustled with life–guards shifting ranks, traders shouting greetings, childrenughing near the garden wall–but all of it faded to the background as I spotted Monica.

 -just beyond the line

 She was half–hidden behind an herb stall, her back pressed against the wooden beam, her eyes locked on something–or someone–j of market carts.

 I followed her gaze.

 And the world stilled.

 She stood not far away, her back turned to us, speaking gently to a young man I recognized as Damon, the courier. She wore a simple traveler’s cloak, dust on the hem and a bundle of wrapped herbs in her hands. Her silver hair was tied in a loose braid that shimmered in the sunlight.

 But her profile-

 My throat closed.

 The curve of her cheek. The angle of her jaw. The way her lips moved, calm and soft.

 Monica had been right.

 “Moon above,” I whispered.

 “She looks different,” Monica said beside me, “but… it’s her, Audrey., The way she smiled. The way she walks.”

 I didn’t answer. I stepped forward just enough to catch a better view–and in that moment, she turned slightly.

 Eyes like starlight. The same haunted light that had once looked at me from across the moonlit hills of Italy.

 My Luna.

 Eine.

 But she didn’t look at me with recognition. She didn’t freeze or call my name. She didn’t shift. She just handed Damon a cloth pouch and pointed toward the courtyard,pletely unaware of the storm building behind her.

 “She doesn’t know,” I murmured.

 Monica nodded. “She’s pretending to be someone else. She’s with the traders, traveling like a healer.”

 We watched a few more moments in silence.

 “She answered to ‘Edith,” Monica whispered. “That’s what the boy called her, Edith.”

 Edith.

 1/4 

 19:01 Mon, 21 Jul M

 They must’ve renamed her. Whoever found her after she disappeared. The poison–the forgetful poison–had taken more than her memory, it had stolen, her identity.

 And yet, here she was.

 In our territory.

 In his territory.

 The threads of fate had begun to weave again, pulling her back.

 “She’s here for a delivery,” Monica added, her voice trembling. “Herbs. Some of it for the King’s court. I overheard the courier mention it.” 

 That made things easier.

 We couldn’t simply run to her. Not yet. The trauma of recognition too sudden might send her mind reeling, especially with the poison still in her blood.

 But we could observe. We could begin to bring her home slowly. Gently.

 I turned to Monica. “Stay with her. Watch where they go. Don’t engage unless something goe 

 “And you?”

 I clenched my fists, heart pounding.

 “I’m going to the Beta, he knows what to do.”

 Because the King Alpha, Francesco needed to know.

 n

 He had been searching for her without rest. Traveling between territories. Erasing rogues, yes–but always with the same question on his lips.

 Have you seen her? My mate. My Luna.

 And now–she was here.

 Francesco’s Point of View:

 They say a King Alpha’s duty is to his court. That his throne is sacred. That his presence alonemands order, unity, and fear. But what good is a throne if your soul has vanished?

 Since the day Eine disappeared, I have barely been able to breathe inside the pce walls.

 The stone halls once held herughter, her footsteps, her scent. Now they suffocate me. So I left. Months ago. And I haven’t stopped moving since.

 What began as a mission to stabilize rogue activity across neighboring territories quickly became something else–a personal pilgrimage. An endless, desperate search. Each journey cloaked in official reasons–support for allies, strategic interventions, border strengthening–but underneath it all, I was just a man searching for the woman who held his soul.

 My Eine.

 The world believed she was dead. The healers and seers imed she had passed to the stars–that her energy had scattered. But I refused to believe it. Not because I’m a fool. But because the bond didn’t die.

 It changed.

 When I tried to reach her through our connection, I felt something broken, muted—but not gone. There were shes of pain, sharp and sudden like a scream swallowed by silence. My wolf paced endlessly inside me, growling at the emptiness, confused by the severed threads but unwilling to let go. 

 That’s when I knew.

 She was alive.

 Wounded, maybe. Hidden. Maybe even… made to forget.

 So I began to move.

 I rode north, helping the Hignd Packs fortify their defenses after a sudden surge of rogue attacks. We cleared a dozen camps hidden beneath frozen cliffs, and I interrogated every survivor. Some knew nothing. Some lied. But one old rogue–dying in a pool of his own blood–whispered of a girl taken by a hidden faction. He didn’t know her name. But he said she screamed like she’d lost everything.

 I nearly tore him apart for not remembering more.

 Next, I went west–to the Rainfold Enve–where an allied Alpha begged for support rebuilding his border town after a mysterious fire. We stayed a week. In that time, I scoured their underground shelters, searching among healers, refugees, and wandering witches for anyone who might’ve helped a woman with a broken memory. I found a blind herbalist who said she once treated a girl who cried in her sleep and smelled of moonlight. But by the time I reached her vige, it had already been abandoned.

 Still, I followed the trail.

 Everywhere I went, I left behind rumors of the King Alpha looking for something he wouldn’t name. I let them talk. Let the whispers spread. Sometimes information came back to me. Sometimes it didn’t.

 I didn’t care.

 I kept going.

 I visited packs who had once been enemies–offering aid, protection, even treaties–if it meant I could search theirnds, ask their people, look into the eyes of every woman in every vige and hope to see her.

 I didn’t sleep much. Didn’t eat properly. My men worried. Audrey begged me to rest. Even Alfonso–the most stoic of us–said I was beginning to unravel.

 But none of them stopped me.

 They knew.

 This wasn’t just about love.

 This was about a bond fated by the Moon herself. A connection that shouldn’t have been broken.

 Eine was not just my mate.

 She was the one light that made all this power bearable. Without her, I ruled a world that no longer meant anything.

 Some nights, I sat alone in the mountains, staring into the mes of my campfire and wondering if she was doing the same. If she remembered anything. If she cried for something she couldn’t name.

 I would’ve burned down the world to bring her back.

 Instead, I searched every inch of it I could reach.

 And now, after all these months of failure, silence, and bone–deep exhaustion–a whisper.

 Beta’s voice in my head, he sounds worry and nervous: “My King, you need toe home.”

 For a moment, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak, hoping he will give me a great news.

 ‘Something’s wrong?‘ I growled through the link.

 19:01 Mon, 21 Jul M

 ‘My King. We found her” My heart mmed once, painfully hard, then again. “She’s in the courtyard. She’s with traders. Her name’s different, her hair s It changed… It was silver, white… But it’s her. I swear to the Moon, Alpha Francesco–it’s her.”

 Time cracked open.

 I was hundreds of miles away in the western mountains, but I didn’t care.

 “I’m leaving,” I said to the Joshua and Marlow as I stalked toward my horse. “Now.” 

 They followed without question.

17kNovel

Still His 108