The air was thick with tension, though Bella could not see the storm that raged just beyond the window of the small orphanage she called home. Blindness had never stopped her from sensing the world around her—its texture, its sounds, and most of all, its feelings. Yet there was a gnawing emptiness within her, a deep longing for something, or someone, she could never name. She sat at her usual spot in the corner of the room, where the floor creaked beneath her worn shoes, her fingers brushing over the familiar rough fabric of the chair she had claimed as her own. The rest of the children at the orphanage often whispered about her father—rumors too dark to ever be confirmed. They spoke of him as a monster, someone feared by all, a man with the blood of an Alpha coursing through him. A Buber, they said, though Bella had never heard the full story. No one told her much about her family, and she hadn’t asked, not after all these years. But there was something… something that had always felt different about her. An energy she couldn't name, a power that coursed through her veins like a current, waking in her whenever the moonlight bathed the orphanage at night. But tonight… tonight was different. The door to her room creaked open, and she recognized the sound of footsteps she had never heard before. They were heavy, deliberate, yet somehow light, as though the man moving toward her had the power to shatter the world and yet chose not to. Her breath hitched. "Who’s there?" she asked, though she already knew. His voice, smooth yet commanding, came from the darkness. "Bella," he said, the name rolling off his tongue like it had been made for him to say. "I’ve been looking for you." Bella’s heart skipped a beat. How does he know my name? And in that moment, the world shifted, and she realized she wasn’t alone anymore. Her mate, her true Alpha, had found her.