Alpha Of Ashes

They buried me alive on my wedding day, and my husband held the shovel. I am Kira Storm. I was the only female Alpha in the North. At twenty one, I was supposed to end a fifty year war by marrying Alpha Zane Crowe of Winter Fang. My dress was ash grey, because Ash Pack never wears white. White means surrender. White means you have already lost. The drums stopped in the middle of my vows. That is how I remember the m******e started. Not with a scream, with silence. Victor Kane's wolves came over the walls. They didn't howl. They came to erase. That is Victor's word. Not kill. Erase. Because Victor Kane does not just want power. He wants the female Alpha gene erased forever. His father was rejected by my great grandmother, Yara Frost, the first female Alpha who ever said no to a Kane. His father never recovered. His family fell apart. Victor decided no daughter would ever be allowed to lead again, so no son would ever be rejected again. He started with my pack. On my mating night. My mother, Kara Frost, was trying to pull me behind the altar. My Beta, Jonn, was shouting. Selene Kane, Victor's perfect blonde daughter, was standing on the guest balcony in a white dress, smiling, holding a glass of wine while my people died below her. She was supposed to be a guest. She was a signal. Zane found me dying. Throat cut, dress soaked, wolf gone silent. Ember, my Phoenix wolf, who had howled for his wolf since we were fourteen, was suddenly quiet. That silence was more terrifying than the blood. He didn't carry me to the healer. He dragged me by my veil into the Black Forest behind the Ash hall. My wedding veil tearing on roots. He pushed me to my knees in the dirt where we had first kissed as pups. Then he put his own dagger in my hand. He pointed the tip at my heart. His silver eyes were black with grief and something else I did not understand. "Die as my Luna, so you can live as my revenge," he whispered against my bleeding mouth. I thought he hated me. I thought he was finishing what Victor started. So I stabbed myself. Because I trusted him even while he was killing me. Because he was my mate. He buried me alive. Fast, shallow, with his bare hands, while I choked on dirt and blood and watched him. He didn't look away. He made himself watch. I woke up three days later two hundred miles south in a human clinic that smelled like bleach. A woman with tired eyes and human hands was stitching my chest. Rogue healer, Mara. No pack. No wolf. Just a human doctor who had left the packs because she was tired of watching daughters die. "Your scar will never heal right," she said. "Your wolf is gone. You're lucky to be breathing at all. Whoever buried you knew exactly where to miss the heart by a centimeter." My wolf wasn't gone. She was dormant. Hiding to survive. That is what Phoenix wolves do. The prophecy says the Ash bloodline must die before it can awaken. If I had lived that night as Alpha, Victor would have executed me publicly on the Ash altar and taken my power. By burying me alive, Zane broke our mate bond temporarily and hid my bloodline. He faked my death to save me. I didn't know that then. For three years, the world thought Kira Storm, Alpha of Ash Pack, was dead. Her grave sits on the hill behind Winter Fang. Empty. Zane visits it every night. I know because after I learned to walk again, after I learned to suture like a human, after I learned to be invisible, I came back and watched him. I trained as a human doctor. No shifting. No pack link. No howling. Just hands that don't shake. I learned how to keep a person alive when their wolf wants them dead. I learned how to be mute, how to be small, how to be no one. Because no one looks at a mute Omega maid. Now I am back as Mira. Twenty four, wolfless, mute from a throat burn, Omega maid assigned to Winter Fang's main house. My papers are forged. My hair is dyed black. My scar is covered with a cheap leather collar. I scrub floors that never get clean and carry trays that are too heavy. The Winter wolves call me Mouse. I came back for two reasons. One, I learned from Mara's human contacts that Victor Kane is going to destroy Winter Fang next, the same way he destroyed Ash. He is using Zane's engagement to Selene to get inside the gates. If I can get close enough to warn Zane, maybe I can stop a second m******e. Two, I came back to find out why my own mate buried me alive. I got the kitchen shift on the night of the engagement banquet. The hall was full. Winter Fang wolves in white fur, Blood Stone wolves in black leather. At the high table, Zane sat in his Alpha chair, looking exhausted. Not cold and possessive like the stories say. Guilt-ridden. Hollow. A boy who thinks he is a monster. He is twenty four now too, but his hair has grey in it. Beside him, Selene Kane, in a white dress that cost more than my entire human clinic, was talking about flowers. White roses. Surrender roses. She kept touching his arm. He kept flinching. I was carrying mulled wine, head down, mute, invisible, when my tray tipped. Just a little. My scar, the one Mara said would never heal, the one that glows orange under a full moon when Ember tries to wake, caught on the metal edge and tore. One drop of blood fell on the stone floor. It was not red. It was white. Hot, glowing, Phoenix white. The hall went silent. Every wolf smelled it. Ash and fire and something that has not been alive in the North for a hundred years. Zane went rigid. His nose flared. His hands gripped the table so hard the wood cracked. His wolf, which everyone thought died with me, which he thought died with me, howled inside him so loud I felt it in my own silent chest, even though I was supposed to be wolfless. He turned. Slowly. Looked straight at me. At Mira. At the mute Omega maid with the burned throat. For one second, the mate bond he broke when he buried me alive snapped back. I felt it like a knife and a kiss at once. Fire up my spine. My knees buckled. His lips parted. His dead wolf howled my real name inside my head. *Kira.* Then his face closed. Blank. Cold. The mask of the cruel Alpha who killed his Luna. Everyone in the North thinks he killed me out of jealousy, because a female Alpha cannot lead beside a male Alpha. He looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was dirt. Like I was a spill to be cleaned. "I have never seen you before in my life," he said to the entire hall. But he was looking at me. He is lying. And his dead bond just howled for me. Behind me, Selene Kane smiled at the maid, at Mira, at me, and her voice was sweet poison. "Mouse, clean that up. And then come to my chambers. I need someone to lace my wedding dress. Someone mute. Someone who will not repeat what she hears." She knows. She has to know. Or she suspects. And she wants me close. I knelt to clean my own Phoenix blood, pretending my hands were not shaking, pretending I was not the Alpha who everyone thinks is dead, pretending I was not feeling my wolf Ember wake up for the first time in three years and whisper inside my skull, *We are not done. He buried us alive. Now watch us rise.* And from the kitchen doorway, where no one was supposed to enter during a banquet, Alpha Victor Kane walked in, late, not apologizing, smiling like a father, looking straight at me, the mute maid on her knees in my own glowing blood, and said in a voice that made every Winter Fang wolf stand straighter, "Interesting. Winter Fang has a new Omega. Where did you find her, Zane? She smells like ash. Like someone I already killed once." Zane stood up. His chair fell. His silver eyes were black. His hand went to the dagger at his belt. The same dagger he put in my hand on my wedding day. And Selene, still smiling, whispered to me, only me, while everyone stared at Victor, "Welcome home, Kira Storm. I have been waiting three years for you to come back and try to kill my father. Don't worry. I won't tell him. Yet. I need you alive. For the wedding night." The doors behind Victor slammed shut. Locked. From the outside.