Alpha Of Ashes

The Alpha Who Stared At A Maid

I have been a maid in Winter Fang for four days now, and no one looks at me twice, which is exactly how I planned it. My name is Mira, I am mute, I am wolfless, I am twenty four but I look older because human life ages you faster than pack life. I carry a bucket, I scrub floors, I clean the infirmary where I once trained as a human doctor, and I keep my head down so no one sees the scar that never healed.

The ash paste the rogue healer gave me works. It hides the glow, it hides the smell of Ash blood, it makes my skin look grey and dead. Hilda, the head Omega, hired me because I am cheap, I do not complain, and I know how to stitch a wound the human way, which wolves find fascinating and useless at the same time. She thinks I am from the south, a wolfless Omega who ran from a cruel mate.

No one asks questions about a mute maid, do they? That is the beauty of being invisible. You hear everything, and no one hears you.

This morning I heard Selene Kane on the phone with her father, Alpha Victor Kane, the man who ordered my pack massacred. She was in the Luna suite that should have been mine three years ago, wearing my old colors, white and silver, laughing about the banquet tomorrow. "Yes Father, Zane is finally agreeing to set a date, and yes, the last Ash survivor rumor is working, Winter Fang thinks there is still one female Alpha hiding in the south." There is no survivor in the south. There is only me.

Alpha Zane Crowe passed me in the hallway right after that call, with Selene's perfume still in the air. He was in his black Alpha uniform, snow on his shoulders, his face that same exhausted, guilt ridden face I remember from the night he buried me. He did not look at me at first, because Alphas do not look at mute maids, until his wolf did.

His dead wolf, the one that died when he thought he killed me three years ago, made a noise inside his chest, a broken, confused howl that only a former mate could hear. He stopped, right in front of my bucket of grey water, and stared down at my hands.

My hands were red from scrubbing, doctor hands that once held a scalpel in the human world, that once held a dagger he put in them. Did he recognize them? How do you recognize hands that you once forced to stab a heart?

"Who is this?" he asked Hilda, who came running because an Alpha stopped for a maid, which never happens.

Hilda bowed so low her forehead almost touched the floor. "New maid, Alpha. Mira. Mute since birth. Wolfless. Good with infirmary. Very clean, very quiet. From southern packs."

He looked at me, and I kept my eyes down, playing Mira, playing nobody, but I could feel his silver eyes trying to dig under my ash paste, under my black dyed hair, under my mute act. "Mira," he repeated, tasting the name, finding it bitter. "Look at me."

If I look up, will he know? I am twenty four now, not twenty one. I lost weight, my cheekbones sharp, my eyes gold from Ember trying to wake, not amber like before. I am not Kira Storm, the pretty, strong, bright Alpha princess who was supposed to marry him. I am ash. But mates remember ash, do they not?

I looked up for one second, eyes empty, mouth closed, mute, sorry. I let him see nothing.

His frown deepened, and for a second his hand twitched, like he wanted to push my collar down to see my neck, to see if there is a scar there. Does he remember the scar? He made it, after all.

Selene appeared then, looping her arm through his, possessive, smiling at me like I was furniture. "Zane darling, Father is waiting on the video call, and the council is waiting, it is just a maid, come." Just a maid. Perfect. Let her think that.

He let her pull him away, but he looked back once, over his shoulder, at my bucket, at my red hands, at my bowed head. And his scent, winter and pine and grave dirt, lingered, and his dead wolf howled again, louder this time, confused and hungry.

That night I did what I came to do. Victor Kane arrives tomorrow for the engagement banquet, and I planned to poison his wine with human medicine that wolves cannot detect. Wolfsbane extract looks like salt, smells like nothing, kills in thirty minutes, no wolf can heal it if dosed right. I learned it as a human doctor, not as an Alpha. That is my advantage.

I was in the kitchen at midnight, grinding the root, measuring like a surgeon, my mute act dropped because no kitchen maid is awake at midnight, when the door opened without knock.

Zane stood there, barefoot, in a loose shirt, hair wet from snow, looking like he just came from my empty grave. Everyone says he visits it every night, even in blizzard, even when Selene begs him not to. Did he just come from talking to dirt that is not me?

He saw the mortar, the white powder, my hands no longer scrubbing but measuring, my face not empty but focused, cold, Alpha. He did not shout for guards. He closed the door quietly behind him and locked it.

"You are not mute," he said, not angry, not surprised, just tired, like he knew all along and was waiting for me to stop pretending.

I froze, powder on my fingers, caught as a maid trying to poison an Alpha. Should I kill him? Should I run? For three years I trained to not feel, to be dead inside, but my heart hammered so loud I was sure his Beta could hear it from the barracks.

"Who were you going to poison?" he asked, stepping closer, his eyes on the vial, not on my scar yet. "Me? Or Selene? Or Victor tomorrow?"

I shook my head, still playing mute for one more second out of habit, then I stopped. There is no point. If he wanted me dead, I would be dead already. He buried me once, he can bury me again, right?

I grabbed his hand, the hand that put the dagger in mine, and pressed it to my throat, to my collar, to the edge of the ash paste that hides my scar. His hand was hot, Alpha hot, and where he touched, the paste melted a little and the scar glowed faintly orange underneath.

His whole body shook. "No," he whispered, to himself, to the Moon, to his dead wolf that suddenly howled so loud inside him that the windows rattled. "No, you died. I felt your heart stop. I put dirt over your face myself. The healer said no one could survive that much blood loss."

So he knew about the healer. He left me to a rogue healer, hoping I would live? Is that supposed to make burying me alive better?

Tears I did not know I still had burned my eyes, hot and angry. I yanked my hand away and my voice, rusted from three years of being Mira, came out raw and loud, not mute, not Omega, but Kira.

"You buried me alive on my wedding day," I said, each word a dagger of its own, full stop, clear. "Not my enemies. My own mate. Alpha Zane Crowe put a dagger in my hand, pointed it at my heart, and whispered, die as my Luna, so you can live as my revenge. Do you remember that? Or did you forget while you were picking out wedding colors with Selene?"

He fell to his knees, right there in his own kitchen, in front of a maid, his silver eyes full of tears that he never shows his pack, his Alpha mask completely broken.

"Kira?" he said, my name like a prayer he is afraid to get wrong, like if he says it wrong I will die again. "Is it really you? Kira Storm? My Kira?"

Outside the kitchen window, in a white dress that glowed in moonlight, Selene Kane stood watching us through the glass, her phone in her hand, recording every word, every tear, every confession, smiling, because now she has proof that the dead Luna lives, and her father will pay a fortune for a live Phoenix Wolf who can be made immortal.

The maid who was mute was not mute anymore, the dead Alpha was not dead, and Zane Crowe, the Alpha who stared at a maid for four days without knowing why, finally remembered why his dead wolf howled.