Alpha Of Ashes

The Banquet Poison

The kitchen was silent after I spoke, except for Zane on his knees and my own ragged breathing. My words, you buried me alive on my wedding day, hung in the air like smoke, like ash that would not settle. Three years I waited to say it to his face, not as Mira, not as a mute maid, but as Kira Storm, Alpha of Ash Pack, who everyone thought was dead.

Zane's hands were still shaking where he held my wrist, where he saw my scar glowing faint orange through the ash paste. His silver eyes, which I once thought were cold and cruel, were full of tears, full of the guilt he carried every night to my empty grave. Did he really think I was dead all this time? Did he really think he killed me and had to live with it?

"Kira?" he whispered, my name like a prayer he was afraid to say wrong, like if he says it wrong I will disappear again into dirt. "Is it really you? How? I felt your heart stop, I buried you myself, the rogue healer said no one could survive that much blood loss, that much wolfsbane in the soil."

So he knew about the healer. He left me to a rogue healer, hoping she would find me? Is that supposed to make it better, that he buried me alive and then hoped a stranger would dig me up? Does that bring back my pack, my mother, my father, three years of being wolfless and mute?

"You left me to a rogue healer?" I asked, pulling my wrist away, my voice still rusted but now angry, Alpha angry, the kind that makes omegas bow without meaning to. "You stabbed me, buried me, and left me to a stranger to decide if I live? You do not get to decide if I live or die, Zane. You said that yourself when you put the dagger in my hand, die as my Luna so you can live as my revenge."

He flinched, and for the first time since I returned as Mira, I saw him as he really is, not the Alpha of Winter Fang, not the cruel mate who killed his Luna, but a boy of twenty one who found his mate dying in a m******e and made a terrible, desperate choice because the prophecy said the Ash bloodline must die to awaken. Does that excuse him?

"I did it to fake your death," he said quickly, words spilling out like he had held them for three years in his empty grave. "Victor Kane was coming with his Blood Stone army, he would have executed you publicly, taken your Phoenix power, erased female Alphas forever. My mother told me the prophecy, die as my Luna so you can live as my revenge. If I buried you alive and broke our bond temporarily, your wolf would go dormant and survive. I thought you would understand, I thought you would wake up and run."

I stared at him, this guilt ridden, exhausted Alpha who thinks he is a monster, who visits my empty grave every night, who married Selene to get close to Victor. He buried me to save me? Is that supposed to make me thank him? Should I thank him for three years of being dead?

"Did you ask me?" I hissed, quiet but deadly, my doctor hands clenching into fists that know how to stitch and how to kill. "Did you ask if I wanted to die as your Luna? You decided, again, like you decide everything, like you decided to marry Selene to get close to Victor. You never ask, Zane. You just bury, and then you mourn the grave you made."

He had no answer, because there is no answer. How do you apologize for burying your mate alive, even if you did it to save her from a worse death? You do not, you just kneel in a kitchen at midnight and let her be angry.

Before he could try, the kitchen door opened again, and Hilda the head omega walked in, half asleep, holding a lamp, smelling soup. "Alpha? Is everything okay? I heard howling, I thought the pups were..."

Zane stood up instantly, Alpha mask back on, wiping his tears with one quick hand, cold again, cruel again for anyone who is not me. "Everything is fine, Hilda. Mira was just showing me a human medicine for my headache. She is very good, you were right to hire her. Leave us."

Hilda looked at me, at my powdered hands, at Zane barefoot in his kitchen at midnight with a maid, and she bowed and left quickly, pretending she saw nothing. Omegas learn to not see things that will get them killed, especially when their Alpha is kneeling for a maid.

When she left, Zane turned back to me, his face desperate, his hands hovering near my scar but not touching, because he knows he lost the right to touch it when he buried it.

"You cannot poison Victor tomorrow at the banquet," he whispered, so low only a mate could hear. "He will smell wolfsbane, he has a priest who tests his wine, who chants to detect Phoenix blood. He will kill you on the spot, and this time I cannot fake your death again, Kira. Please, let me handle him. I have a plan, I married Selene to get close, to get his war maps..."

"I know why you married her," I cut him off, picking up my vial of white powder, my clean, doctor clean poison that I spent three years learning to make in the human world. "You married the daughter of the man who ordered my pack's m******e to get close enough to kill him. Noble. Stupid, but noble. Did it work? Is he dead? Is my mother alive because of it?"

Zane looked down, ashamed, his silver eyes on the floor he made me scrub for four days. "No. He is stronger now, he has more packs, he wants to erase the female Alpha gene because a female Alpha rejected his father and ruined his family. He engineered your pack's m******e to kill you, and now he is using me to find the last Ash survivor."

"There is no last Ash survivor in the south, Zane," I said coldly, putting the vial back in my pocket. "I am the last. I am standing in front of you in a maid uniform, holding poison you stopped me from using. So your plan is already dead, just like your Luna was supposed to be."

He stepped closer, his scent winter and pine and grave dirt, and whispered, "Tomorrow at the banquet, Victor will announce the wedding date for me and Selene. He will also announce that Winter Fang will join Blood Stone to hunt the last Ash survivor in the southern wastes. If you stay as Mira, mute and invisible, you can hear where he will hunt, you can warn her, you can..."

"There is no her," I repeated, tired of his plans that never ask me. "I am her. And I am not warning anyone, I am going to kill him. If not with poison tomorrow, then with something else. I did not come back as a mute maid to watch you fail at revenge, Zane. I came back to do it myself, without being buried again."

The kitchen window showed the full moon rising, and my scar, hidden under paste, started to throb, to glow faintly, even through ash. Ember twitched again, hotter this time, not a dormant twitch but a waking twitch, like a wolf stretching after three years of sleep. The full moon was coming in two nights, the same moon that was there when he buried me.

Zane saw the glow through my collar and his hand shot out, not to grab me, but to cover my scar with his own big, warm hand, to hide my light from anyone who might be watching through the window. His touch burned, but not painful, like coming home.

"She is glowing," he whispered, awe and terror in his voice, his dead wolf howling inside him so loud I felt it in my own chest. "After three years, Kira, your wolf..."

"She is waking up," I said, and for the first time I was not afraid of it, I was angry that it took his touch to wake her, that my Phoenix needed the man who buried me to rise. "And when she wakes, she will not be mute, she will not be a maid, she will be Phoenix, a wolf made of ash and fire. And you, husband who killed me, will have to decide again if you are on my side or hers, or if you will bury me a second time."

From outside, beyond the glass where Zane's hand covered my glow, Selene Kane stood in the snow in her white dress, watching us through the kitchen window, her phone in her hand, recording everything, her smile thin and sharp. She had what she needed now, proof that the dead Luna lives, that her fiance kneels for a maid, that the female Alpha gene her father wants to erase is alive and glowing in his own packhouse.

Tomorrow at the banquet, would she tell her father that Kira Storm lives and give him the Phoenix blood he needs to become immortal, or would she keep it secret to use for herself, to finally make Zane look at her the way he just looked at a maid?

Zane and I stood in the kitchen, his hand over my glowing scar, my poison in my pocket, two Alphas pretending to be Alpha and maid, while the house slept and the enemy's daughter watched, and the full moon rose higher, ready to make me shift for the first time in three years.

Would Zane protect me tomorrow when Victor comes with his priest and his hatred of female Alphas, or would he bury me again to save me, because that is the only way he knows how to love?