Alpha Of Ashes

The First Shift In Three Years

The banquet for Victor Kane was supposed to be my death trap for him, but it became his trap for me. I stood in my maid grey uniform against the wall, head down, mute Mira with a bucket, while Victor Kane himself sat at the high table in Winter Fang's great hall, eating my Alpha's food, drinking from my Alpha's cups, talking about erasing female Alphas like me, like I was already dead.

He is bigger than I remembered from three years ago, when I saw him from the trees the night my pack burned, my mother screaming my name. His hair is silver now, his eyes red from wolfsbane use, his smile too wide and too calm for a man who burns pups. He wants to erase the female Alpha gene because a female Alpha once rejected his father and ruined his family, and he thinks that gives him the right to burn whole packs and call it justice.

Selene sat beside him, in white, perfect, her phone in her pocket that recorded me in the kitchen last night, that recorded Zane on his knees calling me Kira. She said nothing to her father yet. Why? What is she waiting for? Is she waiting to sell me for a higher price, to be Luna of Blood Stone instead of Winter Fang? Or is she scared of what her father will do to her if she tells him the Phoenix lives in his enemy's kitchen?

Zane sat at the head of the table, his face cold, exhausted, Alpha perfect, the mask everyone thinks is cruel, but his eyes kept flicking to me against the wall, to my collar where my scar was hidden under fresh ash paste, where last night it glowed orange when he touched it and woke my wolf. He knows I am Kira now, but no one else knows, and he has to pretend he does not, or Victor will kill me before I can shift, before I can burn.

The full moon rises tonight, and I can feel it in my teeth, in my blood, in the scar that never healed since he put the dagger in my hand. Ember, my wolf, who has been dormant for three years, silent since he buried me alive and broke our bond, is thrashing inside me, hot, angry, awake, clawing to get out. She went silent to survive, the prophecy said the Ash bloodline must die to awaken. I died twice now, once when he stabbed me, once when I lived as a human doctor with no wolf. Is tonight my third death, or my first real birth?

Victor stood up, his cup raised, his priest beside him chanting low to detect poison, to detect Phoenix blood, and the whole hall went silent, two hundred wolves holding their breath. "To the last Ash survivor," he said loudly, his voice booming like a war horn, "who we will hunt in the south next week and burn publicly, so the North knows female Alphas are an abomination that must be erased forever, so no daughter thinks she can be Alpha."

My hands clenched around my bucket, water sloshing onto the stone floor, my doctor hands that know how to stitch and how to poison shaking. There is no survivor in the south, you old monster. There is only me, right here, holding your poison that I did not get to use because your future son in law stopped me. Should I scream it? Should I shift here and burn him now, even if I die, even if it ruins everything?

Zane stood up too, his chair scraping loud, his silver eyes locked on mine for one second across the hall, telling me without words, not yet, wait, do not reveal yourself, please, trust me one more time. He is still trying to decide for me, is he not? Even after I told him you do not get to decide if I live or die.

"To the hunt," Zane said, his voice flat, dead, the voice he uses when he visits my empty grave every night, and he drank, and all the Alphas drank, and I stood there, mute maid, wolfless, invisible, while they toasted my death and my pack's erasure.

The banquet ended, Victor left with his priest who tests wine with chants and ash, Selene followed her father, giving me one last look through the doorway that said, I know who you are, mute maid, and I will tell him when it benefits me, when you are fully risen, because dormant Phoenix blood is useless.

Midnight came, full moon high, white and cruel and beautiful, the same moon that watched him bury me three years ago. I could not stay in the packhouse, Ember was burning me from inside, my scar glowing so bright the ash paste melted off and dripped down my neck like lava, like a warning. I ran, barefoot, in my maid dress, out into the forest behind the packhouse, to the frozen river where he buried me, where the dirt still remembers my blood and my tears.

Zane followed me, of course he followed me, barefoot too, shirt off despite snow, because his dead wolf, now alive and howling since last night when he learned Mira is Kira, would not let him stay inside while his mate burns alive again.

I fell to my knees at the river, at the exact spot where he put dirt over my face and whispered, die as my Luna so you can live as my revenge, and I screamed, not as Mira, not as mute, not as Omega, but as Kira, as Alpha, as Phoenix, as the only female Alpha in the North. "Ember, if you are in there, come out, I cannot be wolfless anymore, I cannot be maid anymore, I cannot be dead inside anymore!"

My scar exploded, light, orange and white and gold, melted the snow for twenty feet, cracked the frozen river, steamed the air, burned away three years of ash paste and mute act and doctor scrubs. I thought shifting was bones cracking, fur sprouting, pain like I remembered from when I was twenty one and first shifted. This was not that. This was fire, dissolving, becoming ash, becoming something else, dying and living at once.

I shifted, and the forest disappeared in cinders and light. I was not a wolf, not exactly, not the grey wolf I was at twenty one. I was a wolf made of ash and fire, black as char, edged in living flame, wings of ember and smoke trailing from my shoulders, eyes like small suns, size of a horse, larger than any Alpha wolf, beautiful and terrifying. Not a wolf that had fire on it, a wolf that was fire itself. The Phoenix Wolf my mother died to protect, the prophecy wolf that must die to awaken.

I howled, and it was not a wolf howl, it was the sound of a forest burning and being reborn in the same breath, of a pack screaming and then singing, of three years of being dead inside, wolfless, mute, finally breathing fire.

Zane stood at the tree line, his bare feet in snow that melted around him, his silver eyes reflecting my flames, tears cutting clean lines through ash on his face, his hands open, not afraid. He did not run, he did not call guards, he did not try to bury me again. He fell to his knees in the snow, just like he did in the kitchen, and he whispered my wolf's name.

"Ember," he whispered, my wolf's name that only he knew, because he named her when we were sixteen and thought forever was easy and no one would bury anyone. "You came back, you really came back."

I walked to him as Phoenix, my paws leaving burning prints that turned to green shoots, my fire not burning him, my ash not choking him, because Phoenix fire knows its mate, knows who buried it to save it and who mourned it every night at an empty grave. I pressed my huge, flaming forehead to his chest, to his heart that beats with guilt and love, and he sobbed, finally, after three years of thinking he was a monster.

"You are beautiful," he said, his hands in my fire fur, not burned, blessed, his dead wolf howling alive inside him for the first time since my death. "You are Ash Queen, you are my Alpha, you are not dead."

For one minute, there was no Victor, no Selene, no Blood Stone army, no banquet poison, no prophecy that says Ash must die to awaken, no war of two Alphas coming. There was just a girl who was buried alive on her wedding day, who came back as a maid, who finally shifted for the first time in three years, and the boy who buried her, who finally saw what he saved and what it cost.

Then footsteps crunched in the snow behind us, and Selene's voice, cold and clear and jealous, said from the trees where she followed us, "Well, well, Father will be so happy to see that the mute maid is a Phoenix Wolf. What do you think he will pay for a live one, Zane darling? A whole North?"

Only Zane was supposed to see me shift, only him, under full moon, at our grave. But Selene saw me too, with her phone recording, with her white dress glowing in my firelight, and now the last betrayal has a witness, and the war that was supposed to be about a hunt in the south is about to become about a hunt right here in Winter Fang, tonight.

Will Zane bury me again to hide me from Victor, to save me by killing me a second time, or will he finally stand beside me, two Alphas, one heart, and let me burn his enemy's daughter and her father to ash?