Alpha of Ashes

The breeze brought with it the aroma of ash and abandoned hopes over the remains of once-thriving Blackmoon lands. Lucian Blackmoon stood over the devastation, his scarred hands fisted at his sides as his eyes took in the burned remains of his birthright. It had been three years since that conflagration that burned everything—his pack, his family, his pride—yet still the sting of it clung to the air like a blame that would never go away. The packhouse was nothing more than a skeleton of blackened timber and crumbling stone. Where laughter had once echoed through grand halls, only silence remained. Where his father had held court as Alpha, dispensing wisdom and justice with the authority of generations, weeds now pushed through cracks in the foundation like nature's own condemnation. The sight should have brought him to his knees, but Lucian had long since spent his tears on this graveyard of memories. He pushed through wreckage, boots crunched through shards of glass and bone. Here once stood the large dining hall in which the pack had come together for ceremony and feast. There, remnants of the nursery in which cubs first learned their first lessons of loyalty and honor. With every step, one more spirit was found, one more reminder of all that he'd not been able to guard. His face was mirrored in a rainwater puddle—a face sculpted by betrayal, burned with scars that would never fade. The burns had begun at his left temple and continued down to his jaw, a lattice of reddened, inflamed flesh that bore witness to fire and betrayal. A scar that would forever symbolize that evening that Marcus had betrayed him. The evening that all had burned. The evening he'd discovered that to trust was to be weak. “Alpha.” The name was bitter in his mind, poison on his tongue. What kind of Alpha was not strong enough to protect his own pack? What kind of leader was such that his own territory was a monument to his own humiliation? The other Alphas sneered behind his back these days—when they bothered to remember that he was still living at all. The Burned Heir, they said. The wolf who'd forfeited everything to his own Beta's covetousness. "Still conversing with ghosts, brother?" Lucian didn't turn at the familiar voice. Mira approached through the rubble with careful steps, her auburn hair catching what little sunlight filtered through the overcast sky. His sister had always been the brave one, the one who refused to let the past define her future. She returned to this cursed place when he could barely stand to look at it, tending to the small memorial she'd built among the ruins. "They're louder here," he said, his voice rough from disuse. Living as a rogue meant days without speaking to another soul, weeks of nothing but his own thoughts for company. "Sometimes I think I can hear Father calling for a pack meeting. Or Mother humming in her garden." Mira froze next to him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her, catch a whiff of that old-home scent still lingering on her despite it all. She was all that was left of his former world that didn't feel like ash and regret. "The dead do not speak, Lucian. Only living people torture themselves with their voices." He finally gazed at her, taking in the face that was his own mirror—the same chiseled cheekbones their father had passed down to them, the same storm-gray eyes that had once made wolves older than they respect them. But while his features were toughened by sorrow and fury, worn down by three years of living off the land, hers still carried that softness that somehow lay out of his reach ever since that fateful night. "What's wrong with you that you insist on coming back?" he asked. "Why torture yourself with it?" "Someone must recall them aright," she went on, "someone must grieve over them without being swallowed up in churning remorse of guilt. Someone must hold their memory in love, and not in self-hatred." The reproach in her words hurt because it was real. His sorrow had turned to poison, consuming the little that was still left of the man he used to be. He'd opted for exile rather than confront the surviving pack members, opted for the solitary existence of a rogue than to challenge himself with rebuilding all that Marcus had torn down. It was simpler to bemoan failure than to risk failing once more. "They deserved better," he said, his statement roughening his own throat. "Irja." Mira's eyes widened with tears. "They deserved to be honored with an alpha who would survive for their sacrifice, not die beside them." Prior to being able to defend against that specific blade thrust, a puff of wind came rushing through the wreckage, with something attached to it that caused Lucian's wolf to move restlessly. The scent was off—not that pleasant rot of his destroyed home, but something different altogether. Something that hinted of flame and fury and a force that made his scarred body tense with warning. "Do you smell that?" he asked, his nostrils widening fully as his mind struggled to recognize that strange odor. Mira frowned, c*****g her head to one side like a confused puppy. "Smoke. But we can't burn anything around here." But it wasn't just smoke. There was something beneath it, something wild and electric that called to the deepest part of his wolf nature. A scent like lightning before a storm, like the moment when everything balanced on the edge of transformation. It reminded him of old stories, legends whispered by elderly pack members about powers that predated civilization itself. The vision took him by surprise, sending him to his knees with its power. Fire. Not the burning flames of his horrors, not the devourer that had eaten his pack, but something different—a flame that cleaned rather than burned, that built rather than devoured. In the center of the inferno was a being enveloped in golden light, too brilliant to look at but distinctly feminine. Her hair danced like flames, her face shone like melted metal, and power issued from her in currents that made reality itself curve. She glanced his way, and while her face was obscured behind radiance, he knew the force of her eyes like a bodily caress. Awareness flashed between them, like two parts of something that had once been shattered a long time ago. "The Phoenix rises," someone breathed, old and frightening and magnificent all at once. "The Blood Oath requires its toll. The shadows congregate, and only flame can banish them. Seek her out,Alpha of Ashes, lest all burn once more." Images danced before his eyes—wolves with eyes of silver and shadow-clawed, a bone-and-despair-built fortress, and above it all, a being in black whose gaze seemed to suck the light from reality. He envisioned himself facing that shadow, no longer alone but with the woman of flame, their abilities entwining like lovers' hands. Then the vision broke, leaving him winded and stumbling on the ash-scorched ground. "Lucian!" Mira was by his side in a moment, hands on his shoulders, her tone acrid with worry. "What was it? You fainted!" He steadied himself, his heart hammering against his ribs like a caged animal desperate for freedom. The scent was gone now, replaced by the familiar staleness of decay and regret. But the memory of that figure in the flames burned behind his eyes, impossible to dismiss or rationalize away. "I'm fine," he lied, extricating himself from his sister's hold. His hands were trembling, he noted with loathing. "Just. just ghosts. Like you said." But Mira's eyes were altogether too knowing, far too keen. She'd never had difficulty seeing through his lies even when they were children playing to be warriors in their father's court. "That was no grief, Lucian. It was something else. Something." She trailed off, nostrils flaring as she took samples of air. "There was a smell. For a moment. Something that made me think of the old legends." "What old stories?" "The ones my Grandmother would say to us. About the Phoenix Wolves and their protectors. About the cost of power and the Blood Oath." Mira spoke in a whisper. "About the prophecy that would bring them all together again." Lucian shivered to think of ice congealing in his veins. "That was mere legend. Children's tales to explain away things we didn't understand." " Were they?" Mira stood and brushed ash off of her knees, but did not remove her gaze from his eyes. "Or were they memories in disguise of legend? Warnings shrouded in poem and story?" He did not get a chance to respond before it changed again and for a moment again he sensed that scent—fire and lightning and something that beckoned to every fiber of his being. It was already gone even as he recognized it, burning away like smoke upon the wind. But it had indeed been real. The vision had indeed been real. Out there somewhere was a woman of fire waiting for him. And if she would prove to be his salvation or his downfall was to be determined. "We gotta go," Mira said, with eyes scanning the horizon that confident glint of a person who'd learned to tough it out outside."Storm's coming." Lucian nodded distractedly, his mind still working with visions of flame and prophecy. By picking their way down through the wreckage to the edge of the tree line, he couldn't help but gaze over his shoulder, half-afraid that golden light would be dancing in among the charred timbers. The Blood Oath. The Phoenix rising. The price of power. Words of a vision that was like a memory, like fate instead of dream. And when thunder began to gather on the horizon, Lucian Blackmoon couldn't help but think that his years of exile were nearly over. Whether or not he was ready.