Alpha of ashes

Alpha of ashes

efua sunday

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She was supposed to be dead. Falsely accused of betrayal, Zara was exiled from her pack and left to die in the snow. Years later, she resurfaces - stronger, colder, and determined to reclaim her life. But fate has other plans. Damian Blackthorn, billionaire CEO by day, ruthless Alpha by blood, has been haunted by dreams of a mate he's never met. When Zara walks into his life, every instinct screams mine. The problem? Zara has secrets. And Damian has enemies. And the bond between them might destroy everything they've both built.

Chapter 1 Back from the dead

The cold didn't bother me anymore.

I'd walked through worse than this-blood, betrayal, frostbitten nights alone in the forest. A little winter wind brushing through downtown Manhattan? Child's play.

I adjusted the scarf around my neck and kept walking.

The city glowed beneath a steel-gray sky, all concrete and glass and people too busy to care who I was or what I'd survived. That's why I liked it here. You could disappear. Or rise again, if you had the guts.

And I'd had nothing but guts the past four years.

I paused at the revolving door of Blackthorn International, the towering glass headquarters of a man I swore I'd never see again.

Damian Blackthorn.

Alpha. Billionaire. Liar. Monster.

And my mate.

My fingers trembled as I reached for the door. Not from fear. From rage. From the ghosts that clung to my skin like frostbite.

The last time I saw him, I was half-dead in the snow, a silver collar burning into my throat while my pack turned their backs on me-on orders from him.

Now? I was about to walk through his front door, wearing heels and lipstick and a name that wasn't mine.

And he wouldn't recognize me.

That's the best part of being dead. You get to come back however the hell you want.

---

"Miss Kade?" the assistant said, glancing up from her iPad.

I smiled politely, clutching the fake resume in my hand. "That's me."

"Mr. Blackthorn will see you now."

She didn't look up again, just pressed a button and gestured toward the elevator.

As the doors slid shut, I let my shoulders drop. My reflection stared back at me in the mirrored walls-dark curls, sharp cheekbones, eyes like wildfire. I didn't look like the girl I'd been. I didn't feel like her either.

Zara D'Lune died four years ago.

Now I was Rielle Kade, consultant from London, MBA from Oxford, expert in market reconstruction. Total bullshit. But believable enough to pass for the position I'd "earned."

And to get close to the man who ruined my life.

I told myself this was just a job. A setup.

I told myself I didn't care if he remembered me.

But then the elevator dinged, and I stepped into his office...

...and the world tilted.

---

Damian

I smelled her before I saw her.

Moonlight. Ash. Something dark and forbidden buried beneath all that perfume and corporate polish.

It hit me in the gut-raw and hard-and my wolf growled before I could stop it.

What the hell-

She stepped inside. Tall. Graceful. Dangerous.

My wolf went still.

My soul? Shook.

She didn't flinch when she saw me, didn't do that nervous hair-tuck thing most new hires did. No giggles. No fake charm.

Just cool, unreadable eyes. Burning gold.

Familiar... but wrong.

No. Not wrong. Hidden.

"Mr. Blackthorn," she said, voice smooth as silk with a hint of something sharp underneath.

"Miss... Kade, was it?"

She nodded. "Pleasure to meet you."

Liar.

My wolf clawed against my ribs. Mate.

No. It couldn't be.

My mate died. I felt it. The bond snapped in the woods the night I sentenced her to exile.

But the scent...

The way her eyes pierced straight through me...

I stood slowly, walking around the desk. "Have we met before?"

She tilted her head, that dangerous smile still on her lips.

"No," she said. "But you'll remember me soon enough."

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I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

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