Shattered and Saved (Ashen Wolves #2)

5

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K O E N

I woke up gasping for air.

The pain of feeling my entire pack die was like a thousand needles stabbing straight into my heart. It lingered, the ache reverberating through my body in shockwaves that never ceased. I was certain it must have been the echo of my shattered mind. What I had just endured was so agonizing, it was hard to believe it had truly happened. But the silence where their bond should have been - their souls forever out of reach - was too solid, too crushing. This wasn’t a nightmare I could wake from. It was the unbearable truth.

Yet, here I was. Awake. Alive. I had survived, only to carry the burden of having failed to protect my pack. But as my eyes burst open and I sat up in a rush, chest heaving in a frantic search for air, I asked myself - where was here ?

There was nothing familiar about the cold stone walls surrounding me. The expensive room was dark, the few windows blocked with thick curtains. It was hard to see, especially when I couldn’t use my night vision. I tried reaching out to Col, but he didn’t respond. Although I could still feel him in the depths of my mind, it seemed he had entered a state of hibernation, probably induced by our heavy grief.

When I tried to move, my muscles burned, forcing me to stay still. Strangely, though, I didn’t feel any real pain. Upon closer inspection, I realized my injuries had been tended to, bandages carefully wrapped around them. What the hell was going on? I tried to recall the most recent events, but everything after my pack’s eradication was a blur. The only thing anchoring me, keeping panic at bay, was the familiar scent that filled the room - warm and comforting, like a promise of safety.

If it weren’t for the confusion, I would have identified who it belonged to before she walked into the room.

My eyes darted to the only source of light, coming through the crack on the door as it opened. “Hey. You’re up,” Avril spoke softly. She looked like an angel haloed in light.

What was going on? Why was she here? My head throbbed as I forced myself to think. That’s right - she had come to Whispering Hills, moments before the tragedy. She was also there afterward. I remembered her begging me to come with her right before I took a blow to the head. Did she hit me?

While I tried to process everything, Avril opened the curtains halfway, allowing the sunlight to partially illuminate the room. I watched as she pulled a chair close, sitting next to the bed. Her presence always soothed me; it was an effect of the mate bond, which I never stopped feeling. However, the same couldn’t be said about her expression. She eyed me with caution, uncertainty laced in her features.

“How are you feeling?” she quietly asked, offering me a glass of water.

I hadn’t realized how dry my mouth was until my eyes locked on the clear liquid. Accepting the glass, I took a large sip, thinking about my answer. The last time we spoke, I hadn’t been nice to her. I basically told her to disappear from my life, yet she came back. Why?

As questions arose, I completely forgot about answering her, focusing on my own doubts. “Where are we? Did you bring me here?”

She tensed up, but still nodded. “This is…my room,” she replied hesitantly.

“So, we’re at Azure Smoke?” I guessed, and she nodded her head in affirmation. “Do all omegas have rooms this big in your pack?”

Her eyes darted away from mine, and she started fidgeting with her hands. She was clearly nervous, and it made me anxious. “Are you in any pain?”

I ignored that she avoided my question, still a little dazed. “No. Not physically, at least,” I uttered.

She managed a small smile, glancing back at me. “You’re lucky you didn’t have to rely solely on me this time,” she joked. “Our shaman is a much better doctor than me. She patched you up and gave you a special tea for the pain, just in case.”

“You have a shaman here?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. Shamans were quite rare to come by, at least in wolf packs. They were usually from a different species - druids. Thanks to their affinity with nature and magic, they had phenomenal healing abilities. “It seems there’s a lot I don’t know about Azure Smoke.”

“Yeah,” she dragged out the word. Her lips pursed and parted open as if she wanted to elaborate, but it was evident in her face that she was struggling to figure out where to start. Her nervousness started getting to me, especially when she was being extremely vague about everything.

In desperate need of explanations, I decided it was time for me to start my own interrogation. “Avril,” I called, drawing her attention before getting straight to the point. “Why did you take the urn?”

She visibly stiffened, but the hesitation gradually faded from her eyes. “There’s a lot that you don’t know, Koen. I…I’ll try to tell you everything, but you need to stay calm. Before I begin, I just want you to know that you can trust me, okay?”

Her words stirred something strange inside me. I used to trust her - until she used me, stole from me, and disappeared. I’d spent the last week wondering if anything we had was ever real, or if she had been faking it all along. How could she expect me to trust her again?

For the sake of learning the truth - if she was even capable of it - I replied, “Okay.”

“Okay,” she repeated, inhaling a deep breath, readying herself to start. “I’m not who you think I am. Even if I purposefully hid my true identity from you at first, I did want to tell you before I left. It was just…too complicated,” she rambled. Closing her eyes for a second, she focused before revealing, “I’m not an omega, Koen. I’m Alpha of Azure Smoke Pack.”

My eyes widened. An alpha? At first, I was stunned, but the longer I thought about it, the more it clicked. During her time at Whispering Hills, I’d noticed how much Avril had changed since the day I rejected her. There were moments when her behavior didn’t align with that of most omegas, but I had brushed it off, never imagining there could be more beneath the surface.

“When your father exiled me…” she continued. “I ran into a group of rogues. Well, I thought they were rogues, but I learned that they were an actual pack - my pack.”

I furrowed my brows. “I don’t understand.”

“My parents died shortly after leaving me at Whispering Hills. They were the former alphas of Azure Smoke, and I was their sole heir,” she revealed to my utmost disbelief. Little did I know, her story would soon become even more bizarre. “Azure Smoke is not a regular wolf pack, Koen. We’re survivors. The last pack of Ashen Wolves.”

“Ashen Wolves?” I repeated, the name ringing in my head as I remembered my research. “I thought they were just a myth,” I whispered.

“They’re not- uh, we’re not,” she corrected softly, her gaze dark and serious, as if the weight of the truth lingered in her words. “We’re faster than normal wolf shifters; stronger. And we have…special abilities.”

“Superpowers?” I asked, my voice barely audible as my head spun, trying to grasp how surreal all of this was.

She grimaced. “Kinda. For centuries, these…powers, had been suppressed. We needed the ashes that were inside of the urn to restore them.”

“That’s why you came back to Whispering Hills,” I realized. The guilt in her expression as she nodded didn’t diminish my anger. “It was all a lie, then.”

“Not all of it, Koen,” she argued, deep regret in her eyes. “In the beginning, I hated you. And, to be honest, I wanted to make you pay for what you put me through,” she confessed. “But then, you made me feel…something else. It melted the hatred and ignited a feeling long lost within me. I realized that you weren’t the monster I painted you out to be.”

“Yet, you still chose to betray me and leave,” I countered.

“I did what was best for my pack, Koen,” she observed. “Like you, I made a choice. And I’m not proud of it.”

Her reasoning struck a chord with me. Could I really blame her for doing the same thing I had done to her? After hearing the truth about who she was, I could understand her choices. However, it was still too much to process.

“Thank you for telling me the truth,” I told her wholeheartedly, shifting in bed to let my legs fall over the edge as I prepared to stand up. “But I need some time to think, Avril. I need to go home.”

She flashed a confused look at me. “Koen, Whispering Hills is gone,” she stated, and my heart fell.

“I know,” I admitted, pushing through the pain. “But it’s still my home, and the only place I can go.”

As I rose to my feet, she used her werewolf speed to do the same, positioning herself between me and the door. When I arched an eyebrow at her, her gaze dropped to the floor.

“You can’t leave,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They won’t let you leave.”

As anger mingled with anxiety, I demanded, “Who are ‘they’?”

“The pack,” she clarified. “I’ve broken our most sacred rule by taking you in. If I weren’t the alpha, they would’ve banished me already. But now that you know, we can’t risk you sharing our secrets with the rest of werewolf society. It would jeopardize what we’re doing.”

“And what are you doing?” I asked, bracing myself.

Her eyes locked onto mine as she replied with determined intensity, “Getting revenge.”