A Queen Reborn from Ash

Alyssa

The metallic tang of my own blood fills my mouth. It’s the only thing I can taste, the only thing that feels real besides the cold, damp earth seeping into my gown. Each breath is a sharp, rattling agony in my chest. A rogue’s claw, they’ll say. A tragic accident.

But I know the truth. I see it standing before me.

“Ethan,” I rasp, my voice a broken thing. My hand presses against the gash in my side, but the warmth gushing between my fingers tells me it’s useless. “Please.”

He looks down at me, his face a mask of stone. My husband. My Alpha. The wolf I pledged my life to. His silver eyes, the ones I once thought held the moon, are glacial. There is no love there. No pity. Only a chilling finality.

Clinging to his arm is Lyra. Her wide, innocent eyes are filled with perfectly formed tears, her delicate frame trembling. She looks like a frightened fawn, this frail omega who shattered my world. A masterful performance.

“Oh, Ethan,” she whispers, her voice laced with manufactured horror. “She’s… she’s bleeding so badly. We have to help her.”

“Stay back, my love,” Ethan murmurs, pulling her closer behind him. He shields her from the sight of me, his dying wife. His Luna. “It’s too dangerous. The rogues could still be near.”

I almost laugh, but the motion sends a fresh wave of fire through my ribs. “Rogues?” I manage to choke out, looking directly at him. “There are no rogues here, Ethan. Only you.”

His jaw tightens. “Don’t be foolish, Alyssa. Your ambition finally got the best of you. You pushed too far into the disputed lands alone. The pack will mourn you, but they will understand.”

The lie is so blatant, so insulting, it cuts deeper than the wound in my side. I remember the whispers he and his new pet started. *Alyssa is too aggressive. Her strategies are too risky. She doesn't have the pack's best interests at heart.* It was slow, that poison. Dripped into the ears of the council, the warriors, the families. Lyra’s sweet, concerned façade was the perfect delivery system for it.

“You did this,” I say, the words barely audible. “You set this up.”

Lyra peeks out from behind his shoulder. “Luna, please. Don’t say such things. You’re confused. The pain…”

“Do not speak to me,” I snarl, and for a moment, a flicker of the old power, the Luna’s authority, makes her flinch. It feels like a ghost on my tongue.

Ethan steps forward, blocking my view of her. He crouches down, his expression unreadable. “It didn’t have to be this way, Alyssa. If you had just accepted it. If you had known your place.”

“My place?” The memory rises, sharp and bitter. The great hall, filled with the entire pack. Ethan standing on the dais, his hand holding not mine, but Lyra’s. “I have found my fated mate,” he had announced, his voice ringing with a conviction he never used for me. “The Moon Goddess has blessed me, has blessed us all, with our true Luna.”

The shock. The humiliation. The pack’s confused silence. I had stood there, his wife of three years, suddenly a stranger. An obstacle. He didn’t even have the decency to dissolve our bond in private. He made my rejection a public spectacle.

“My place was by your side,” I whisper now, the fight draining out of me with every drop of blood I lose. “As your Luna. I helped you build this pack. I secured the alliances. I trained the warriors.”

“And I thank you for your service,” he says, his tone dismissive, like he’s thanking a servant for clearing the table. “But my fated mate requires my protection. She is gentle. She needs a strong Alpha. You… you were always trying to be the Alpha yourself.”

He thinks my strength was a weakness. The strength that saved him, saved this pack, more times than I can count. He resented it. Because he couldn't control it.

He rises, pulling a now-sobbing Lyra into his arms. “We have to go. We’ll send a patrol to… recover the body.”

He turns his back on me. On everything we were.

That’s when the rage hits. It’s a tidal wave of fire, a force so powerful it momentarily pushes back the encroaching darkness. It burns away the pain, the sorrow, the love I once felt. All that remains is a pure, cold hatred.

They wanted me to fade away quietly. A tragic footnote in the story of the great Alpha Ethan and his fated love. Another problem solved.

My mind flashes through the indignities. Being forced to let Lyra live in my house. Watching her wear my mother’s jewelry, which Ethan gifted her. Hearing her offer strategic advice, parroting ideas I had shared with Ethan in confidence, and seeing the elders praise her for her insight. She stole my life, piece by piece, while he held the door open for her.

As their footsteps recede, leaving me to the silence of the forest and the gurgle of my own breathing, I stare up at the sliver of moon visible through the canopy. I make a vow. Not as a Luna, not as a wife, but as a woman betrayed.

*If there is any justice, any power left in this world, let me have one more chance,* I think, my consciousness fraying at the edges. *One more chance. Not to fix this. Not to win him back. But to burn his world to ash. To make him feel this. To make him lose everything he holds dear, just as I have.*

The cold is absolute now. The forest floor feels like it’s swallowing me whole. My last breath escapes in a shuddering sigh.

Darkness.

Then, a gasp.

A breath so sharp and deep it feels like swallowing lightning. I bolt upright, my heart hammering against my ribs like a war drum. My hands fly to my side, expecting the sticky wetness of blood, the torn flesh. I find nothing. Only smooth skin and the soft linen of a nightgown. My nightgown.

My eyes snap open. I’m not in the forest. I’m in my bedroom. My old bedroom in my father’s house. Sunlight streams through the large window, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. The sheets smell of lavender and sun. My scent.

Panic claws at my throat. What is this? An afterlife? A trick of a dying mind?

I scramble out of bed, my legs shaky. My gaze falls on the full-length mirror against the wall. The woman staring back at me is… me. But not the me from the forest. Not the tired, hardened Luna of twenty-five. This version is younger. Her face is fuller, unmarred by the stress and faint scars of the last few years. Her eyes, though wide with shock, don’t have the shadows I’d grown so used to seeing. This is me at twenty.

My hands tremble as I touch my reflection’s face. It feels real. The skin is warm. I am solid. I am alive. My hair is shorter, styled the way I wore it before Ethan convinced me to grow it out, saying he preferred long hair on his Luna.

My eyes scan the room, desperate for an anchor, for something to make sense of this madness. They land on the mahogany desk by the window. On it sits a heavy, cream-colored envelope and a daily planner, flipped open.

I stumble towards it, my bare feet cold against the polished wood floor. The phantom pain of the rogue’s claw echoes in my side, a ghostly reminder of a death I feel like I just experienced seconds ago. I lean on the desk, my knuckles white, and read the looping script in my own handwriting on the planner.

The date is five years in the past. Five. Years.

And circled in bright red ink are the words: *Formal Ceremony. Accept Ethan’s Proposal.*

The air evacuates my lungs. It’s the day. The day it all began. The day I stood before the pack and gleefully accepted the proposal of the man who would one day leave me to die in a forest.

The memory of his cold eyes, of Lyra’s triumphant tears, of the mud and blood and utter desolation, is not a distant dream. It’s a fresh wound in my soul. I can still taste the blood.

I stare at my reflection again. The shock in my eyes is slowly, surely being replaced by something else. Something cold and hard and glinting like obsidian.

The ultimate betrayal. The ultimate humiliation. He called my death a tragedy.

A slow, dangerous smile spreads across my lips. A smile that doesn’t reach my eyes.

“A tragedy,” I whisper to the girl in the mirror, my voice a low promise. “No, Ethan. This is a gift.”

This time, I know all the players. I know all the moves. And this time, the board is mine. Revenge won’t be swift. It will be a symphony, and I will be the conductor. He wanted a gentle, compliant mate. He has no idea what a monster he has just woken up.