Page 8 of Shattered and Saved

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, Ididwant 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’?”

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