Alpha’s Forbidden Sister

Anniversary Ashes

(Aurora's POV)

Happy Anniversary to me. Or rather, unhappy. Whatever. The sentiment was about as genuine as the smile plastered on my face as I adjusted the stupidly expensive silk napkin beside my plate. Anniversary dinner. Right. More like another night playing the invisible wife to the Lycan King who’d rather gnaw his own paw off than acknowledge my existence.

Across the ridiculously long, polished mahogany table, Ethan Stonecreek was doing his best impression of Mount Rushmore carved from ice. Blonde hair swept back, those arctic blue eyes fixed on some point beyond the window, probably mentally strategizing his next border skirmish or counting the ways he despised me. Twenty-four, built like a god of war, and radiating enough frost to give a polar bear the shivers. My husband. For a whole, miserable year.

"Wine, Luna?" Silas, the butler whose face was more creased than old leather, materialized beside me.

"Please, Silas," I murmured, forcing the smile wider. "The red." Anything to take the edge off the suffocating silence. My parents had insisted on this farce. ‘Appearances, Aurora! Think of the pack!’ As if the Stonecreek pack gave a single howl about whether Ethan deigned to eat dinner with his inconvenient wife. They saw me about as often as a blue moon – briefly, vaguely, and quickly forgotten.

I took a fortifying gulp of the wine, the rich berry notes doing little to soothe the familiar ache in my chest. Nineteen felt ancient sometimes. Ancient and utterly hollow. All I’d ever wanted was… well, something. Not this glorified slavery lined with indifference. My auburn hair felt heavy tonight, pinned up in a style Brielle would have sneered at as ‘trying too hard’. My sky-blue dress, chosen because it supposedly matched my eyes (according to the stylist my parents hired to make me ‘presentable’), felt like a costume. Five foot seven of curvy, unwanted obligation.

Ethan finally shifted, his gaze slicing towards me like a shard of ice. "You’re fidgeting."

"Apologies, my King," I said automatically, the meekness ingrained deep. Avoid conflict. Stay small. Don’t cause trouble. It was the survival mantra of my life under the Hudsons’ roof. Do anything to keep Brielle happy, keep the peace, fade into the wallpaper. Only, Brielle was supposedly dead. Killed in a rogue attack six months ago. The news had shattered me, the one person who shared my blood, even if she’d spent her twenty-one years making my life a special kind of hell with her blonde perfection and venomous tongue. Her death was the reason I was here, married off as a replacement bride to strengthen some obscure political tie my father craved. My real sister gone, and I was the consolation prize. Talk about winning the cosmic lottery.

A sharp rap on the dining room door shattered the brittle quiet. Ethan didn’t even blink. "Enter."

Marcus, Ethan’s head guard, stepped in, looking unusually… flustered? "My King, apologies for the interruption. There’s… a situation requiring your immediate attention. In your private study."

Ethan’s expression didn’t change, but a flicker of annoyance crossed his features. "Can it wait?"

Marcus shifted his weight. "It’s… delicate, Sire. Highly sensitive."

With a sigh that sounded like the crackle of breaking glaciers, Ethan pushed back his chair. He didn’t spare me a glance. "See that the Luna finishes her meal." An order, not a request. Then he was gone, Marcus trailing him like a shadow.

Alone. Again. I stared at the perfectly roasted pheasant on my plate, suddenly nauseous. Delicate? Sensitive? In Ethan’s world, that usually meant violence or strategy. Nothing that involved me. But a prickle of unease, sharp and cold, traced my spine. Something felt… off.

I picked at my food, the silence now oppressive. Minutes stretched. The grandfather clock in the hall ticked like a bomb counting down. The unease grew into a gnawing anxiety. What ‘situation’ demanded the King’s presence now? On our anniversary? Not that he cared.

Curiosity, that dangerous beast I usually kept chained, finally broke free. Silas had vanished. The corridor outside the dining room was deserted. Heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, I slipped out. My heels sank silently into the thick runner carpet as I approached Ethan’s private study, tucked away in the west wing. The heavy oak door was slightly ajar.

I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t. Trouble. Always trouble. But the pull was too strong. I edged closer, pressing myself flat against the cold stone wall beside the doorframe. Peeking through the crack felt like trespassing in a nightmare.

Ethan stood by the fireplace, his back rigid and pressed against him, arms wrapped around his neck, her face buried in his shoulder… was a woman. Blonde hair cascaded down her back. Expensive perfume I knew all too well drifted faintly to me.

Was that Brielle’s perfume?

My breath hitched, trapped in my throat. That was Impossible or had my werewolf senses gone bizarre

That’s when she lifted her head, turning slightly to murmur something against Ethan’s jaw. The firelight caught the side of her face. I could register the high cheekbones, a cruel curve to her lips and then I saw it. The small, crescent-shaped birthmark just below her left ear. Unique. Unmistakable.

Brielle.

Alive. Here. In my husband’s arms.

The world tilted violently. The expensive wine churned sourly in my stomach. The solid stone wall felt like it was dissolving beneath my fingertips. Dead? She wasn’t dead. They lied.

Rage, white-hot and terrifying, surged through the numbness, burning away the meekness. It warred with a grief so profound that it felt like my bones were cracking.

I was betrayed by my own parents, by my sister and by the husband forced upon me.

I didn’t remember moving. One second I was frozen by the door, the next I was stumbling back down the corridor, blind with tears that I refused to shed. They’d thrown me away like trash the moment their precious Brielle miraculously reappeared.

I was just a liability. What have I even done to deserve this?

I needed answers. Now.