The Queen They Lost, Now His

Ember POV:

The car hummed smoothly beneath me, a stark contrast to the chaos of the storm outside. The heater was blasting, but I couldn't stop shivering.

Derek had thrown his trench coat over me. It was heavy, smelling of that intoxicating pine and ozone scent. Every time I inhaled, my wolf, Sera, purred. It was a foreign sensation. For ten years, she had been a silent lump of scar tissue. Now, she was stretching, basking in the proximity of our Mate.

My eyelids grew heavy. I drifted into the darkness of memory.

Flashback.

I was seven. I was crying because a boy pushed me in the mud.

"Who did it?" Ryker demanded. He was twelve, with a scraped knee and a fierce grin. "Tell me, Em. I'll bite him."

"You can't bite people, Ryker," I sobbed.

"I'm gonna be Alpha," he puffed out his chest. "I can bite anyone who hurts my sister. You're the princess. No one touches the princess."

The scene shifted. The fire. Smoke filling my lungs. The beam falling on my legs. The agony of my soul tearing apart.

Then, the hospital. Axel, holding my hand, his face wet with tears. "I'll fix you, Ember. I promise. I'll find a way to heal your wolf. We're a team."

The scene shifted again. Six years ago. The day they brought Willow home.

They had been searching for the daughter of the man who saved Ryker from a rogue attack. They found Willow in a dilapidated orphanage. She was 'fragile.' She was 'special.'

I remembered the day I found the truth. I was at a charity gala, hiding in the corner. I overheard the orphanage director, drunk on champagne, laughing to a friend.

"That Blackwood family is stupid rich. They took the girl, Willow. But the real daughter died of heart failure three years ago. Willow just stole her identity papers. Best con ever."

I had run home, my heart pounding. I had the director's voice recorded on my phone. I had the truth.

I burst into the living room. "Ryker! Axel! You have to listen!"

Willow was there. She saw my face. She saw the phone. She didn't panic. She just picked up the framed family photo-the last one with our parents-and smashed it on the floor.

"Ember!" she screamed. "Why would you do that?"

Ryker and Axel ran in. They saw the shattered glass. They saw me standing there.

"It wasn't me!" I cried, holding out the phone. "She's lying! She's not who she says she is! Listen to this!"

Axel slapped the phone out of my hand. It skidded across the floor, screen cracking.

"Enough of your lies!" Axel roared. "You're jealous because she's sick and you're not the center of attention anymore!"

"No, please, just listen-"

"You disgust me," Ryker said. He didn't yell. He just looked at me with cold, dead eyes. "Pick up the glass, Omega."

End Flashback.

I woke up with a gasp.

The car had stopped. We were in an underground garage. Concrete walls, bright lights.

Derek was already opening my door. He looked worried.

"Nightmare?" he asked.

"Memory," I corrected, my voice raspy.

He reached out to help me, but hesitated. "May I touch you? I know... I know I'm a stranger to you."

I looked at his large hand. A stranger? No. My soul knew him. My biology knew him.

"You're not a stranger," I whispered. "You're... him."

"I am," he vowed. "I am yours."

He lifted me out of the car. My knee had stopped bleeding, but it was stiff.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Safe house," Derek said. "Shadow Pack territory. My territory."

He carried me into an elevator. He didn't put me down until we were in a penthouse apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city.

He set me on a plush sofa. He knelt before me and began to unwrap the bloody bandage on my knee. His touch was clinical but incredibly gentle.

"Why were you there?" I asked, watching him work. "At my house."

Derek paused. He looked up, his gray eyes darkening.

"I was coming to reject the alliance treaty with Ryker," he said. "I felt... a pull. A need to be there. The Moon Goddess sent me."

He cleaned the wound. It stung, but the sparks from his skin dulled the pain.

"Ember," he said softly. "I know who you are. I know about your research. Project Silver Dawn."

I stiffened. "How?"

"Because I'm funding it," he said.

My jaw dropped.

"You have a brilliant mind," Derek said, applying a cooling gel to my scar. "Your paper on silver toxicity... it's revolutionary. I was coming to offer you a job personally, before I even knew you were my Mate."

He finished bandaging my leg. He stayed kneeling, his hands resting on my knees.

"But now," he said, his voice thick with emotion, "I offer you more. I offer you protection. I offer you a home. I offer you revenge, if you want it."

"I don't want revenge," I said, feeling the tears finally spill over. "I just want to disappear. I want them to realize I'm gone, and I want it to be too late."

Derek reached up and wiped a tear from my cheek. The electricity zapped us both, making his hand tremble.

"Then we will make you vanish," he promised. "Tomorrow, you enter the facility. No phones. No internet. A ghost for fifteen years."

"They're going to the Caribbean," I said, a bitter laugh escaping me. "They won't even know I'm gone for two weeks."

"They will know," Derek growled. "Because I sent them a parting gift."

"What gift?"

"The truth," Derek said. "My spies did a deep dive on Willow. We found receipts for Wolfsbane extract and high-grade scent-masking elixirs. That's how she fooled your brother's medical senses. She's been drugging herself to mimic a weak spiritual signature."

I closed my eyes. So Axel wasn't just incompetent. He was outplayed.

"They'll be on a plane," I said. "They won't open it until they get back."

"Good," Derek said darkly. "Let them have two weeks of happiness. Because when they come back to an empty house and open that box... the silence will destroy them."