From Ashes To Flames Novels & Stories

The howling mountain wind tore through the ravine, carrying a freezing mist that clung to the skin like a shroud of wet ash. Outside the safehouse, the dense canopy of pine trees whipped violently against the gray sky, bending as if bowing to the massive diesel engine rumbling up the narrow access road. Headlights cut through the swirling fog, two twin beams of harsh, artificial white slashing across the timber walls before the heavy silhouette of an armored tactical personnel carrier ground to a halt fifty yards from the cabin.

Pieces of burning debris rained down like falling meteors, sizzling as they hit the water. My lungs burned. My strength was completely gone. I couldn't swim. I couldn't fight the heavy current pulling my dress toward the bottom. As my eyes slowly drifted closed, floating in the dark sea beneath the burning sky, a single, solitary thought echoed in my fading mind: Let them believe I died in the fire. Suddenly, two powerful, gloved arms broke through the burning surface above, plunging into the dark water and locking tightly around my waist, dragging my sinking body toward an approaching shadow in the deep.

I knew that my asthma was acting up. Years ago, I developed asthma after saving Owen from drowning. When we were in love, he always carried my inhaler. But now, seeing me like this, he only said, "Disgusting." I took my medicine and gradually regained my breath. When I returned to the villa, Luca Gray ran up to me. "Aunt Shannon, I dropped my toy in the water. Can you help me find it?" He tugged at my hand, leading me to the swimming pool.

"To rising from the ashes." Natalie clinked her glass gently. "To whatever comes next." And beneath the velvet sky, with the city once again at her feet, Natalie Evans finally felt the fire inside her burn not with rage, but with purpose.

Moonlight spilled through the floor-to-ceiling windows, stretching across the marble floor. I knelt on the balcony, applying a special herbal balm to the skin beneath my ribs—to the scars left by silver weapons thirteen years ago. They still ached. The scars always ached under the full moon, a cruel reminder of a past I fought to forget. "You're still using that balm." I didn't turn around. Kaelen's footsteps were loud on the cold marble. "I thought you'd forgotten that pain," he said. The anger was gone from his voice, replaced by something I couldn't quite place.

My hands trembled as I reached out—not for the shard, but for clarity, for something that could anchor me in the storm. Ashara’s golden eyes softened, almost pitying. “You cannot escape me, child. You are the continuation of what I began, the vessel through which my fire lives again. Deny it, and you will be ash. Accept it, and you will be me.” Her words dripped like molten iron, branding themselves across my soul. The fire twisted, coiling tighter, until every beat of my heart echoed with hers.

Rome’s fingertips brushed lightly against her arm, the feel of his soft warm breath against her forehead reminding her that she didn’t have to think about Henry or Parker or anyone else at the moment. Ella shifted so that she was on her side. He turned as well and found her lips with his, his tongue darting against hers as one hand tugged up her T-shirt so that he could better access her skin. As the kiss intensified, so did his roaming hands until her shirt was off and his mouth was moving lower and lower down her body. Thoughts of Juliet and her problems all faded away as Rome carried Ella away to another place, one where they were the only ones that existed, where their love was a passion

So, I could not try and track her down, I pulled out my phone and called Zac. “I need you to get back here now” I yelled into the phone. “On it” I heard tyres screeching and assumed that he was doing a u turn to come back to me. I was not safe here anymore. The only way to get rid of evidence was to burn the place down. Thankfully the place was not under my name, so nothing would come back to me. As I waited for Zac I doused the place in gasoline. I stood outside smoking a cig while waiting as soon as he pulled up I flicked my butt towards the house and then watched as the gasoline caught and the house I had tortured and killed so many women started to burn.

“The moon is perched high, and the path has been illuminated.” With a heavy heart, I gently lower my hand, allowing the flame to kiss the fragile bed of hay where Azra lies. It ignites with a fierce intensity, and Roman propels the boat upstream, guiding Azra on his last voyage. In mere moments, the flames consume the boat, illuminating the darkness as our alphas' form is reduced to nothing but ash.

Emberflame. It had not been an ordinary fire. It had been lineage-bound. Glimmering gold, sovereign-defined flame that answered only to blood and crown. It had lived in the marrow of their queen, threaded through her veins like molten inheritance. When she fell—when he had watched her flame gutter and collapse into ash beneath a sky choked with cinders—the Emberflame had died with her. Not weakened. Not scattered. Extinguished entirely. He had felt that ending in his bones, a severing that rippled through the battlefield like the snapping of a divine tether.