Chapter 2.

Amira’s POV

I wasn’t dreaming.

Brianna Lowell passed me her lip gloss during the third period like we had been friends since birth. She waved me over to her table at lunch and made sure everyone saw it.

I just stood there, with a tray of mashed potatoes and shame cooling in my trembling hands, blinking like I had entered a dream or a trap.

No one teased me that day, everyone simply looked at me with happy eyes. Finally, I was no longer a silly Omega, I was friends with the most popular girl in school.

It had been three whole days since my altercation with Brianna and since then no silly jokes about my orange hair, or my full hips, or being the “moonless mutt” bastard child of a maid. Instead, I caught compliments. Sweet compliments like.

“You are glowing, Dawson.”

“Did you lose weight?”

“Your scent’s different.”

Even the teachers looked at me like I belonged, like apart from my brain something else about me actually mattered in MMH.

I tried to tell myself it was nothing. A fluke. A dream I would wake up from curled on my mattress in our tiny attic flat, my mom humming while boiling tea for two.

But it wasn’t a dream. Because the weirdest thing of all has not happened yet.

That came in the fourth period of that day in school.

***

He sat in front of me, Declan Westwood.

Alpha heir of Westwood Military Pack. The boy with a face carved from moonstone and eyes like silver dust. The one almost every Luna candidate in school practiced their mating smile for.

He had never looked at me before.

Not even once.

But now?

Now, he kept looking over his shoulder. Eyes darted to me like something was burning behind his pupils. His nostrils flared once, twice and then a third time, and this time slower.

And in the middle of the lecture on Pack Law and History, he passed me a note.

I nearly fainted, my hands trembling as I held the folded note on my palms. His perfume and wolf scent lingered on the note like a baby to its mother’s nipple. I unfolded the note and I couldn’t believe the words that my eyes saw written on the paper.

“You smell like the moon. Like fire and frost. I have not been able to stop breathing you all day. Meet me at the south garden after the final bell. – D”

My hands trembled again, this time even more.

Was this a prank? Brianna’s doing? Maybe now that she and I were besties, she just had to match Declan and I.

Then again I thought it might be one of his silly pranks, so I folded the note and placed it on my desk and decided to forget about it.

But no. When I looked up, Declan wasn’t making goofy faces, he was watching me like I was… a sunrise he never expected to see.

My good Lord!

My heart stopped beating for a second, then continued.

***

When the final bell rang for the close of school, I didn’t tell anyone. I just went.

The garden was quiet. The roses had started to bloom again, white and red. To me it was a symbol of purity and power.

Declan stood there like he owned the sunlight, arms crossed, brows drawn tight, like a Greek god.

He turned when he heard me approach, and something in him seemed to relax, like I brought peace.

Like seeing me calm his chaos.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said softly, “If this is a joke…”

“It’s not,” he cut in, stepping forward. The pace of my breath increased with every step he took. “It’s… strange. But I can’t stop looking at you. And your scent… it’s changing. It’s not just Omega anymore.”

I blinked. “Wait. What?”

He hesitated, then lowered his voice. “I think… I think we are fated. Or something close to it. Because the connection I feel with you is unexplainable.”

My breath caught.

Fated? How?

He rubbed the back of his neck like he hated how that sounded. “I can’t explain it. It started a few days back, you might not have noticed, but I have been staring at you for days now. This pull. I should not feel it. But I do.”

My stomach flipped, I remembered him staring at me a couple of times but I just felt he only stared because I was with Brianna.

All I had ever wanted was to be seen. Just once. To matter. And now he was saying this? Then I felt insecure all of a sudden. ”Does this mean that he didn’t mind that I was an Omega, or about my body size, or about the fact that my own father didn’t want me, or even about my ginger hair?

“But I am nothing,” I whispered. “I am not even… my wolf hasn’t even… ”

“I know,” he said, cutting me off again, softer this time. “That’s what makes it weird.”

We stared at each other. Not moving. Not breathing.

He reached out slowly, brushed my wrist with his fingers.

A spark.

Real.

So real that the blood flowing in my veins felt like fire.

That night, I told my mom everything.

She sat in silence at our tiny kitchen table, her chipped mug of ginger tea untouched.

When I finished, she just looked at me. Long and quiet.

“Don’t trust them, Amira,” she said.

“Mom, he’s different. Finally these people have accepted me.”

“No, he’s not.” She said, firmer now. “They smile when they want something. They kneel when it suits them. But they never, ever forget what you are.”

I swallowed hard. “You don’t know him mum.”

“No.” She said, “But I know his world. I served it. I bled in it. Don’t forget I was a maid to a pureblood family in Vermont. I thought I was invisible. Then one night, I wasn’t. Your father asked me to marry him.”

My chest tightened, she had never told me everything. Only that my real father did not claim me. That we came back to Montgomery because there was nowhere else.

“I was raped.” She said, No emotion. Just the fact, everything seemed to have paused. “His family arranged a marriage between us to cover his crime. I was just an omega orphan with no one to fight for me, so when I discovered I was pregnant I agreed to marry him. And a few years later when he suddenly found his fated mate, he abandoned us and his family fired me. No references. No protection. Tossed me out like a used napkin, so I moved back to Montgomery Moonrise.”

Silence stretched. The air felt colder now.

“You are not broken.” She said, her eyes boring into mine. “But you were born in a broken world. Don’t let the glitter fool you.”

I nodded slowly.

But I did not sleep that night.

Because somewhere deep down, past the fear and the shame… I still wanted to believe that someone like Declan Westwood could really want someone like me.