Mira's POV
Mira didn't sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw it again the older man's hand, open and fast, connecting with Kieran's face. The words after. Reject the human publicly. Or you are no son of mine.
The human.
That was her.
She lay on the thin mattress in the dark basement and stared at the ceiling until the other girls stirred and the day began without any light coming through to announce it.
Combat Training was first.
The room was enormous stone floors, high ceilings, the kind of space built for bodies to move fast and hit hard. Fifty students filled it, all of them shifting and stretching like wolves waking up. Mira stood at the back, in her grey Omega uniform, and felt every single one of them clock her presence.
The instructor a scarred woman with arms like tree trunks paired students off with one look each. She didn't pause on Mira. Didn't ask. Just pointed.
"You. And you."
Mira's partner was a Beta. Broad. Fast. He didn't even look nervous.
He shifted. Not all the way just enough. Enough that when he moved, he moved like something that wasn't entirely human anymore.
He threw her across the room in three seconds.
Mira hit the stone floor hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs. The room went quiet for a beat. Then someone laughed.
She got up.
It took a second to find her balance. Her ribs ached. Her vision blurred at the edges. But she stood, and she turned back toward the center of the room, and she didn't say a word.
The Beta came at her again. She went down again. Faster this time.
She got up again.
The third time he threw her, the instructor's eyes didn't move away from Mira. Not once. Something shifted in her expression — not pity. Something quieter. Something that looked almost like respect.
She didn't pair Mira again after that.
Storm Magic was worse.
Not because it hurt. Because it did absolutely nothing.
The class stood in a circle around a stone pedestal. Each student placed their hands on it, one at a time, and pulled something from the air sparks, wind, and light. Small things. Practice things. The pedestal responded to wolf energy like a match responds to a flame.
When Mira touched it, nothing happened.
Not a flicker. Not a whisper. The pedestal sat there, dead and blank under her hands, and every student in the room watched her fail in complete silence.
The professor — an older man with kind eyes that weren't kind right now simply said, "Next," and moved on.
But his gaze lingered on her for half a second longer than it should have.
Pack Dynamics was the one that cut deepest.
The professor a thin, sharp woman with silver streaks in her hair — spent the first ten minutes of class talking about hierarchy. Ranks. How packs work. How wolves find their place.
Then she pointed at Mira.
"This," she said, "is an example of what happens when something enters the system that doesn't belong. No scent. No rank. No wolf." She said it like she was reading from a textbook. Clinical. Cold. "In a functioning pack, this would be removed."
The room was dead silent.
Mira stared straight ahead. Didn't flinch. Didn't look away.
Then the professor asked a question something about dominance structures within a pack, how challengers establish their place. A detail. Obscure.
Mira answered it.
She didn't plan to. The words just came, pulled from her mother's journal, from pages she'd read by lamplight in an empty apartment. The answer was correct. Exactly correct.
The professor's face went very still.
She didn't acknowledge it. Didn't repeat the answer. Just turned away and kept teaching, faster now, like she wanted to move past the moment before anyone could think too hard about it.
But Mira saw the look. The one that said: that knowledge shouldn't be in your mouth.
The hallways between classes were their own kind of war.
Damon had been busy. By the time Mira walked to lunch, the rumor was everywhere whispered in corners, passed between friends like a gift. She stalked him back in the human world. She's obsessed. She's not right.
It was the same story he'd told in front of the principal. The same one that had gotten her expelled. Polished. Believable. Designed to make people feel sorry for him and disgusted by her.
It was working.
Celeste found her in one of the hallways. Not alone — never alone. She had an audience. Three girls from Claw House, watching with wide, sympathetic eyes.
"Mira." Celeste's voice was soft. Worried. The voice that had once made Mira feel safe. "Are you okay? I've been so worried about you."
She said it perfectly. Every word placed exactly where it needed to be. The concerned sister. The loyal friend. The one who tried.
Mira looked at her and saw the performance for what it was every syllable rehearsed, every expression calculated.
She also saw Celeste's hands.
They were shaking.
Just barely. Just enough for someone standing close to notice. The three Claw girls couldn't see it. But Mira could.
Still scared, Mira thought. Good.
She walked past without a word.
Lunch was the quietest battlefield she'd faced yet.
The cafeteria was loud hundreds of wolves eating, talking, laughing. The noise filled the room like water filling a tank. Mira carried her tray half-empty, because Omega portions were small — and looked for a place to sit.
Every table she passed, the gap closed.
Not dramatically. Not obviously. Just — students shifted. Shoulders turned. The empty chair that had been there a second ago suddenly wasn't. A hundred small movements that said the same thing without anyone having to say it out loud.
Not here. Not near you. Not today.
Mira found a table at the very edge of the room. Alone. She sat down, set her tray in front of her, and ate in silence.
The food tasted like nothing.
She was halfway through when a tray hit the table beside hers with a loud, deliberate clatter.
Mind if I join?
Zane dropped into the chair next to her like he owned it — easy, relaxed, completely unbothered by the fact that the entire cafeteria had just gone quiet. He had food piled high on his tray. He was already eating before he finished sitting down.
Every eye in the room was on him.
He didn't look up.
Mira watched the stares — the shock, the confusion, the calculation happening behind a hundred pairs of eyes. Zane Ironclaw. One of the most dangerous students in the academy. Sitting with the human in Omega grey. On purpose. In front of everyone.
"Why?" Mira asked. The same question she'd asked Lyra last night. But this time it was different. This time it mattered what the whole room heard.
Zane shrugged. Chewed. Swallowed.
"I like underdogs," he said. Simple. Casual. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then the corner of his mouth curled up just barely. "And you stabbed me. That earns respect."
Something in Mira's chest loosened. Just a fraction. Just enough to breathe.
She almost smiled.
Almost.
Because across the cafeteria far enough away to not be part of the conversation, close enough to see every single second of it Kieran Bloodmoon sat alone at his table.
He wasn't eating.
He was watching them. Watching Zane. Watching Mira. His jaw was set so tight she could see the muscle working beneath his skin from twenty tables away.
He didn't move. Didn't stand. Didn't come closer.
He just watched.
And Mira remembered the window. The slap. The ultimatum.
Reject the human publicly. Or you are no son of mine.
She understood now why he wasn't moving.
He couldn't.
After lunch, Mira walked to her locker alone.
The hallway was mostly empty the lunch period ending, students filtering back toward classrooms. She opened the metal door, reached for her things
And stopped.
Something was wrong.
The smell hit her first. Sharp. Metallic. Wrong in a way that made her stomach drop before her brain caught up.
She looked down.
A bird.
Small. Dead. Lying at the bottom of her locker like someone had placed it there carefully. Its neck was broken clean. Its eyes were still open.
Beneath it, a folded piece of paper.
Mira picked up the note with fingers that didn't shake. She unfolded it. Read it once. Twice.
Four words, written in dark ink, pressed hard into the page like whoever had written it wanted the words to cut.
Omegas who attract Alphas die.
And beneath that, smaller, quieter almost an afterthought:
Leave. Or we'll make you.
Mira stood in the empty hallway, the dead bird at her feet, and read the note one more time.
Then she folded it carefully. Put it in her pocket.
And kept walking.