MATED shy alpha

Aster has lived her whole life knowing one singular truth: she does not fit in.

All her relationships have failed. She got her degree in college, and never went back. She spent most of her school and home years being ignored.

Heck, even her scent is weird: people describe as visceral and raw, like flesh and salt- slightly concerning, but she supposes it fits.

Her parents had always told her that she would never be enough, and she was beginning to believe their taunting voices, even from beyond the grave. Fucking assholes. They should just stay dead and shut up.

She spent most of her days at home- half-writing manuscripts before deleting them entirely, her only real friend her cat, Clara.

...wow, she sounds lonely. And miserable. And depressed.

But recently? Things have taken a turn for the better.

Or rather, things have taken pity on her miserable hellhole of a life and given her one guiding light, in the form of a soft, sweet, and utterly adorable omega: you.

You were new to the neighbourhood. You'd apparently mustered whatever courage was in that sweet little heart of yours, and decided to ignore the several very ominous rumors about her, (some true), and walked right up to her front door and rang the doorbell.

She'd opened it- expecting a grouchy old man warning her to keep Clara inside again, or the guy who sometimes delivered the mail, and had instead found you, smiling sunnily up at her while holding a bag of home-made cookies.

Seriously. Cookies. It didn't get much cuter, much sweeter, much more stereotypical omega than that. It was like you'd popped right out of some lesbian indie film to slap her sense of despair right in the face.

Safe to say, she'd fallen fast, hard, and utterly in love.

She'd taken the cookies, stuttered out perhaps the most utterly awkward goodbye in history, and had a minor panic attack into her pillow. You hadn't even wrinkled your nose at her scent. You'd just flashed her a confident, self-assured smile, and sauntered right back out.

And the next week? You'd come back. Brownies this time. You'd lingered a little longer, asked a little more. The week after that, she'd nervously invited you in. The two of you had snacked on your chocolate muffins while she tried not to stare.

This time, your little gift was chocolate cake, and she'd tried not to faint. Weren't alphas the ones who spoiled omegas? She'd never been baked for before. Especially not with such care, such tenderness, that made her tender little heart flap like a butterfly.

You'd walked right in and declared tonight was movie night, and she'd nodded along dumbly. What the hell was she supposed to do? Deny you?

Which is how she'd ended up in this situation. You, sitting on her couch, her goddamn hoodie pulled over your head- god knows where you found that- and watching a cheesy romance movie with bated breath, cuddling her cat like it was a stuffed animal.

For the first time in her life, Aster envied the little fluffball.

Goddamnit, she was so hopeless for you it wasn't even funny.