1. Juno

1

JUNO

“I have a present for you.”

Well, of course Juno wanted it. She was an omega after all. But happiness was not a luxury she was afforded, especially when it didn’t come from one of her alphas.

She took a deep breath before her emotions spiked. Her body calmed while her mind focused on her alpha bonds. Three of them, unwanted parasites rooted deep and thorny within her. She visualised a fine gossamer cloth and laid it gently atop them. It would dull the connection in a way that was indecipherable to her alphas. A survival tactic she had learned long ago.

She opened her eyes slowly to find Julian waiting expectantly, one hand behind his back. Juno sighed, feigning indifference. “Are you just going to flip the bird at me?”

He looked scandalised. “I would never!” he swore, before a dextrous flick of his hand revealed several pens. “Fine-liners,” he grinned.

“You got my favourite kind!”

“0.1mm nib.”

“Stop, you didn’t.”

“In all the colours they had available. I think there’s fourteen?”

“I’m dying, Julian. Dying.”

“I also got you this box of 60 coloured pencils from this expensive-ass brand I can’t pronounce,” he finally added, pulling a slim red box out of his bag. “From Switzerland.”

Juno mimed stabbing herself in the chest with a sharp gasp. She let her body fall limp with her tongue lolling cartoonishly. Julian pulled out his phone and mimed typing on it as he recited how to revive an omega after death by pencils.

“That’s weird, it keeps auto-correcting to penis,” Julian complained and Juno had no chance of keeping up her death charade after that. She sat up on the edge of her seat eagerly waiting for him to slide them over.

It was probably sad that stationary brought her such joy but it did.

“I wanted to get these for you for a while,” he admitted shyly. “Shipping took forever.”

All pretence was pushed aside as Juno fought the urge to squeeze him with a grateful hug. She settled for clasping her hands to her chest. “Thank you, Julian. Just…thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do,” he replied, not meeting her eyes. A thousand unspoken words hung heavy between them.

Julian was a beta, slender and soft-spoken in comparison to her alphas. Only slightly taller than her, with thick dark hair that flopped over his forehead and a chin that had never seen a trace of stubble. There was absolutely nothing about him that an alpha would find threatening, which was why he was tasked with watching her in their absence.

Juno thought he was beautiful. The genuine care and what little affection he could safely show her only deepened her infatuation.

The most subtle pine scent wafted across as he leaned forward to place his gifts on the table between them. Beta scents were faint compared to her own omega perfume. They weren’t designed to call to her like an alpha’s was — yet with Julian, she wanted to bury her face in his neck and inhale. Transport herself to a forest floor staring up at the dappled light through the trees. Juno waited until he sat back before reaching out and taking them.

The first and only time Julian had ever touched her was when she had stumbled going down the stairs their first week together. He had reached out automatically to steady her. Her prime alpha picked up his scent on her arm when he got home and rewarded Julian with a bloody nose for it.

They never touched again.

Juno curled up into a ball, resting her drawing pad on her knees before flicking to a fresh page. It had also been from him. She began to scribble aimlessly, forming shapes and hoping they would speak to her. Her eyes met Julian’s over the top of the paper.

“Will you read to me again, please?”

With a gentle smile, Julian plucked a library copy of Roald Dahl’s Matilda from his bag, flicked to the bookmarked page and began to read. They had finished The Witches last week so Matilda seemed like an obvious follow-up. Juno usually requested books she had read when she was younger — he had even slogged through all of Twilight for her. They transported her to a time before.

Before alphas. Before her awakening.

She continued to sketch while letting Julian’s smooth voice wash over her. Tension slid from her body, feeling calm for the first time in days. Either of them could have suggested audiobooks at any time but neither did. This is how they usually passed their time together, a couple of chapters at a time (sometimes more if it was a particularly exciting bit). Afterward, they would settle into a companionable silence with the latest playlist Julian curated for her or a funny podcast he’d found. Sometimes Juno would draw a little cartoon version of him and surreptitiously slide it over. Today’s version of Julian was dressed like Santa.

The buzz of Julian’s phone was an unwelcome reality check.

“I…I have to go soon. They texted saying they’re on their way back.” Julian had the same look on his face he always did when he had to leave her. Pain. Guilt.

Juno gave him a wan smile. “Thank you again for the pens and pencils.”

“1 to 10?” Julian asked quietly.

This was how Julian checked in with her. 10 meant it was a fucking amazing gift of a day. 1 was a day that sliced off pieces of her dignity with every second.

“3 this morning.” She wished she could reach over and take his hand but she could never risk it. “But 7 after seeing you.”

“I’m an extra four?” he beamed. Juno loved the way his eyes disappeared into crinkles when he truly smiled.

“It was mostly the presents,” she teased, waving a pen at him. “You add two points at best.” He clutched his chest as if mortally wounded, exhaling noisily.

The remorse returned to his eyes and his smile dropped. “I wish everyday was a 10 for you.”

Juno hadn’t had a 10 day in two years. Not since she woke from her first heat, disoriented and aching, with a bleeding collar of bondmarks.

That was her first 1.

* * *

“God fucking dammit!”

Juno jumped violently at the savage roar. Her pen jerked, a jagged line running outside the confines of her outline. Fuck. Why are you wasting time drawing when you can’t even do it properly? A small voice that sounded suspiciously like her Chinese Mama scolded her. A sour pang of resentment rose up in her throat before she could quash it. Her shoulders tensed, knowing what was coming next.

“Do you have to be so fucking emo all the time, omega?” Vincent snarled. The alpha was sprawled across the couch, his face lit up by the flashing gunfire from his game.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

She was once again as serene and innocuous as the wildflowers she was drawing. Vincent muttered inaudibly before thankfully turned his attention back to the carnage on screen.

As an omega forcibly bonded to three alphas, she no longer had the luxury of private emotions.

A tall shadow loomed over her page and she continued to inhale deeply to try and stay calm. Unfortunately it also meant she drew in the prime alpha’s bittersweet scent. It was laced with pheromones designed to awaken every cell in her body. An involuntary shudder ran down her spine.

“Why do you have to go and ruin your flowers with that ugly skull?” Andrew sneered.

Juno looked down at her half-inked floral crown adorning the pencil outline of the skull. She liked to pair the beautiful and macabre in her work. Erotic and horror. Much like a trapped, heat-brained omega begging for the bite of her captors.

Maybe she would add a glossy spider crawling out of the skull’s mouth, legs all thin and spindly. Andrew hated spiders.

“I suppose it’s because I’m a garbage artist making garbage art,” Juno replied monotonously, continuing her shading.

Her third alpha, Eric, snorted from the kitchen. “At least she’s calm in the bond when she’s drawing that crap.”

Andrew, Vincent and Eric Zhao. Pack Zhao. Brothers, alphas and businessmen with quotation marks. They ran several illegal gambling dens in the city, feeding their loan shark business like an unscrupulous ouroboros snake. Not to mention several businesses that served as fronts to launder all the money.

So the fact that their acquisition of her two years ago was neither legal nor consensual wasn’t a moral stretch. To them and her father, Juno was merely a product in exchange for an agreed upon sum. A rare omega for the cancellation of an insurmountable gambling debt.

Because there was no physiological or psychological high for an alpha quite like the knot-clenching orgasm you could get from a heat-induced rut. And when a heat lasts for days and your bonded omega was a begging, slick-soaked, grasping mess throughout the whole thing — you got a lot of those orgasms. You could even get a facsimile of it outside of heats if she sniffed enough of your pheromones.

Dealing with her emotions the rest of the time through the bond was just the inconvenient side effect.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Vincent howled at the blood-spattered screen. “I fucking hit him you stupid fucking piece of shit game!”

Only her emotions were inconvenient, of course.

“And no more Call of Duty for you.” Andrew turned the console off and extricated the controller from Vincent’s grasp. Vincent’s retaliation quickly died as a news anchor’s voice cheerily filled the room.

“…scientists say that the first round of bond dissolution clinical trials have been successful, changing the concept of lifetime alpha and omega bonds as we know it. Joining us now is Dr. Anita Kokotis from the National Omega Commission.”

Every head whipped toward the screen.

“Turn it up.” Eric instructed coldly as Andrew pointed the remote at the TV. Vincent slid across the couch towards Juno, ignoring her flinch. He pulled her roughly against him and traced her ear with the tip of his nose. “Find the news interesting, omega?”

“Not at all,” Juno replied airily. “I wish I was watching you get sniped again.”

His grip on her shoulder grew painful and his teeth closed on her lobe. “Just for that, omega,” Vincent breathed. “You can choke on my cock later.”

Juno struggled not to voice several insults, mostly revolving around his cock size or lack thereof.

Shut up so you can listen.

“…have been seeing astonishing results between alpha and omega pairings who are both invested in and seeking the bond dissolution.”

She wanted to scream at the TV. Both invested? There was no way even one of Pack Zhao would let her go, let alone all three. Where did that leave omegas like her?

The news about the trials was coming at an already volatile time. Social media was currently lit up with a heated debate over bonds. Word had gotten out that the box office magnet Sawyer Callahan and the significantly younger omega actress Sage North had an unbalanced bond. It shattered their hashtag couple goals illusion big time. Rumour had it that he didn’t allow her to complete her side of the bond by bestowing her bite on him. The mental and emotional link between them had formed. But only her scent pheromones had changed to reflect that she was bonded.

The Alpha Brotherhood, an extremist group masquerading as lobbyists, were the loudest in defending Sawyer’s rights. He’s the head of their pack, it’s his right to make decisions as prime. Speculation was rife amongst omega advocacy groups that Sawyer had bonded Sage during her heat. It was the only time alphas could bypass an omega’s defence against non-consented bonds.

Juno understood it all too well. Bonds only formed if the omega receiving the bite was happy and content with their alpha. Heats were the most vulnerable time of an omega’s life. It was no wonder almost every unbonded omega was on heat suppressants.

“But we are hoping to also make headway with nonconsensual one-way bonds. That will be the next stage of our trials.”

The temperature in the room dropped several degrees. Juno felt Andrew and Eric close in behind her, their scents suffocating.

“And what has set you apart from the numerous other unsuccessful trials conducted here and overseas?”

“I firmly believe that it’s been our holistic approach, targeting not just what physiologically makes a bond but also the mental aspect. Subjects with a particularly strong mindset — grit, focus and determination — were the most successful.”

Andrew let out a bark of laughter, deflating the tension in the room instantly. “Did you hear that, Juno? A strong mindset.” He switched off the TV and flung the remote past her head, eliciting a sharp gasp as it barely missed striking her. Her pen dropped to the floor, her fingers trembling. His smug satisfaction was unmistakable in the bond. “Guess that rules you out, huh?”

Once the three of them had left the room, Juno reached down to pick up her pen. She focused hard on starting the shape of her spider so they could not feel the hope that sparked within her. She buried it deep, hidden from the alphas, where it burned and burned.