24. Juno

JUNO

Juno was playing chicken with Ari.

She had written a very professionally worded email stating she was experiencing a medical event and would be missing that week’s classes. Then he had the audacity to be thoughtful enough to text Ollie to check in on top of his perfunctory reply to her email. Ollie proceeded to blow all tact out of the water with his reply before Isaac or Everett got around to it. All good, Juno’s in heat. An understandably rushed response considering she was probably busy trying to sit on his dick.

She knew that he knew exactly why she had been away. And he must know that she knew that he knew.

Juno’s head hurt.

And they still had not made eye contact once in the last hour.

He dismissed the lecture and Juno stared down at her page. It was completely blank except for the headline she had underlined about fifty times. Productive. At least Ari made his slides available online. He seemed a little more frazzled today, like he had just rolled out of bed and straight into class. Extra scruffy, extra overgrown, extra rumpled. Why was that hot? Juno shook her head. Maybe some vestige of her heat hormones was still rattling around inside her. That had to be it.

Juno made her way out of the building and was hit by a frigid gust of wind as she opened the door.

“Shit, my jacket.”

It was still hanging uselessly off the back of her chair. She rushed back down the corridor and loped up two flights of stairs like a madwoman, hoping the door wouldn’t be locked. Huffing as she turned the corner, she let out a little excited squeak when she saw that it was still open.

“Yesss, I freaking made—oof!”

Juno caught the briefest glimpse of tan skin and eyes widened in shock before she slammed into a solid chest. Something had to give and it certainly wasn’t the tall skyscraper of an alpha, so Juno found herself off balance and heading inexorably towards the ground.

But instead of landing on hard linoleum, a strong arm wound its way around her waist. The air was punched from her lungs as she snapped back up, pressed safely against a shirt that smelled of tea and warm honey. Juno’s omega hindbrain urged her to bury her nose in it but her frontal lobe screamed at her that this would be a very, very dumb idea. So there she remained, frozen in the arms of her lecturer.

“Juno, are you ok?” Ari asked her urgently. Instead of releasing her, his belongings clattered to the floor beside him and his other arm enclosed her as well. She couldn’t think like this, not when she could feel his touch on her hips, the small of her back, against her stomach and breasts. It was too easy to imagine those arms gripping her tighter as he crushed their bodies together against the wall. Tasting him, consuming him. Panties pulled to one side and two long fingers sliding home while he swallowed her cries of pleasure.

Arousal flooded between her legs, her thick vanilla cream and peach perfume filling the small space between them. It blended with Ari’s own sharply mounting scent and she looked up at his blown pupils, harsh breaths and knew with 100% certainty that he had envisioned the exact same thing she had.

Rational thinking finally caught up with them both and they leapt away from each other, stammering apologies. Pretending that it felt right to be apart, and their bodies did not remember how it felt to hold each other.

“I-I forgot my…”

Ari leaned down, gracefully scooping her jacket up from the pile on the floor.

“I saw that you’d left it,” he said hesitantly, holding it open for her. Juno slid her arms through, not daring to look at him. She could feel the care he was showing in the way he smoothed the collar down behind her neck and adjusted her shoulders slightly.

She pulled the sides of the jacket tightly around herself. “Thanks,” she said, dumbly.

Then she ran.

It was idiotic because they were headed to the same place. She just needed a bit of distance to gather herself before their tute together, she told herself.

But as she pushed the heavy door of the building open, she couldn’t help lifting her collar to her nose. A lazy afternoon nap in her nest, woken with kisses along her neck and an aromatic mug of honey sweetened tea. Then the rough slide of a beard along her inner thighs, fingers intertwined with hers.

With a muttered curse, she snapped her head back and released the fabric, trying to breathe thinly to calm her racing heart.

* * *

Juno picked a seat closest to the open door, lamenting that the small class meant there was no back row she could try and set up some sort of book fort around. She didn’t even notice she had sat down next to Bodhi, the alpha who had hit on her the first week and then assiduously avoided from then on. He straightened up from his slouched position.

“So it finally happened, huh?” He let out a crude laugh. “Nice.”

Juno opened her notebook, flicking the pages much more aggressively than she needed to. “What are you talking about?” she said shortly, not looking at him.

He leaned in way too close and took a long, exaggerated sniff. Then he looked pointedly at where Ari was fiddling with his laptop cable, unaware. To Juno’s great horror, he threw a shaka and stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth at the same time. Bodhi’s antics unfortunately did not go unnoticed by Priya and Juno groaned internally, wondering how that was going to bite her in the ass later.

Juno pasted on a saccharine smile as she crumpled a blank page in her fist. “If you could never speak to me again, Bodhi, that would be great,” she said sweetly before throwing the paper ball at his head. She was immensely satisfied when he tried and failed to dodge it. Although she should be thanking him in a way. She had never been more unaroused in her life and it would be the trick to getting through this class.

It was a relief when it ended. Juno fled out the door without looking back. The semester would be over soon and Ari and his class would just be a distant memory (apart from a hopefully excellent grade, of course). Though her stomach did a sour little flip at the thought.

“Hey!”

That sounded like Priya. Guess the ass-biting was about to happen now. Juno swung her head around and saw the beta flouncing towards her. Juno knew it was ill-mannered but she responded with a waspish “What?” anyway. The girl had spent the entire class staring maniacally at Juno like she wanted to peel her skin off and wear it, so she didn’t deserve politeness.

Priya was seething, biting off each word with furiously clenched teeth. “I may be a beta but I’m not an idiot.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Juno interjected, casually inspecting her nails. Not the cleverest move as it riled Priya up even more but Juno could not find it in herself to care.

“I can smell him on you, you dumb omega bitch. You’re all the same entitled whores. Don’t you have a pack already?”

“I’m sorry, I’m the entitled one?” Juno asked her incredulously. “You know he’s our teacher, right?” God, she just wanted to be home annoying Everett in the kitchen, not being yelled at by a delusional beta coated in a migraine-inducing floral perfume.

Priya forged on, undeterred. “Ari is exactly the kind of man I should be with. Did you know he dated a beta for years? He left his pack in London when they found their omega. How does it feel to know that he wouldn’t want you anyway?” Her expression twisted into something cruel and ugly. “He doesn’t need a pack and he definitely doesn’t need an omega.” She spat her last word out like it was poison.

The sound of footsteps echoed through the corridor. Instead of backing off, Priya rushed forward crowding in Juno’s personal space.

“You’ll never understand him like I would,” Priya hissed at her.

Juno had had enough. Priya was too close and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with the insane, ranting woman. She held a firm hand in front of her to try and put some distance between them and stepped forward.

“You need to back off,” Juno demanded.

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked, flinching back as if Juno had struck her.

“What’s going on here?” The alpha roar was unmistakable.

Ari charged towards them, his steps stuttering as he surveyed the scene in front of him. Juno stared down at her outstretched hand, held out to stop Priya’s advance, and the beta who was shrinking back with her arms curled protectively around herself. She opened her mouth to explain but Priya was faster.

“She just attacked me out of nowhere, Ari.” Priya was doing a frighteningly convincing job of cowering. “S-she said that I should…that I should—”

“Should what, Priya?”

“Know my place as a beta,” Priya whispered, squeezing her eyes shut as a lone tear slid down her cheek.

If Juno wasn’t so frozen in horror she would have clapped at Priya’s impressive performance. Surely Ari wasn’t going to buy this? One glance at the alpha and her heart sank. It was like something clicked within him, a trigger Priya had found and pulled.

Aimed straight for her.

“I thought you were different, Juno.” The unfairness of it all made her feel sick and she couldn’t rationalise the alpha in front of her with the one who so attentively helped her with her jacket.

“No, she’s lying, that’s not—”

“Just because you’re an omega does not give you licence to antagonise others based on their designation. Consider this your first and only warning.”

He wasn’t going to even try to hear her side? Fine. He didn’t deserve it.

“I’m sorry, Priya. I was wrong,” she said grimly as her compassion drained from her. Priya swallowed as her mask slipped slightly. “I hope you get everything you wanted.”

She left so she didn’t have to hear Priya sinking her talons further into him.

* * *

Isaac was the first packmate she came across as she trudged into the house that evening. Sensing her turmoil immediately, he was in front of her in seconds. He gently lifted her bowed head, his thumb grazing her chin.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes…no.” Juno tore her face away from his far too discerning gaze. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered, petulantly.

From the way his brow raised, she knew he was only letting it go for now. He didn’t even make a comment about clutter when she let her bag fall off her shoulder and land on the floor with a loud thump. Instead, he ran his hands over her arms and Juno felt the tension slide from her body as his leather and rum scent washed over her.

“I have some news that I think will help.”

“Ollie used Everett’s fancy cast-iron skillet and then cleaned it wrong?”

“No, darling. Although I do like that apparently that’s all it would take to cheer you up.” He gave a rueful little chuckle before his expression grew serious. “I found Julian.”

Isaac caught her as her knees collapsed.