33. Ari

ARI

Juno and her alphas were all eerily quiet, staring at their tiles in deep concentration. Gin rummy using mahjong tiles with suited card faces — something Isaac had brought home after a business trip in Hong Kong — was apparently a staple of game night with the Rivera-Gunnarsson pack. The green and white blocks clicked rhythmically as each player adjusted their hand.

Ari started as a cold, wet sensation grazed his arm.

“Oh, sorry mate. Just trying to give you a beer.”

Isaac’s bonded was all smiles as he held the bottle out for him. Ari took it gingerly before trying to focus back on the game. He was supposed to be learning the rules so he could switch with whoever lost.

How the fuck am I here right now.

Miles clinked his bottle with Ari’s and took a long gulp as Ari dutifully matched him. Surely there were hidden cameras somewhere. His eyes instinctively made a beeline for the perfectly ordinary ceiling corners.

“The alphas are just on edge right now after everything,” Miles said discreetly out the corner of his mouth. “Once they see that Juno is fine it’ll be ok.”

Ari didn’t understand any of this. “How do you know?”

The beta levelled him a knowing look. “Please,” he scoffed. “There’s a reason those three are playing with Juno right now and Julian and I are not.” He used his bottle to point at the table. “Juno’s doing her best work right now.”

Everett had laid three Jacks down. As soon as he discarded a tile and ended his turn, Juno let out a squeal and did a happy little shimmy in her seat.

“I won!”

She clicked her final tile — the fourth Jack — next to Everett’s set.

“Fuck,” Everett swore, looking down at his hand.

“Oh no!” Ollie exclaimed, “Look how many tiles you have left.”

“I’m aware,” Everett said shortly.

“Wow, I’m not last for once,” Ollie continued, unwittingly rubbing salt in his wound.

Isaac just sat there with a bemused smile, turning his final tile over and over with his fingertips. There wasn’t really a need to tally up, especially when Everett grumpily revealed a pair of Kings he still had. Juno blew him a kiss from across the table and he responded by mouthing something Ari couldn’t catch from his perspective. The reaction from Juno was immediate, her mouth falling open as she squirmed in her seat. Everett rose, looking pleased with himself despite his loss, and offered his chair to Julian.

The mountainous alpha trudged over to the pair of them, picking up the snack and dip bowls along the way.

“Chip?”

Ari glanced at Miles, who had his brow raised as if to say ‘told you’. Ari thanked Everett before taking a bite.

“That dip is bloody good,” Ari said as he went for seconds. And then thirds.

Everett chuffed from deep in his chest. “Course it is. Juno and I made it.”

Ari watched him bring it over to the table to offer Juno some, his open affection for the omega softening his blunt features considerably. Juno gave him the most adorably appreciative doe eyes, thanking him with a little scritch of his tummy. Something in Ari’s chest twinged painfully like a phantom limb.

Ollie proceeded to lose the next round, even more spectacularly than Everett had lost his, and called on Miles to take his place. Ari held a fresh beer out for him, unconsciously holding his breath until Ollie trotted over to take the peace offering.

“So…I don’t like being angry at people I like,” Ollie began, after they’d sipped in silence for a few moments.

“Oh, I deserved it though,” Ari responded immediately. “100%.”

“Good, we agree then,” Ollie shot back. They exchanged timid smiles and drank some more, thankful to have something to occupy both their mouths and hands.

“Just…don’t hurt her again,” Ollie said quietly, scraping at the bottle label with his fingernail.

How could he when he would never see her again? Why would he ever be an issue when he was firmly in her past and they were her future? What was his life supposed to look like after he left tonight?

There were a lot of things Ari wanted to ask.

Instead he just inclined his head. “I won’t,” he promised.

Ollie’s genuine smile lightened the dead weight on his chest slightly. He gestured at the gin rummy game with his thumb. “Is it making sense yet?”

Isaac must’ve had bat-like hearing because he waved them over. “I’ll sit out this time,” he offered. “Let you and Julian play a few more rounds to get the hang of things.” Isaac’s hand brushed lingeringly along Julian’s shoulder as he stood up, causing the young beta’s ears to flame uncontrollably.

Juno gifted Ari a smile as he sat, eyes a little too bright from her drink being refreshed constantly by attentive pack members all night. He began to stack his tiles, trying not to focus on how intoxicating the perfume of a happy, fulfilled omega was. Plush, whipped and delicately sugared vanilla cream, the surface smooth and inviting just pleading for him to run his tongue along and—

“Ari, it’s your turn.”

“R-right, ok. Sorry.”

The hardest thing was how easy it all was. Easy to start teasing the other pack members for their awful hands. Easy to find delight in each other’s clever moves. Easy to laugh, easy to let go. It didn’t matter who sat across and beside him, whether Juno was there or not, there was an effortless connection between them all.

“Do you guys play any other games?” Ari asked as he helped shuffle the tiles ready for the next game.

“What, bored already?” Miles needled him.

“N-no, of course not. I meant—”

“Don’t tease him,” Juno chided from behind him, ruffling his hair. Fuck, that felt good. It took everything to stop himself leaning back and chasing more scratches like an eager pup.

“We kind of go through phases,” Ollie provided helpfully. “Classics like UNO and Pictionary. Sometimes we’ll try newer, more obscure games too.”

“There were those quiz-type games we did for a while too — with our phones and the TV,” Miles added, clicking his fingers.

“Would you ever do something like Mario Party?” Ari asked.

The last thing Ari expected was Miles and Ollie groaning, with the latter waving his arms frantically trying to shut him up.

“Don’t mention Mario Party,” Ollie hissed, leaning close so he could keep his voice down.

“Why not?” Ari whispered back.

“We don’t play Mario Party in this house, Ari.” Isaac’s booming voice echoed across the room, startling Ollie and Ari like misbehaving schoolchildren.

“You mean you don’t play Mario Party.” Everett’s footfalls were heavy as he strode over. “Cause you’re a goddamn fucking thief.”

Miles threw his hands up. “Here we go,” he said in a deeply resigned tone.

“For god’s sake, Everett, let it go,” Isaac said, massaging his temples.

“Don’t tell me to let it go, I will never let it go!” Everett hollered. “There were two other A.I. players yet you chose to steal MY fucking star!”

“And I fucking won, didn’t I?” Isaac roared back.

“The point of Mario Party isn’t to win, it’s to PARTY!” Everett punctuated the final word with a slice of his huge hand.

Juno was watching them with the most undisguised look of glee on her face, dining on the revelation that these two commanding alphas had one weakness — a long-held grudge over a pixelated star.

“How long has this argument been going on?” Ari asked Ollie out of the corner of his lips.

Ollie counted on his fingers, mouthing the numbers under his breath. “About 12 years,” he finally said.

The argument deflated as quickly as it started, the exact same way it always did according to Miles (they agreed to disagree). The rummy tiles were abandoned soon after as their Greek feast arrived. They had seven fat, overstuffed gyros and a mountain of oregano feta chips to contend with. Ari ate more than he should’ve and they all sat around afterward looking like slugs draped over the furniture, unable to do anything except complain about how they should’ve stopped eating sooner.

Juno made an offhand comment expressing an interest in VR gaming so of course several of them leapt up immediately to get the console set up. It’s how Ari found himself on the sofa alone with Julian.

“This is my first game night too.” The soft-spoken beta said shyly, blinking like he couldn’t believe he was here. “I’m having a lot of fun.”

Ari gave him a surprised look. “I didn’t realise how new you were to the pack.”

Julian ran a hand through his thick black hair. “Yeah, I still can’t believe it sometimes. Like look at all them and I’m just here like—” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand as if to indicate how woefully inadequate he was.

“Don’t do that,” Ari admonished him immediately. “Betas have a place in pack dynamics just as much as other designations.”

Julian ducked his head, embarrassed. “Well, thank you,” he replied almost imperceptibly. “I wasn’t expecting Isaac to give me a chance to be honest. I mean, Juno and I weren’t even anything back then. But I’m grateful. It would’ve been hard to lose Juno again.”

Ari’s brain was stalled on one part of Julian’s nervous babbling. “Back…then?”

Julian’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly like a goldfish as panic overtook him. “Um, I-er…”

“It’s ok, Julian.”

Juno had reappeared, laying a calming hand on his shoulder. He grasped her fingers, laying a kiss across her knuckles. They exchanged a few words, heads close and noses almost touching before Julian stood up, gave Ari a nod and left.

Ari was extremely conscious of the fact that this was the first time they had been alone together all evening. He smoothed the creases on his pants with damp palms. She sank into the armchair next to him, their knees on the verge of making contact.

“I met Julian through my old pack. They weren’t good alphas to say the least and we both suffered.” Juno’s eyes were far away as she absentmindedly traced circles on her neck. “Luckily, I got away and qualified for the bond dissolution trials at the National Omega Commission.”

She wasn’t tracing circles, Ari realised. She was tracing scars. Raised scars of old, viciously delivered bondmarks. The tattoos, her reaction to Priya’s attack. It all came together. A mosaic of trauma and adversity she had overcome, crystallising into the woman in front of him.

Bent not broken.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “I’m utter garbage for piling on top of what you’ve already been through.”

She leaned forward on her elbows, eyes luminescent and penetrating. “Don’t minimise what happened to you, Ari. You lost your entire family, everyone you loved. It’s no small thing.” She broke her gaze and Ari felt like he could breathe again. She continued haltingly as she picked unconsciously at the skin around her fingernails. “And with Priya…I judged her too, you know. She was rude so I was rude back. But it can’t be easy being a female beta either. With the balance of gender and designations the way they are in our world, many packs look like this one. I mean, why should I have so many amazing men to love and she can’t even find one? Someone can only feel unwanted or left behind so many times before it twists them into something ugly.” Juno looked up with a wistful expression on her face, and Ari couldn’t help staring at her inked neck. “It’s a shame she didn’t focus on what she did have rather than what she didn’t.”

“How…” Ari cleared his throat and began again. “How can you sympathise with her after what she did?”

Juno’s next words etched themselves on his very soul. “Anger is poison, Ari. Compassion is free.”

He wanted to surge over and pull her up into his arms. To feel her skin on his skin, breathe the same air as her, just for the chance that glimmer of her light would infuse him too. Brown sugar sweetness balancing all the places he was bitter.

Measured footsteps approached, and Ari sensed the arrival of the prime alpha before he saw him. Alphas didn’t test each other often anymore — it would make day to day life a bit too savage for modern sensibilities, baristas fighting customers, business meetings turning into brawls — but Ari had capitulated to Isaac almost instantaneously. Worse was that he was certain Isaac hadn’t even been trying to contest him.

It was why his blood froze when Isaac stopped directly behind Juno, staring him down like a sentinel.

“Thank you for joining us tonight, Ari.”

He knew a dismissal when he heard it.

Ari unfolded his tall body from the sofa and rose, letting Isaac and Juno escort him out. He was halfway down the steps when he paused, looking back over his shoulder at Juno and Isaac framed by the front door like a Baroque painting. The Queen and her Black Knight.

Look but don’t touch.

“You passed with flying colours by the way.”

Juno lifted a hand to her chest. “Thank you.”

Ari inclined his head respectfully. “You deserve it.”

They both knew he wasn’t talking about her grade.

A chill came over him as he walked away, a bittersweet depression numbing him from the inside out. He felt banished from his home all over again. Only this time, there was his beautiful scent-matched omega at the centre of it all. A sun who shone a light on the very best parts of the family who orbited her. He tumbled from her gravitational pull, icing over.

She was happy.

She was happy without him.