2. Juno

2

JUNO

“May I enter your nest, omega?”

So formal and respectful for an alpha who found a perverted satisfaction in annoying her. Things were changing already, like she knew they would.

“No,” she said, pulling her quilt tighter around her shoulders.

“That’s fine,” Everett said without a trace of resentment. “I’m just gonna sit out here, ok?”

Juno pulled down the top of her cocoon just far enough to spy the large shape of Everett settling himself against the doorframe. She tugged it back up and rolled away, turning her back on him deliberately.

“Did I ever tell you the story of my parents’ break-up?” He shook his head, chuckling light-heartedly. “Not that I heard it from them, mind you,” he continued talking, unfazed by her silence. “Uncle Henrik told me about it years later and I couldn’t believe it. All my memories were of them being in love. Disgustingly so.”

Everett glanced at her to see if she had anything to say. Nothing. He continued his story, unbothered by her silence.

“So anyway, a year into dating — mind you, back then a year was a serious relationship — and out of nowhere, mum tells dad it’s over.” Everett made a little explosion sound effect. Juno snuck a peek and he was making a hand gesture mimicking a mushroom cloud.

“Dad’s devastated — as you would be, losing the love of your life. Especially for no reason he could see. One week later he runs into her at the pharmacy. Now at this stage, he’s just like fuck me. Can’t get over her if she’s popping up at places where he is. Meanwhile, she’s trying to get away like ‘ahh, he can’t see me!’”

Juno gave up the pretence that she wasn’t listening, completely dumbfounded as she stared at Everett act out scenes from his story with voices.

“Then Dad sees it. Her hair’s different. Not just different, but wrong. It was a wig, see.”

Juno gasped. “It wasn’t…?”

Everett shook his head hurriedly. “No, not the big C, thankfully. She had alopecia. Had always been careful about cleaning up what had fallen out. But it had gotten to the point where she couldn’t hide it anymore with styling or the right haircut.”

He rested his head back on the doorframe, looking wistful. “She thought he wouldn’t want her like that. So she left first, to save herself the heartbreak of hearing him reject her.”

He chuckled like it was the most preposterous thing in the world.

“I was born 9 months later. They got married while mum was fully pregnant with me. Like, I’m talking, everyone made jokes about her water breaking pregnant.” He gave her a playful look out of the corner of his eye. “Kinda nice that I was there for it though, don’t you think?”

His clean eucalyptus scent drifted over her. Fresh and clarifying, brushing away the cobwebs in her mind.

“Why are you telling me this?” Juno whispered.

Everett didn’t answer. After a pensive moment, he finally turned to her again.

“Can I come into your nest, baby?” He smiled.

Against her better judgement, she nodded. Everett stretched his large frame out from his spot by the door and settled himself next to her. Slid himself under her quilt and wrapped himself around her like he belonged there. His ocean blue eyes were so tender it was hard to hold his gaze.

“There’s something I’d like from you,” he said, stroking her hair off her face with gentle sweeps of his fingers. “Hear me out first, please?”

“What is it?” Her heart began beating wildly. She could feel its frenzied, erratic rhythm in her throat and fingertips.

“I want you to bite me.”

Juno bristled immediately. “You know I don’t want a—”

“No, you misunderstand,” Everett interrupted her gently. “Just you. Here.”

He took her hand and brought it up, laying her fingertips on his bared neck. “I changed my mind about that neck tattoo,” he said jokingly, but Juno could sense his intentions were anything but. Their first date argument over the most painful place to be tattooed seemed so long ago. “I don’t want anything here except your mark.”

He was serious, deathly serious now. An alpha asking for an unbalanced bond from an omega. It was unheard of. Unprecedented. There were reports of it of course — feral omegas bonding unwilling alphas. But it was akin to an urban myth, the butt of a joke. Everyone knew alpha bites were permanent (or used to be). Beta bites would fade after a year or two, more if the relationship remained strong. But a one-sided omega bite? The weakest of them all. Practically mosquito bites. What little research had been done on it said they faded within months. The bond so weak it was like two cans and a piece of string.

Just another reminder of how inferior her designation was.

“I need you to feel how much I want you here. How furious I am for you.” Everett pressed her fingers harder against his skin with an urgent desperation. “I don’t care that you don’t want a full bond. You already own me, Juno. You own me completely.”

Juno slid her hand down his neck towards his chest and he chased it, refusing to let her go. “I don’t have a clean slate, Everett,” she said quietly. “My past could hurt us all.”

“I don’t need a clean slate. I didn’t have one and you certainly didn’t care. Why should I?” His arm slid down her back, over the curve of her ass and gripped her inner thigh. He hoisted her up towards him and wrapped her leg over his hip. “You are my omega and you’re exactly the right amount of trouble for me.”

Juno snorted, her hand slipping underneath his shirt and feeling the taut muscles of his back. “I’m trouble, says the biggest ogre of them all,” she muttered, her resolve crumbling.

“I’ll be anything you want me to be, as long as I’m yours.”

Then he was kissing her. A serious, soul-bearing surrender of a kiss. Everett held his body over hers, trembling as he held himself back from melting into her entirely. Their breaths aligned, in and out like the rising tide. He was steady, inevitable as the sea but she was his moon, guiding him. His body responded to every touch, kiss and arch of her back like he belonged to her.

Her hands found the heavy bulge in his pants and he emitted a low sound, pressing his crotch into her palms. She could feel the beginnings of his knot at the base and her fingers traced along his thick shaft towards the sensitive tip.

“Please…”

His vulnerability shifted something inside her. She undressed them both with a dizzied urgency, clothes flying out of the nest as she craved the feel of his skin against hers. His boxers were last, and as she pulled the waistband down and wrapped her hand around his smooth cock, he fisted the sheets near her head and made an unholy sound.

Juno flipped them with a firm push on his shoulders, her hair falling down like a curtain shielding them from the rest of the world. She anchored him as he surged up to kiss her. His warm mouth left her lips and found her jaw, her neck. Between her breasts and took a detour to suck a peaked nipple between his lips. His hands spanned the entirety of her ass cheeks as he pulled her slick cunt on top of his face.

“Don’t hover,” Everett demanded, his voice muffled by her inner thigh. “Sit on my fucking face and ride me till you come.”

There was no room to be embarrassed. Not with him. He wanted her, all of her, in all the messy, beautiful, fucked up ways a man could want a woman.

And if he wanted to drown in her slick then she was going to let him.

Juno let the entire weight of her lower body go, smothering his oh fuck yes before his tongue slid into her cunt. He lapped eagerly at her, unable to decide whether he wanted to suck on her clit, tongue-fuck her clenching pussy or tease the rim of her asshole. Hot, wet sounds and hungry, gasping noises filled her nest.

Her hips started to move against him as she chased the sparking trail of her orgasm. He grasped her tighter, encouraging her to use him, ride him, fuck him. She came in a burst of light, letting out a thin scream as the pleasurable sensations ran electric through her body.

When the last of the tremors had left her system, Everett had drifted back up so their faces were level. Juno pulled him in for a fierce kiss. Once she saw that his eyes had fluttered closed, she reached between them, lined their bodies up and sank down on his broad cock.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” A deep, feral sound escaped his throat. “Do you have any idea what you fucking do to me?”

Everett thumped his head against the mattress, eyes rolling to the back of his head and his mouth curled in a savage snarl. He met each bounce of her ass cheeks with a snap of his hips, ramming his cock deep into her slick and saliva drenched pussy. Juno watched him lose himself in her and felt a primal possessiveness unfurl in her chest.

He was magnificent like this. Magnificent and mine, Juno thought.

Because he was, wasn’t he? Her scent was all over him, her sun-kissed golden-sweet peaches mingling with his summer saltwater spray. She was mesmerised by the strained column of his neck and the pounding pulse point underneath. Each liquid beat of his heart rang in her ears.

Claim him. Claim him. Claim him.

Beneath the roar lay a whisper. Untouched by hormones, pheromones and scent. Her pure, unadulterated truth.

Choose him.

Saliva pooled in her mouth and it all crystallised in that moment.

This alpha belonged to her.

Her head snapped forward and she bit down, breaking the skin and tasting his blood on her tongue.

“Take it, baby. Take everything. It’s yours.”

Did it work? Juno ran her tongue over the bite, feeling the little cuts she’d made in his neck. Everett shuddered beneath her, their bodies still as they hung suspended in the moment.

Then she felt it.

It was like a faint ripple of water flowing over her bare skin. There was no doubt that it was a part of her, but it also wasn’t her. A wanderer finding his home in her chest.

Juno stared down at Everett. His eyes smouldered with determination as he pushed his emotions to her through the weak bond. How much he cared for her. The tireless fight in him to defend her. Promises upon promises, vow upon vow, ghosting through her.

She blinked her eyes tight, feeling the hot prick of tears rise up. Everett rolled them both so he was on top, kissing away the droplets that fell onto her cheeks and stoking the slow burn of desire between them with purposeful, long strokes.

It was so clear to her what she needed to do next. One hand came up to cradle his face, smiling as she felt the roughness of his stubble. She traced the thin line of his mouth with delicate fingers before letting her wrist rest against his bottom lip, pulling it open slightly.

“Bite.”

His shock was like the sting of a tiny thorn. “No, I can’t do that to you.” He shook his head vehemently. “Not after everything. I wasn’t trying to coerce you by offering you a one-sided bond, I swear. I’ve already decided to wear teeth caps for your heat when I’m in rut and—”

“I want it,” Juno interrupted him gently. She felt a tear escape the corner of her eye as she let a crucial cornerstone of her protective wall crumble. “I want your bond. I want you.”

“I do this and that’s it,” Everett vowed. Juno could feel his alpha power rising. Instead of feeling afraid, it made every cell in her body light up. Waiting. Needing. “You’re it for me and I’ll never let you go.”

“That’s everything I want,” she whispered.

His large hand wrapped around her small wrist, holding it to his lips and kissing the spot she’d promised to him. Kept holding it as he fucked her slowly, intent on ensuring she was blissed out on another orgasm right at the moment he bonded her. Her desire felt two-fold, whispers of his bottomless need for her coming through the bond and building the pleasure in her belly. It didn’t take long before she was crying out I’m so close and he unleashed himself like a force of nature.

Her slickened pussy stretched as his knot slid deep, locking inside her as the heat of his cum filled her. Her cunt pulsed erratically as she came hard around him, pulling him deeper and milking load after load of cum from his heavy sac.

A primal growl left his lips and he silenced it by sinking his teeth into her wrist. Pain melded with pleasure and the fragile bond between them blazed to life, a lightning storm of sensations assailing her. Everything he felt for her magnified a hundredfold.

“I love you,” he purred over and over as he rained kisses on her eyes, lips, cheeks. “I love you. I love you.”

She found herself doing the same back, filling every gap between them with sweetness and affection. “I love you too.”

Finally, Juno pressed her nose into the curve of Everett’s neck and inhaled. She let out a bright, carefree laugh. “You got my peaches.”

It was a gift a fully bonded omega gave their alpha. A shared scent note declaring all the ways they were one. A sea breeze carrying the scent of the nearby eucalyptus gum and the first bite of a blush-ripe peach, juices dripping on the sand.

Juno kissed her first bonded alpha and felt free.