20. Juno

20

JUNO

Something was wrong.

Juno felt like the conductor of a dreadful symphony, each of her bonds rippling with emotion one after another.

First was Miles. A sharp sense of horror like a dagger in the gut, followed by stress. The frantic, pacing stress borne from feeling helpless.

Then came Everett. He was an explosive storm of aggression. Brimstone and reckoning.

“What’s wrong?”

Juno looked up at Ollie’s sweet oblivious face. The poor dear had no idea his spontaneous afternoon picnic date wasn’t going to work out after all.

She held up her finger, mouthing one second as she called Isaac. The one pack member whose emotions she wasn’t privy to. Still, something told her everything had originated from him.

It was frustrating yet somewhat expected when it went straight to voicemail. Clearly he was on another call.

The who became apparent very quickly when Ari’s bloodthirsty need for vengeance lanced through her. Julian’s bond was the worst of them, filled with the guilt she had never wanted him to feel again.

Juno turned to Ollie. “I’m sure you’ll get a call from Isaac soon,” she said serenely.

Ollie jumped when his phone rang. Juno could hear the barely-controlled rage in Isaac’s voice even through the tiny speaker.

“Get Juno back to the house. Now.”

Bye bye demolishing a charcuterie board and sharing kisses in the sunshine.

As their packmates converged on the house one-by-one, Juno was soon cocooned in a very warm, slightly uncomfortable couch cuddle pile as they all insisted on being as close as possible to her.

“Just wait for Isaac,” was all they’d say when she asked them what the hell was going on. When their prime finally arrived home, he shook the walls with how hard he slammed the door.

“No call for me?” Juno asked mildly. The energy radiating from him was so different from her own. Like they’d turned up to the same event with wildly different interpretations of the dress code.

“I didn’t want to do it over the phone with you.” Some of the blackness in his gaze receded slightly as he stepped close to her. “I wanted everyone here for you,” he said, his thumb finding her cheek.

Juno sighed. “What’s he done, Isaac?” A flash of red caught her eye. She pulled his hand away from her face, turning it over to reveal bloodied knuckles. Her raised eyebrow spoke volumes.

“Oh I…punched a hole in my office wall.” Isaac at least had the sense to look a little embarrassed.

“I see. What did the wall do to deserve it?”

Isaac reached into his jacket. “It was there when this arrived,” he lashed out furiously, pulling a crumpled yellow envelope out and tossing it on the table. He turned as if he couldn’t bear to look at it for another second. Miles stood up, wrapping an arm around his alpha as he tried to calm him.

Juno looked at the envelope. So sad and misshapen. Yet the source of all their dread. “It’s my heat video, isn’t it?”

“You don’t have to look,” Ollie said, quietly. “You can just let him tell you about it when you’re ready.”

Before any of them could move, she snatched it from the middle of the table.

“Baby,” Everett pleaded as she stood up. Facing them like some twisted boardroom presentation.

Juno flicked the flap open and pulled a single folded piece of paper out. Just one? She looked in the envelope before shaking it.

“That’s it,” Isaac confirmed, roughly.

Juno cocked her head to the side. “Huh.”

She unfolded it and could feel every single one of her bonds tense up, almost strangling her with the pressure. She felt like the great emotional counterweight to all their distress and it was the first time she got a sense of what it truly meant to be a pack-bonded omega.

It was a screenshot of her. It was funny, she had never really seen her heat videos apart from that brief clip Vincent had been so delighted to share with her. Come to think of it, she didn’t even know how many they had.

Juno took in the black and white image. Clearly Andrew had been too cheap to spring for a colour printout. She was on her back. Naked, of course. Eyes closed, head thrown back and three bond marks visible on her bare neck. There was the edge of another pelvis pressed against hers, but nothing X-rated was visible.

She recognised Andrew’s scrawl over the top in heavy black marker.

HIDING BEHIND LAWYERS? I EXPECTED MORE, ISAAC.

Clearly he was unimpressed by the cease and desist letter he’d received. Juno absently noticed that he had managed to obscure her nipples with the word HIDING and she wasn’t sure why that was so funny.

Finally confronted with what she had feared for years and all she felt was a mild exasperation. Was she so deliriously upset that her brain had turned to humour as a last ditch coping mechanism? Or was she actually…ok?

Maybe it was because this wasn’t the threat of everyone seeing her naked and begging for the bites of her abusers. It was a taunt. Andrew was doing his best to rattle her cage and she would do anything to make sure he didn’t succeed.

“I look weird without the blonde and my tattoos, right?” Juno said, holding it up. Her pack flinched and anger shot through all her bonds. Whoops. She quickly turned it back around. “Almost didn’t recognise myself at first.” She traced the line of long dark hair spilled out on the sheets. “Shame I can’t go back to black. Blonde is a bitch to maintain.”

“Juno…” She could feel Julian’s careful concern.

Without a second thought, she grasped the edges of the image and ripped. The tension in the room heaved like a giant, swelling wave.

“It’s not worth it,” she said quietly. “Getting angry over this.”

“I promise you it is absolutely worth it.” Everett’s voice simmered with fury.

Juno looked around at her pack. “Don’t give him what he wants,” she told them firmly.

“And what’s that?” Ari’s cold wrath sizzled and smoked against the live wire of Everett’s anger.

“The satisfaction of knowing he’s under our skin.” Juno looked down at the ripped pages in her hand. She tore both in half again. “If he was going to release it, he wouldn’t have done this. I’m not saying he still won’t threaten to, in fact I’m absolutely sure he will. But this?” The offending image turned into confetti in her palms. “He’s just toying with us.”

None of them seemed to know what to do or feel with her declaration. There were a lot of pent-up emotions that had nowhere to go.

Juno had an idea. “Ollie and I were on our way to the botanical gardens before all this. But I think we need a pack date night.”

Isaac walked over to her with a bin, letting her dispose of Andrew’s message exactly where it belonged. “What did you have in mind?”