Chapter 5: Cruel Future

Juno's POV

The pack meeting hall buzzed with nervous energy as Matthew and I walked in that evening. I felt eyes on me from every direction, heard the whispers that followed in our wake. My heightened senses picked up fragments of conversation - about Matthew and Isabelle on the balcony, how he'd been so far gone he'd torn her dress, how she'd moaned loud enough for half the party to hear.

Each detail was a fresh wound. Seraphine growled low in my mind, wanting to challenge every person who dared whisper about us.

During a break in the meeting, Freya approached me. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin sallow beneath her makeup. The scent of alcohol clung to her clothes, barely masked by expensive perfume.

"How are you holding up?" she asked, her voice raspy from years of drinking.

"I'm fine," I lied.

Freya gave me a knowing look. "It's okay not to be fine, you know. No one expects you to be."

I glanced around the room, noticing how the other women carefully avoided the topic of Matthew and Isabelle. I appreciated their attempt at tact, even as I smelled the wariness and sympathy in their scents. Some genuinely hoped this was just a phase that would pass. Others, like Scarlett and Freya, knew better.

"Does it get easier?" I asked Freya, keeping my voice low.

She let out a humorless laugh. "You want the truth? No. But you get braver."

"Quinn hasn't touched me in over a year," Freya continued, her fingers fidgeting with her necklace. "Our bed grew cold long before that. He sleeps in her room now."

"And you just... accept it?" I couldn't keep the disbelief from my voice.

"What choice do I have?" she countered. "An Alpha won't reject his fated mate - the risk of weakness is too great. And no one wants used goods, Juno. No wolf will challenge an Alpha for a woman he's marked and discarded."

Her words hit me like a physical blow. Seraphine, usually so quick to roar in defiance, fell silent. A chill ran down my spine. This was my future - watching Matthew fall deeper in love with Isabelle while I faded into the background.

"So what do you do?" I asked, desperate for some solution, some way out of this nightmare.

Freya's smile didn't reach her eyes. "I find comfort where I can. Discreetly, of course."

It took me a moment to understand what she meant. "You have affairs?"

"Quinn doesn't care who I fuck anymore," she shrugged. "As long as I don't embarrass him in public. It's... an arrangement."

Is that what my marriage would become? An "arrangement" where Matthew slept with Isabelle while I sought physical comfort elsewhere? The thought made me sick.

As the meeting reconvened, I watched Matthew from across the room, noticing the way he interacted with Alpha Charles, Isabelle's father. There was tension there, barely contained anger bubbling beneath the surface of civility. I could smell it in their scents - challenge.

A storm was coming.

"Alpha Matthew."

Charles's deep voice stopped us in the parking lot after the meeting. I felt Matthew stiffen beside me. The scent of aggression filled the air between the two Alphas.

"Not now, Alpha Charles," Matthew warned, his hand possessively at the my back.

"This can't wait." Charles's gaze flicked to me, contempt clear in his eyes. "You know you can't keep him, right? Not when my daughter is his fated mate."

The words stabbed into me like knives. Seraphine snarled, wanting to lunge at the other Alpha.

"Don't bring my wife into this," Matthew growled, stepping slightly in front of me.

Charles laughed, the sound harsh. "She's already in it. You made sure of that when you put your hands on my daughter at the party and then left her there."

"We didn't—"

"What? Fuck?" Charles spat. "Is that supposed to make it better? You were all over her and then you just walked away with her." He jerked his chin toward me.

Before Matthew could respond, Charles's fist connected with his jaw, the impact echoing in the empty parking lot. I should have been horrified, but my heart felt a twisted satisfaction. It was what I'd wanted to do myself.

"I spent years protecting Isabelle," Charles continued, his voice shaking with emotion. "She just finished her master's degree. She had options. Plans. Now what? She becomes one of your whores?"

"That's not—"

"Shut up," Charles hissed. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to take Isabelle from my pack because I can't stand to watch this. You're going to mark her because that's the only way she'll ever have any standing now that you've ruined her. And then the three of you can figure out your fucked-up arrangement."

"I can't reject Juno," Matthew said. "She means too much to me."

"And you can't reject Isabelle because it would weaken your wolf," Charles finished for him. "I know how this works. So does she." He nodded at me again. "You've put yourself in this position, and now you all have to live with it."

With that, he turned and walked away, leaving us standing in silence.

I walked to the car without a word, my body moving mechanically while my mind reeled. I felt numb, disconnected from myself. Even Seraphine seemed absent, no growls or whimpers reaching my consciousness.

I blinked back tears, refusing to let them fall. Charles had laid out our situation with brutal clarity. I would share my husband with another woman - a woman he was destined to be with. I would watch their love grow while mine withered. I would become like Freya, seeking solace in the arms of men who meant nothing to me while my mate gave his heart to someone else.

I couldn't even smell my own scent anymore, as if some essential part of me had already died. The future stretched before me, bleak and unforgiving, and for the first time since this nightmare began, I had no idea how I was going to survive it.