Chapter 8 Dominic
Dominic
The afternoon department meeting runs from two to three thirty, and I spend most of it watching my father's hand on Mattaniah's shoulder instead of the revenue projections on the screen.
It's a calculated touch. Father doesn't do anything without calculation, a trait I inherited and resent in equal measure. His palm rests against the back of Mattaniah's neck while the Omega stands beside his chair taking notes, his thumb pressing against the top knob of the spine.
To anyone else in the conference room it looks like a CEO keeping his assistant close or at the very least providing some comfort to his new stepson.
To me it looks like a man testing how much weight a shelf can bear before it buckles, measuring how much pressure it takes to make the posture curve inward, how long he can hold the contact before the scent shifts.
I recognize the technique because I've used versions of it myself. I've never had the stomach for the patience Father brings to this kind of work, though. He treats it like a hobby he can tinker with over weeks until the subject can't remember what it felt like to have boundaries.
Mattaniah stands perfectly still beneath the weight of Father's hand with his face arranged in blank compliance that would fool anyone who wasn't looking for the cracks.
His nostrils flare with each breath and his pen grip tightens every time Father's thumb shifts.
Fear is threading through his muted scent, pushing against whatever chemical wall he's put up today.
Then Father reaches across Mattaniah to grab a report from the table, and the Omega flinches. It's subtle, a micro-movement that no one else seems to catch, but it draws my gaze to his hands and what I see there makes my pen creak in my fist.
His knuckles are red. Pink lines are striped across the backs of both hands, the kind that come from repeated strikes to the same spot, and I know exactly what made those marks because I wore the same ones when I was twelve years old.
Father kept a metal ruler on his desk back then, too. He used it on me and Amos whenever our behavior fell short of his standards, rapping our knuckles until we learned to sit straight and speak when spoken to and move through his house without making a sound.
He stopped the day we presented as Alphas.
Hitting an Alpha son is a challenge, a declaration of dominance that invites retaliation, and Father is too strategic to provoke a confrontation he might not win.
But an Omega is different. An Omega's biology is wired to absorb correction from a dominant Alpha instead of fighting back, and Mattaniah's training must have made him even more susceptible.
Father isn't just correcting him. He's exploiting a biological response the Omega can't override, and his mother made damn sure he'd never even try.
My pen cracks. I ease my grip and set it down before anyone notices, redirecting my attention to the quarterly review. Amos is two seats to my left with his jaw tight, my mate watching Father's hand too.
The meeting grinds through another hour.
Father corrects Mattaniah's posture twice and the angle at which he holds his water glass once, each correction tossed at him without eye contact like an afterthought.
Mattaniah absorbs every one and adjusts immediately, his compliance seamless enough to look voluntary.
When the meeting ends, Mattaniah gathers the notes and follows Father out without looking at me. I give it three minutes, then find Amos in his office.
He's standing at the window with his arms crossed and his glasses pushed up into his hair, which means he's too agitated to care about seeing clearly. "Close the door," he says without turning around.
Had it been any other moment, I would make Amos pay for giving me a direct order. I close the door and lean against the frame. "How long has he been doing that?"
"The touching?" Amos turns to face me. "All day. Shoulder, back of the neck, lower back, always in contexts where it reads as authority rather than anything else."
"Did you see his knuckles?"
Amos' expression tightens. "I saw them this morning when he brought Father coffee. He kept tucking his hands against his thighs like he was trying to hide them."
"Father's using the ruler on him." I hate the memories that come with that fucking ruler. It’s probably even the same one.
"He used to do that to us, remember? Before we presented.
Same marks, same placement." I push off the doorframe and cross to him.
"He stopped hitting us the day we became Alphas because that would've been a challenge.
But Mattaniah can't challenge him. His biology won't let him, and whoever trained him made sure his mind won't either. "
"He's grooming him." Amos says it flat, without softening the word.
"Yes." I fit my hand against the back of Amos' neck where Father's hand sat against Mattaniah's an hour ago.
Amos leans into my touch immediately, his body softening, his chin tipping forward.
The difference between what this gesture means when I do it and what it means when Father does it hits me.
"He's already establishing physical contact in front of an audience.
That means he's confident enough to escalate. "
"I know." His voice is muffled against my collarbone. "I just need you to acknowledge that what we're doing isn't clean."
"No, it’s not. It's necessary." I press my thumb into the knot of tension at the base of his skull. "The Omega is ours, Amos. Father has the mother. Mattaniah is ours to deal with."
He pulls back enough to look at me with one eyebrow raised. "Ours?"
"You know what I mean."
"I know what you said." The corner of his mouth twitches. "I also know you came to bed last night tasting like slick and talking about him like he was the most interesting thing that's happened to you in years. The strategic timeline seems to be running behind the emotional one."
I kiss his forehead because he's right and I'd rather acknowledge that with my mouth than my words. "Get back to work." It’s a soft command layered beneath amusement but a command nonetheless.
By six, the executive floor has mostly emptied, Father having left an hour ago for a dinner meeting. I’m ecstatic that family dinners aren’t going to become the norm nor required after the first night Mattaniah and his mother came to the house.
The filing room beside Father's office is where I find Mattaniah after I pack up, kneeling on the floor surrounded by boxes of documents that haven't been touched in a decade.
His hair is escaping its bun in dark curls around his face, his jacket discarded over a chair, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows.
The overhead lights wash the color from his skin and make the shadows beneath his eyes look deeper than they should.
He doesn't hear me in the doorway as he quickly moves through the files with a competence that tells me this isn't the first time someone has buried him in busywork to keep him available after hours.
"That's going to take you all night."
He startles hard enough to scatter a stack of folders, his head snapping up, his scent spiking before he wrestles it flat within seconds. "Mr. Hale wants the quarterly archives reorganized by morning. I'm almost done."
"You're not close to done; there are six more boxes behind you." I step into the room and crouch beside him, my shoulder pressing against his as I reach for a misplaced document. "And my father left you here with twelve hours of work and no intention of paying you for it."
He stiffens at the contact but holds his ground. The pulse hammering in his throat tells me that staying costs him. "You don't have to help me." He murmurs, keeping his eyes on the files. "This is my job."
"This is busywork designed to keep you in the building alone after hours." I sort three files into their correct locations and reach for the next stack, positioning myself so our knees touch. "I noticed him touching you in the meeting today."
His hands go still.
"It's fine." His voice goes flat, the tone he seems to use around Father. It’s soft enough to mistake for submission but it’s really just obedience. "He's my employer, and he's allowed to direct me physically."
"He's your stepfather, and he's testing how far you'll let him go,” I grind out, setting the files down and facing him, close enough that my scent fills the space between us. "When you finally let go, it will be for us, not my fucking father."
His eyes snap to mine and the blankness cracks. Something moves behind his expression that he kills before it surfaces, but not before I catch the heat of it. "You're my brothers, and you're trouble."
Fuck, this little Omega gets more interesting every time we’re in the space.
"I'm more than trouble, firefly, and I'll be your worst nightmare if that's what it takes to wake you up.
" I hold his gaze. "We're not brothers. There's no shared blood between us.
Your mother is dating my father, and that makes us strangers who share a roof. "
"That doesn't make this okay," he whispers.
"No." Slowly, I reach toward him, my hand settling around his throat with my fingers resting against his pulse and my thumb finding the hollow beneath his jaw.
His pulse kicks faster against my palm, his lips parting as his eyelids flutter, instinct surging through the suppressants to meet my touch.
"Tell me, firefly. Do you want this Alpha to help take care of you again? "
His throat moves against my hand. "I can't."
"That's not what I asked."
His scent breaks through the suppressants and floods the filing room as I trace my thumb along his jaw, feeling the tremor that follows my touch.
When I reach his mouth, I don't stop. I trace the curve of his lower lip, feeling how soft it is, how it parts under the lightest pressure.
His breath catches and his eyes go liquid, and when I press forward, he opens his mouth and lets my thumb slide past his lips.
The sound he makes is barely audible, a tiny exhale of relief that cuts through every strategic thought in my head.
He closes his lips around my thumb and his whole body transforms. His shoulders drop and the rigid line of his spine dissolves.
His eyes close and the tension that has lived in his face since the foyer smooths away.
"You're precious." It comes out rougher than I plan. "Absolutely precious, firefly."
He sways toward me at the praise, seeking contact, and I could take this further because the door is closed and the floor is empty. But I pull my thumb from his mouth instead, and the whimper of protest takes more self-control to resist than I'd like to admit.
"Time to go home, Mattaniah."
He blinks at me, still half under, his lips wet. "I'm not done. Mr. Hale said by morning."
"And I wasn't asking." I stand and offer my hand. He takes it and I pull him to his feet, holding on a beat longer than necessary. "The files will be here tomorrow."
His gaze drops to his own shaking hands. "How did you..."
"You've been trembling since this morning and your pupils are uneven." I pick his jacket off the chair and hold it open, standing behind him close enough that my scent covers his back. "How many pills did you take today?"
He slides his arms in without answering.
"Two is your maximum. Promise me."
"You don't get to tell me what to do." The faintest edge enters his voice, a spark of resistance that warms me from the inside outside.
"I absolutely get to tell you what to do, and you like it when I do."
He turns to argue and finds me closer than he expected, our faces inches apart. Whatever retort he'd prepared dies when his gaze drops to my mouth and snaps back up.
"Dominic." Amos' voice comes from the doorway with the warmth of someone who's been watching long enough to enjoy himself. He crosses the room and settles behind me with his chin on my shoulder and his arms around my waist, fitting himself to my back with the ease of years of practice.
Mattaniah's expression shifts as he takes in what he's seeing, the casual intimacy of two people who belong to each other completely. I watch the Omega recalculate, Mattaniah slowly picking up that whatever exists between me and Amos isn't competition.
"We should get him home," Amos says to me with his eyes on Mattaniah. "He looks like he hasn't eaten since the sandwich I watched him pick at hours ago."
"I'm standing right here." Mattaniah's voice sharpens. "You can talk to me instead of about me."
Amos grins against my shoulder. "You're right, I'm sorry, Niah. Have you eaten?"
The nickname tightens Mattaniah's jaw, not with anger but with the effort of refusing to respond to the intimacy it carries. He shakes his head.
"Then let's fix that." Amos releases me and heads for the door. Mattaniah glances at me with a look full of questions he can't articulate, then follows Amos into the hallway.
The original game was to break my Father while making Mattaniah submit fully and completely to us, but I’m beginning to wonder if this new Omega will be more than just a passing toy.