Chapter 10 Dominic
Dominic
Amos walks into my office carrying interdepartmental reports and the expression he wears when he's been holding something in all morning and has finally hit his limit.
I don't let him get to the desk. I'm across the room before he can set the files down, my hand catching the back of his neck and pulling him into a kiss that's half greeting and half grievance.
He makes a startled sound against my mouth and then softens into it, his free hand finding my hip while the reports crinkle between our chests.
"You're going to wrinkle the quarterly summaries," he murmurs.
"I don't care about the quarterly summaries." I keep him close with my forehead against his, breathing him in until my chest loosens. "I didn't get to see you last night. Father hijacked dinner, you vanished afterward, and Mattaniah has been flinching every time I walk past his desk all morning."
Amos pulls back enough to meet my eyes. The warmth in his expression fades, replaced by the focus he brings to problems he's been turning over in his head.
"I know, that's why I'm here." He sets the reports on my desk and perches on the edge, settling into the spot that used to annoy me and now just looks like where he belongs.
"I didn't want to have this conversation on the phone, and I haven't had a free minute until now. "
"You've been sitting on something since last night?"
"Since yesterday evening." He pushes his glasses up.
A flicker of irritation moves through me. "You're keeping secrets from me."
"No, but I think there's a whole picture we're missing and I wanted the pieces assembled before I brought it to you." He watches my face, trying to pick apart something while I continue. "Mattaniah had a heat spike yesterday at the office."
I go still.
"It wasn't a full heat, it was a spike that came on suddenly with no warning and completely outside his normal cycle.
" He folds his arms across his chest as he leans back a little.
"He let slip that he ended up in the bathroom on the fifteenth floor, and based on the scent I picked up in that corridor, it was bad. "
I picture Mattaniah alone in an office bathroom with his body turning on him in a building full of people who work for our father. A snarl sits at the back of my throat but I swallow it back far enough to get Amos to continue. "Then what happened?"
"Then nothing." Amos lets that word sit between us.
"He apparently cleaned himself up, changed into spare clothes because I noticed he wasn’t wearing what he was yesterday morning and went back to work and finished his day.
He didn't tell anyone and he didn't ask for help because he didn't have anyone's number to call.
His phone contacts are his mother, two old coworkers, and a rent-an-Alpha service. "
I absorb the fact that Mattaniah probably has a clinical stranger dispatched to handle his biology every three months, and the contrast between that arrangement and what happened between us pisses me off.
"You gave him our numbers, right?"
My mate nods, letting out a small sigh. "Last night, after I found him in the garden behind the east wing. He’d been having a full breakdown, like he’s been holding everything together by the skin of his teeth."
I turn to the window because I need a moment with my own face unobserved.
The picture I've been carrying of Mattaniah has a flaw in it.
I've been calculating him as responsive, an Omega whose walls come down at the first application of real pressure.
His walls do come down. I've watched it happen twice.
But the Omega I'm picturing wouldn't have gotten through that spike alone.
He wouldn't have cleaned himself up, changed his clothes, walked back to his desk, and sat there for hours without anyone knowing what happened.
An Omega who can do that while his body is in open revolt isn't soft the way I assumed.
He's been holding himself together on nothing for years, with no resources, no allies, and a mother who made sure he can't function without her.
The discipline that takes is something I recognize because I learned my own version of it from the same man currently testing Mattaniah's limits.
The difference is I learned mine as an Alpha heir with money and a mate who had my back. Mattaniah learned his from the bottom with nothing.
Which means the submission I've gotten from him costs him more than I calculated.
An Omega who can endure what he did yesterday and still show up for work the next morning isn't someone who submits because he's weak.
He's someone who has been refusing to kneel for anyone, and he chose to kneel for me.
"There's more," Amos says behind me. "When I found him in the garden, I could smell Father on him. Stronger than office proximity would explain. He wouldn't tell me what happened, but something went on before the spike hit."
I turn back to face Amos, my brow furrowing slightly. Father is moving faster than I thought he would and he’s been bolder than I expected. My focus shifts to my mate, my gaze dipping to his neck and his wrists from what I can beneath his shirt. "Has Father done anything to you?"
The question is familiar territory between us, a check I've been running since we were teenagers. Amos shakes his head.
"I barely exist when you're not around, you know that.
" A thin smile crosses his face without reaching his eyes.
"I'm useful to him as a lever against you and invisible otherwise.
Mattaniah doesn't have that buffer. He's at his cubicle most of the day but Father can call him whenever, and the suppressants aren't covering him anymore. "
"I noticed. His scent's been leaking through all morning."
"It's going to get worse. The spikes will come more often, the blockers will keep failing, and Father is going to catch every bit of it." Amos leans forward on the desk. "We need to move now, Dom."
He's right. The timeline I built three days ago is already dead, outpaced by biology that doesn't care about strategy.
"I'll handle it." I sit down and pull up my email, trying to ignore the emotions building in my chest. As much as I want to take Amos against the wall or drag his pretty ass home and bury myself in it, I can’t. "Go back to your office."
Amos visibly shudders, his scent sweetening slightly before he collects his reports, only pausing by the door. "Be careful with him today. He's running on fumes and fear."
"He's not fragile, Amos."
"No, he's not. That's exactly why you need to be careful." He leaves, and I sit with that for a moment before I start typing. The email is two lines, addressed to Mattaniah.
My office, 2pm, come alone.
The next three hours pass in meetings I don't need to attend while I run scenarios behind the public-facing part of my attention. By two o'clock I've dismissed my assistant, closed the blinds on the glass wall facing the corridor, and cleared the space beside my desk.
He knocks at exactly two and enters with the anxiety of someone who spent three hours deciding whether to show up.
He looks worse than he did this morning, the shadows beneath his eyes deeper and his skin pale beneath its warmth.
His scent is churning behind the blocker, pushing against the chemical suppression while something sour threads underneath.
He stands in front of my desk with his hands clasped behind his back, the perfect picture of an assistant awaiting instruction.
"Sit down, Mattaniah."
He reaches for the chair across from my desk.
"Not there." I nod toward the floor beside my chair. "Here."
His hand freezes on the chair back. I watch the collision happen across his features, the training that says obey meeting something underneath that pulls him toward the floor even as his mind resists.
"That's not appropriate."
"The door is closed and the blinds are drawn." I turn back to my computer and begin scrolling through a report, removing the pressure of being watched. "You've had a difficult few days and you don't need to perform right now."
The control I need right now isn’t something Mattaniah will understand, not yet, anyway.
However, I’m more curious to see if he’ll obey and even more curious to see if he’ll melt into this moment the way he melted the first night.
Maybe it was a fluke and his body just needed the touch.
Or maybe this is him, his Omega crying out for help beneath everything else.
The soft sound of his knees meeting the carpet sends a pulse through my chest. I give him a ten-count to settle before I glance down.
He's kneeling beside my chair with his hands in his lap and his head bowed, the rigid line of his shoulders already beginning to soften. I expected him to sit but not to kneel.
Has he done this before or is this just the most comfortable position?
His scent shifts as the haze thins and the coconut pushes through. His body is responding to the act of kneeling itself, submission triggering something that the suppressants can't fully block.
I work with one hand, scrolling through reports and typing notes, while the Omega beside me gradually stops fighting.
His breathing slows first. Then his shoulders drop, the tension draining in increments.
His head drifts toward the arm of my chair, hovering in the gap between wanting the contact and allowing it.
I shift my arm so my hand hangs off the armrest, my fingers close to his hair.
He takes a full minute to close the distance, his curls inching toward my fingertips in a negotiation between need and caution.
When they finally brush my hand, a tremor runs through him and his breath leaves in a long exhale.
My fingers settle into his hair and scratch gently against his scalp as his body shudders once and goes loose, his weight shifting until his temple rests against my thigh.