Chapter 24 Amos
Amos
I take the stairs by threes, trying to catch Dominic before he reaches the kitchen, but he’s much faster than I am.
It didn’t even occur to me that anything was wrong when the Omega wasn’t between us until a shriek echoed through the house.
And now, Mattaniah is in distress, Dominic responding to that signal with the full force of a territorial Alpha, and nothing I say is going to slow him down.
What I see through the kitchen doorway stops me in my tracks.
Shattered glass covers the tile floor in a wide spray.
Father threw the tumbler hard enough to leave a mark on the plaster, and Mattaniah is backed against the pantry door with glass in his hair and tears streaming down his face.
He's clutching a small cup of water against his chest with both hands, his whole body shaking, his scent so sour with fear it burns the back of my throat.
Father stands between him and the exit, swaying slightly, his face mottled with rage.
His hand is raised in the open palm I remember from years ago, which means that tonight’s drink isn’t the first. He’s been hiding this escalation, something I’m all too familiar with, every blocked move and every confrontation with Dominic pushing Father further into the bottle. Tonight it's spilling over.
"I said clean it up." Father's voice carries the particular cruelty of a drunk Alpha who has decided a cowering Omega is being defiant. "You broke my glass and you're going to clean it up on your hands and knees."
The spray pattern on the floor tells me Father threw it during one of his rages and the Omega walked in at exactly the wrong moment looking for water. But Father has already decided on a narrative and contradicting a drunk Alpha's version of events is a mistake I stopped making when I was twelve.
Dominic takes in the scene for approximately three seconds, his gaze moving from Mattaniah's bare feet to the glass on the floor to Father's raised hand. Then he crunches across the broken glass, reaching Mattaniah in four strides.
"Get the fuck away from him, Dominic." Father's voice drops into a growl that would make most Alphas hesitate.
Dominic twists around and snarls at him with a sound that comes from somewhere deeper than his throat, a full Alpha challenge that makes the air pressure change in the room.
Father actually steps back half a pace before his drunk pride catches up.
Dominic has already turned back to Mattaniah.
He pulls the Omega into his arms and lifts him against his chest in one motion, Mattaniah's legs wrapping around his waist on instinct, the cup of water falling to the floor.
"This shit might have worked on us but I'm not going to watch you torture someone else through the same thing." Dominic's voice carries a cold fury I've rarely heard from him. "You can try words tomorrow when you're sober enough to stand without swaying."
He starts for the door with Mattaniah locked against his chest. Behind us Father picks up another glass from the counter, the calculation working in his drunk eyes.
"Try it, Dad." Dominic says it without turning around, his voice hardening. "If I find one cut on my body, I'll make sure everyone at work knows who put it there." He keeps walking. "Come on, Amos."
Father's hand lowers, the glass cracking as he sets it down on the counter. I follow Dominic up the stairs without looking back, my eyes on the trembling Omega in his arms.
Mattaniah stays curled tight against Dominic's chest with his fingers digging into the Alpha's bare skin, his face pressed into Dominic's neck.
His feet are bleeding. Two cuts on his right sole where he must have shifted on the glass before Dominic reached him, the blood leaving small prints on the hardwood as Dominic carries him up the stairs.
Dominic carries him into our bedroom and lays him on my side of the bed before I climb in and wrap myself around the Omega from behind.
Mattaniah's body is rigid between us, his breathing coming in short hitching gasps.
Dominic's arm drapes over his waist, his hand finding the back of Mattaniah's neck, squeezing just enough to soften the Omega’s emotions.
Mattaniah's breathing slows within thirty seconds of both of us being in contact with him.
His shoulders drop first, then his spine uncurls.
His shaking tapers from violent tremors to fine shivers and then to stillness.
His scent shifts from the sour terror that filled the kitchen to something warmer.
I hold him and breathe against the back of his neck while his heart rate settles.
"Why didn’t you take me to my room?" Mattaniah's voice comes out small and muffled against Dominic's chest. "You just... brought me here. Like this is where I belong when something goes wrong."
Dominic's fingers find a shard of glass caught in Mattaniah's hair and carefully work it free, setting it on the nightstand.
"Because you needed to be here." His picks out a few more pieces before settling his hand on the back the Omega’s neck.
"And because this is where we bring things we want to protect. "
"But your father... he's going to make your lives hell for this. You know that. He's going to..."
"You know I don’t hate you, right, firefly?" Dominic says it bluntly enough to cut the spiral short. "I hate your mother. I hate what she did to you and what she planned for you. That doesn't extend to you. It has never extended to you."
Mattaniah curls into himself a little, his fingers tightening on Dominic's chest.
"My feet hurt." His voice comes out small, the adrenaline crash stripping the composure from his voice. I sit up enough to look at the soles of his feet, silently hating myself for not taking care of that first. Some part of me just needed to hold him.
"I'll get the first aid kit." I start to move, Mattaniah's hand shooting back and grabbing my wrist, his scent spiking with fresh panic.
"The bathroom is fifteen feet away and I'll be back in thirty seconds." I press my mouth against his knuckles before peeling his fingers free.
I grab the first aid kid along with a damp washcloth and return to the bed where Mattaniah has pressed himself so tightly against Dominic that there's no visible space between them.
I clean his feet at the end of the bed, dabbing the cuts with antiseptic while he hisses into Dominic's collarbone. The cuts are shallow which means no stitches, but he’ll still be a little sore tomorrow.
I press my lips against the arch of his right foot when I'm done and feel him shiver.
Settling back into position behind him, I wrap my arm around his waist. His fingers trace absent patterns on Dominic's chest while his brow furrows in the expression I've learned means he's processing something.
"You brought me here again." He says it quietly. "To your bed."
Dominic's hand shifts from his neck to his hair, scratching gently against his scalp. "Yes."
"You're both in the same bed and neither of you even questioned it.
" His head lifts enough that he can look at Dominic's face, then cranes to look at mine over his shoulder.
"I know you two are... I know you're together.
I've known since that night in the filing room when Amos put his chin on your shoulder.
But this is different. This isn't sex." He gestures at the bed, the shared pillows, the nightstands with items on both sides that clearly belong to two different people. "This is a home. You live together."
"Yes, Niah." I settle my chin on his shoulder from behind. "Dominic is my Alpha."
Mattaniah's eyes widen and his cheeks flush a deep red that spreads to his ears. He buries his face in his hands.
"Oh my god." His voice comes out muffled through his fingers.
"Oh my god, I've been sleeping with both of you this whole time and I never.
.. I mean I knew you were together but I didn't realize it. It didn’t click that those marks were.
.. he's your Alpha Alpha? The way an Alpha is an Omega's Alpha? "
"Exactly like that." I can't keep the amusement out of my voice.
"And I've been... with both of you... while you're..." He presses his hands harder against his face. "Every time you two looked at each other over my head, that wasn't just... you were actually..."
"Communicating?" Dominic's voice carries the edge of a smirk. "Yes."
"I thought I was imagining it." Mattaniah drops his hands and stares at the ceiling.
"I thought the coordinated sex thing was just Alpha instinct or something.
You're telling me you two have been in a relationship this entire time and I've been the third person in your bed and neither of you thought to formally mention that? "
"You seemed to be enjoying yourself." Dominic's thumb traces his cheekbone. "We didn't want to complicate things with labels while you were still adjusting."
"Adjusting." Mattaniah's voice goes flat with sarcasm. "I was adjusting to being fucked by my two stepbrothers who are also in a committed Alpha-Alpha relationship. That's what I was adjusting to. Without the relevant information."
"To be fair," I say against his shoulder, "the relevant information wouldn't have changed anything. Would you have said no?"
His mouth opens, closes and opens again as the flush on his face deepens. "That's not the point."
"It's exactly the point." Dominic pulls him closer. "You would have said yes regardless. The label doesn't change what this is."
"What is this, then?" Mattaniah looks between us, the question underneath the question visible in his eyes. "If Dominic is your Alpha, and I'm whatever I am to both of you, then what are we?"
"You're ours, Niah." I say it against the curve of his ear. "Whatever label you need for that, we'll figure it out. But you're ours, and tonight proved that we'll walk through broken glass for you."
"Literally." Mattaniah glances at Dominic's feet, which are bleeding from multiple cuts that the Alpha hasn't acknowledged or apparently noticed. "Dominic, your feet are shredded."
"I'm aware."
"You walked across broken glass in bare feet to pick me up."
"I'm aware of that too."
"That's the most insane and stupidly romantic thing anyone has ever done for me."
"Don't call me romantic." Dominic's voice carries a growl. "I'll deny it."
"You carried me up a flight of stairs with my legs around your waist."
"I carried you up a flight of stairs because you were an Omega standing barefoot in broken glass. There's a difference."
"There really isn't." Mattaniah's face crumples into something between laughter and tears. He presses his face into Dominic's chest again, his shoulders shaking, the sounds half-sob and half-laugh.
The shaking subsides and his breathing evens out, the longer he lies between us.
"I need to clean Dominic's feet," I say eventually. "And then we're all going to sleep, and tomorrow we're going to have a conversation about what happens next."
"What happens next with us?" Mattaniah asks.
"What happens next with Father." I press my lips against the back of his neck. "Because what Dominic did tonight drew a line, and Father doesn't let lines go unanswered."
Mattaniah's body tenses at the mention of Richard. Dominic's hand finds his nape again and squeezes, the tension draining as fast as it arrived.
"Tomorrow." Dominic says it with enough finality to close the conversation. "Tonight you're safe."
I clean Dominic's feet at the end of the bed with antiseptic and band-aids, the Alpha's jaw tightening with every dab of the washcloth. Mattaniah watches from the middle of the bed with his chin propped on his hands, his eyes tracking my movements.
"You take care of him." Mattaniah says it quietly. "He takes care of me, and you take care of him."
"Someone has to." I press a band-aid over the deepest cut. "He won't do it himself."
Dominic says nothing, but his hand reaches out and finds Mattaniah's ankle. His thumb tracing circles against the bone.
We rearrange ourselves in the bed, Mattaniah pulling the blanket up to his chin and tucking his bandaged feet between Dominic's calves for warmth. His hand reaches behind him and finds mine, threading our fingers together.