Chapter 25 Mattaniah
Mattaniah
My feet sting before I've opened my eyes, the cuts from last night pulling against the bandages when I shift under the sheets.
Dominic is already gone. His side of the bed is cool but his scent lingers in the pillow, leather and smoke pressed into the cotton from years of sleeping in this exact spot.
Amos is still behind me, his arm draped over my waist, his breathing slow against the back of my neck.
The sting brings last night flooding back in sharp, glass-edged fragments.
My chest tightens at the memory and I press my face deeper into Dominic's pillow to hide from it. The scent helps. It always helps, which is embarrassing because three weeks ago I would have rather died than admit I was face-down in an Alpha's pillow on purpose.
"You're thinking too loud." Amos' voice is sleep-rough against my neck. His arm tightens around my waist and pulls me back against his chest. "I can feel it vibrating through the mattress."
"I'm processing."
"Then process quieter." His mouth presses against the spot behind my ear that makes my toes curl, and the contact sends warmth flooding through my belly despite everything. "Or process out loud. I'm a good listener before coffee."
"You two are actually bonded, not just dating or together, like... you two have actual bond marks."
Amos goes still behind me. His arm stays around my waist but the lazy warmth of half-sleep evaporates, replaced by something more alert. "You never mentioned that you saw anything."
"I didn’t really know how to? I’ve seen Dominic’s but yours… I haven’t done a lot of exploring." I roll over to face him and his expression confirms everything. "But now I know I'm right."
Amos exhales through his nose and a rueful smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "Walked right into that one."
"Where are they?" My hand reaches for the hem of his sleep shirt before the question is fully formed, my fingers finding the fabric and pushing it up. Amos catches my wrist but doesn't stop me, his grip loose enough that I can keep exploring if I choose to. I choose to.
His shirt rides up and I see it. The scar sits along his left ribs, a crescent of raised tissue about two inches long that has clearly been there for years.
The skin around it is smooth and healed, the edges soft with age, but the shape is unmistakable, Dominic's teeth pressed into Amos' body hard enough to leave a permanent mark in the exact spot where Dominic's hand rests when they stand close together.
The intimacy of touching it makes my face heat but I can't make myself pull away. My fingers trace the scar and Amos shivers under the contact, his breath catching, his body responding to the touch on his bond mark the way mine responds when Dominic's thumb finds my lower lip.
"Six years." Amos' voice has gone quiet. "He marked me six years ago in a hotel room in Montreal during his first rut after we admitted what this was."
"Six years." I trace the curve of the scar again and Amos' eyes flutter. "You've been hiding this for six years."
"We've been hiding everything for six years. The mark just happens to be the part that would get us disowned if Father saw it." His hand comes up and covers mine against his ribs, pressing my palm flat against the scar. "Now you've seen it."
"Where's his?" My eyes move to his face. "Where did you mark him?"
"Over his heart." Amos' smile carries something private. "Left side of his chest, right over the nipple. I'd show you but he's already downstairs and he'd kill me for revealing the location without his permission."
"Over his nipple." I press my lips together to keep from laughing and fail. "You bit Dominic Hale over the nipple."
"It seemed romantic at the time." Amos' ears go red. "In my defense, I was in the middle of an extremely intense bonding rut and my aim wasn't exactly precision-calibrated."
The laugh escapes me, loose and loud enough to surprise me. Amos watches me laugh and his expression shifts into something unguarded enough to make my throat close.
"Stop looking at me like that," I mutter, turning my face back into the pillow.
"Like what?"
"Like I'm something you're afraid to break."
"You're something I'm afraid to lose." He says it simply, and my throat tightens because I've heard Alphas say things like that before but never while looking at me the way Amos is looking at me right now. "There's a difference, Niah."
The bedroom door opens and Dominic walks in carrying two cups of coffee.
He's dressed for work already, his shirt buttoned to the collar, his sleeves not yet rolled.
His feet are in socks that cover the bandages Amos applied last night.
He takes in the scene, me with my hand up Amos' shirt pressed against his bond mark, Amos flushed to his ears, both of us looking guilty, and his eyebrow rises one precise millimeter.
"I've been gone for twelve minutes."
"He found the mark." Amos doesn't move my hand.
"Took him long enough." Dominic sets the coffees on the nightstand and sits on the edge of the bed beside me. His hand finds the back of my neck and squeezes, and the pressure sends a wave of calm through my nervous system that is frankly unfair. "How much did Amos tell you?"
"Six years. Montreal. Over your nipple." I keep my face in the pillow because looking at him while I say 'nipple' about his bonding mark feels like something that might get me killed. "He said you'd be mad that he told me the location."
"I'm not mad." Dominic's thumb traces the knob of my spine. "I'm going to make him pay for it later, which is different."
"You keep saying that word. Everything is different with you two, nothing is what it looks like, and I'm running out of categories.
" I press my palms against my eye sockets.
"I woke up this morning and I couldn't figure out where I fit.
If you're already bonded, already complete, then I'm the extra.
I've been the extra before and it broke me. "
"You're not an extra." Dominic's hand moves from my neck to my jaw, turning my face toward him. "You're not a toy. You're not the recreational accessory to a relationship that was already complete."
"Then what am I?"
"You're the piece we didn't know was missing.
" Amos says it from my other side. "Dominic and I are bonded.
We've been bonded for six years and I would die for him and he would burn the world for me and none of that changes because you're here.
What changes is that now there's someone else in the equation who makes both of us better.
You make Dominic gentle in ways I've never managed.
You make me brave enough to say things like this out loud.
And we give you something your mother never let you have. "
My eyes sting. I blink against the pillow and swallow hard because crying before coffee feels like a line I'm not ready to cross two mornings in a row.
"Drink your coffee." Dominic hands me a cup and the shift from emotional devastation to caffeine delivery is so aggressively Dominic that it makes me snort. "And get dressed. You're working from my office today."
"Your office."
"My office." He stands and adjusts his cuffs. "Father is going to be in a mood after last night and I'm not leaving you on the executive floor where he can get to you. Your laptop and files are already on the table by the window."
"You moved my stuff while I was sleeping?"
He snorts and shakes his head. "Amos messaged one of the new staff to move you. I supervised remotely." He heads for the door. "You have twenty minutes."
My brain keeps circling one stupid, dangerous thought: they actually want me. Not my usefulness, not my compliance, not whatever my mother trained me to offer. Just me.
"Stop thinking and drink your coffee," Amos says from beside me, and I comply.
Dominic's office becomes my workspace by nine fifteen.
The small table by the window already holds my laptop and the Southeast division files, arranged in the exact order I left them yesterday.
My chair has been swapped for a larger one with a cushion, and someone has draped a throw blanket across the back that smells like Dominic's closet.
I sit down and stare at the blanket for a full thirty seconds.
"That was already there," Dominic says from behind his desk without looking up from his monitor.
"That blanket was not already there. That blanket is from your bedroom closet and it smells like you and you put it on this chair on purpose."
"The office is cold. It's a practical solution to a temperature problem."
"You're feeding the nest again."
"I'm addressing a climate control issue." His pen taps against his desk. "Open your laptop, Mattaniah."
I open my laptop. The throw blanket ends up around my shoulders within ten minutes because the office is actually cold, and the warmth of it settles around my shoulders while I work. My focus sharpens instead of scattering.
By noon my nest has migrated. Amos' scarf appears on the back of my chair at ten thirty, delivered by Amos himself with the excuse that he was overheating.
Dominic's cardigan materializes on the arm of my chair at eleven, tossed there when he took a phone call and rolled his sleeves up.
A pillow from their bedroom appears on the window seat beside my table after Amos drops off lunch, positioned so casually I almost miss it.
"You two are doing this on purpose," I say over my sandwich.
"Doing what?" Amos asks, his expression so innocent it confirms everything.
"Seeding my workspace with your clothes." I gesture at the growing collection. "You're building me a satellite nest."
"We're maintaining a comfortable work environment for a valued team member." Dominic doesn't look up from his screen. "HR would approve."
"HR would have questions about why the valued team member's work environment smells like two Alphas' bedroom."
"HR can file a complaint." Dominic's mouth twitches. "In writing. Through the proper channels."
A stress spike rolls through me around two, sharp enough that I grip the edge of the table and breathe through it. Dominic's head lifts immediately. He's out of his chair and beside me before the cramp has fully crested, his hand on the back of my neck, the pressure grounding me through the wave.
"Breathe." His voice is low and close. "Just breathe through it, firefly."
The spike passes in under a minute with his hand on my neck. I slump forward and press my forehead against the table, my body wrung out, the slick panties doing their job beneath my work pants.
"I keep waiting to hate this," I mutter against the wood. "You moved me into your office and built me a nest and now you're standing over me with your hand on my neck."
"Do you?" Dominic's thumb pauses on my nape.
The honest answer sits in my throat for a few seconds before I let it out. "No. I don't hate it at all."
"Then stop fighting it." His thumb resumes its circle.
I close my eyes and let his hand stay on my neck. The throw blanket stays around my shoulders. Amos' scarf hangs on my chair. The nest grows around me one piece at a time, folding me into a pocket of their scent that my mother would call a cage and my body calls home.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I can hear my mother's voice calling this surrender.
"Shut up, Mom," I mutter under my breath, Dominic glancing up from his monitor but he doesn't ask.