Chapter 28 Amos
Amos
The third spike hits Mattaniah in the afternoon and drops him to his knees beside the nest chair in Dominic's office.
I'm across the room before his knees hit the carpet, my hand on his back.
His body curls forward and a cramp rolls through him hard enough that I can feel the muscles seize under my palm.
His scent punches through the blocker with a sweetness that fills the office in seconds, thicker than this morning and richer.
"Breathe, Niah." I rub circles between his shoulder blades while he pants through the wave. "Just breathe through it."
"I'm trying." His voice comes out through gritted teeth, his forehead pressed against the carpet. "This is the third one today, Amos. Three in six hours. That's not normal."
He's right that it's not normal. The spikes have been escalating for weeks, coming closer together and hitting harder each time. But the frequency today has jumped past anything we've seen. The scent rolling off him right now is telling my body something my brain hasn't caught up to yet.
The spike passes in four minutes. Mattaniah sits back against the nest chair and presses his palms against his eyes, his shirt damp with sweat, his breathing still ragged.
"I'm fine," he says before I can ask. "Just give me a minute."
I give him a minute and use it to pull out my phone and text Dominic, who left thirty minutes ago to deal with the aftermath of the boardroom evacuation.
His spikes are less than 5 hours apart now. Third one just hit. His scent has changed.
Dominic's response comes in twelve seconds. Changed how?
I look at Mattaniah, who has pulled the throw blanket down from the chair and wrapped it around his shoulders. His eyes are closed and his lips are moving, counting his own breaths.
I text back that his scent is deeper and richer, all the indicators that his heat is a week away at most.
The three dots appear and disappear twice before Dominic's reply comes through. Stay put. I’m coming to you.
Dominic is through the door four minutes later, his sleeves still rolled from whatever he was doing in the boardroom. He closes the door, his nostrils flaring at Mattaniah's scent, his pupils dilating before he locks it down.
"Sit him on the couch." Dominic's voice is clipped in the way it gets when he's running calculations. "Then close the door."
I settle Mattaniah on the couch with the throw blanket still wrapped around him and close the door. Mattaniah curls against the arm of the couch and pulls his knees up, his eyes already drooping.
"He's going into heat." I keep my voice low enough that Mattaniah can't hear me from the couch.
"A real one. Not a spike, not a pre-heat episode.
His body is gearing up for a full suppression-breakthrough heat and based on the frequency of the spikes today I'd estimate we have around a week before it hits. "
Dominic's shoulders tense as his eyes move to Mattaniah on the couch, then back to me. "Not here."
"No. Not here." I sit on the edge of his desk and lower my voice further.
"A breakthrough heat after seven years of suppression is going to be violent.
His body has seven years of cycles to compensate for and the first unsuppressed heat is going to hit him harder than anything he's experienced. He’s had heats before but nothing without the blockers fully in his system.
He'll need both of us for the duration, which means we can't be in the house where Father can walk in. "
"The apartment." Dominic says it without hesitation. The apartment is the two-bedroom unit we've maintained downtown since college, the one Father doesn't know about, the bolt-hole we've kept for exactly this kind of emergency. "It's stocked?"
"Heat supplies, blockers for us, food, water, medical kit." I run through the inventory mentally. "I refreshed the supplies a little ago but the bed is the king from the old place and the sheets are clean."
"Cover story for Father?"
"Business trip. Overnight conference in Philadelphia.
I'll have my assistant book the hotel reservations as a paper trail.
" I pull up my calendar on my phone. "If we leave tonight we can have him settled at the apartment before midnight.
The heat won't hit full force until tomorrow at the earliest, which gives us time to prep the space. "
Dominic stands and crosses to the window, his hands in his pockets, his gaze fixed on the city below. His scent has shifted from the controlled leather of his work persona into something darker, the possessive edge that surfaces when Mattaniah is vulnerable and Father is a threat.
"Father hasn't left his office since the boardroom." I watch Dominic's reflection in the glass. "His assistant says he's been drinking since two. He hasn't made a single call or sent a single email."
"He's planning." Dominic says it to the window.
"He's always planning. But the drinking tells me his plans are emotional right now, not strategic.
A strategic Father is dangerous. An emotional Father is unpredictable.
" I set my phone down. "Either way, we need Mattaniah out of the house before Father's next move, and we need him out before his pre-heat scent gets strong enough to carry through the walls. "
"If Father catches that scent, he'll know that Mattaniah is headed toward a full-blown heat.
" Dominic turns from the window and his expression is the one I've learned to read as barely-contained fury wearing a mask of calm.
"An Omega in heat in his own house, unbonded, unprotected. He'll try to claim it."
"Then we don't let him catch it. We move tonight."
Dominic crosses to the couch where Mattaniah has fallen asleep with his face pressed into the throw blanket and his legs curled beneath him. He crouches beside the couch and brushes a curl off the Omega's forehead.
"Firefly." He says it quietly. "Wake up."
Mattaniah stirs. His eyes open, glassy with exhaustion, and find Dominic's face. "What time is it?"
"Almost five." Dominic keeps his hand on Mattaniah's forehead. "We need to talk about what's happening to your body."
"The spikes." Mattaniah pushes himself upright and the blanket falls to his lap. "They're getting worse. I know."
"They're getting worse because they're not spikes anymore.
" I sit on the arm of the couch beside him.
"Your body is transitioning into pre-heat, Niah.
The frequency and intensity of your spikes have changed, and so has your scent.
Your suppressors have been failing for weeks and your system has reached the point where it's not going to accept the blockers anymore. "
His face goes pale. "Heat. You mean an actual heat. Like a full..."
"A full heat. Your first “real” one in seven years." I keep my voice steady. "It's going to be intense because of the suppression backlog, and it's going to last longer than a normal cycle."
"How long?"
"Three to five days. Potentially longer given the duration of suppression."
"Three to five days." He repeats it, his voice hollow. "I can't be in heat for three to five days in the house. Richard is... if he smells me in heat he'll..."
"We know." Dominic's hand moves from his forehead to the back of his neck and squeezes. "That's why we're leaving."
"Leaving where?"
"We have an apartment." Dominic glances at me and I nod. "Downtown. Father doesn't know about it. It's been ours since college and we've kept it off every record he has access to."
"You have a secret apartment." Mattaniah blinks. "Of course you have a secret apartment. Why wouldn't you have a secret apartment."
"Amos is going to pack a bag for you." Dominic stands and pulls Mattaniah to his feet. "We're going to walk out of this building tonight looking like we're headed to a conference in Philadelphia. By midnight you'll be somewhere safe where your heat can run its course."
"What if he notices I'm gone?"
"He will notice." Dominic pulls the throw blanket off his lap and wraps it around Mattaniah's shoulders. "He'll also notice that Amos and I are gone at the same time, and he'll draw the right conclusions."
"And you're okay with that?"
"I'm okay with you being safe." Dominic's hand cups his jaw and tilts his face up. "Everything else is a problem for after the heat."
Mattaniah's eyes search Dominic's face for a long moment. His hand comes up and covers Dominic's against his jaw.
"Both of you?" His voice is quiet. "You'll both be there?"
"We'll be there the entire time." I rest my hand on his lower back. "We're not leaving you alone for this, Niah."
"Okay." He swallows hard and his fingers tighten on Dominic's hand. "Okay. When do we go?"
"Tonight, as soon as the building clears." Dominic releases his jaw.
The next two hours are logistics. I book the Philadelphia hotel under the company travel account.
The confirmation goes to Dominic's assistant with instructions to hold his calls for a week.
Dominic texts the housekeeper that we'll be traveling and to inform Father that dinner will be served for two.
I slip into the house through the side entrance while Father is in his study and pack bags for all three of us.
In Mattaniah's room I grab his blocker bottle and the nest items from his closet because he's going to need them at the apartment.
I fill the bag with the cardigan, the scarf, the sweaters, the stolen socks, everything he's collected.
Mattaniah dozes on Dominic's office couch while we work, waking every ninety minutes when another spike rolls through him.
Each one is shorter than the last but more intense, his body compressing the cycles as the heat approaches.
His scent fills the office until every surface carries it.
The warm coconut has deepened into something primal that makes both Dominic and me shift in our chairs.
At seven thirty the building empties. Dominic carries the bags to the parking garage while I walk Mattaniah to the elevator with my arm around his waist. He's steady enough to walk on his own but his body gravitates toward mine with every step. His nose finds the collar of my shirt and stays there.
"I'm scared." He says it into my collar as the elevator descends. "I've never had a real heat. It was always more of a clinical thing like clockwork and I used a rent-an-Alpha. I don't know what it's going to feel like or what my body is going to do."
"You're going to be safe." I press my mouth against the top of his head. "Dominic and I have handled things like this before. We know what your body is going to need and we're going to make sure you have it."
"You've handled heats? Whose heats?"
"Each other's ruts." The elevator opens onto the parking garage. "Ruts are the Alpha equivalent. They're not identical but they're close enough that we understand the mechanics."
He lets out a shaky laugh against my shirt. "You make it sound like we're changing a tire."
"The hard part is trusting your body enough to let it happen without fighting it."
"My whole life has been about fighting it."
"I know." I open the car door for him and he slides into the back seat. "That's what we're here for."
Dominic pulls the car out of the garage and onto the freeway heading downtown.
Mattaniah stretches across the back seat with his head on the duffel bag full of nest items, his eyes closed, his hand reaching forward between the seats until his fingers find mine on the center console. His grip is tight and his palm is damp.
I hold his hand and watch the city lights blur past the window, running through the apartment prep list for the fourth time. The list cycles through my head on repeat: sheets, water, protein bars, electrolyte packets, the medical kit with fever reducers, towels.
"Amos." Dominic's voice is low enough that Mattaniah might not hear it from the back seat. "What about the forensic data and the board presentation?"
"Everything is backed up on three drives, two in the office safe and one in the apartment." I squeeze Mattaniah's fingers. "Father can't touch it."
"If he moves while we're gone..."
"He won't move without us there to challenge him. He'll wait." I turn my head enough to see Dominic's profile against the passing streetlights. "Father is a predator, Dom. Predators don't strike when the prey is out of reach. They wait until it comes back."