Chapter 33 Dominic
Dominic
Mattaniah has been asleep for nine hours and I’ve spent most of them lying beside him with my hand on his chest, feeling the bond pulse beneath his skin.
The marks on his neck are still raised and red, the tissue swollen around the bite impressions.
Every time my thumb traces the edge of the one I left on the left side, his body shivers in his sleep and Amos makes a sound from the other side of the bed.
“Stop doing that.” Amos' voice is rough with sleep, his arm draped across the Omega’s waist. “Every time you touch his mark I feel it through the bond. It’s like someone running a finger down my spine.”
“I know.” I trace the mark again and Amos' breath catches. The feedback loop between the three of us is still new enough that every accidental brush against the bond marks sends sensation cascading through the circuit in ways none of us can predict.
This is different from what I have with Amos.
The bond between us is six years old, worn smooth with use, a constant low hum I stopped noticing years ago.
The bond through Mattaniah is raw and loud, every emotion amplified, every sensation shared.
The possessiveness that used to feel like mine alone now runs through all three of us.
Mattaniah stirs beneath my hand. His eyes open, unfocused with sleep, and when they find my face above him the smile that spreads across his mouth is unguarded in a way I've never seen from him while conscious. His face carries no armor, no calculation. He just smiles at me because I’m the first thing he sees.
His contentment hits me through the bond, a warm pressure spreading through my chest.
It isn’t enough because I’m a liar.
The thought lands but I clamp down on it before the bond can transmit the guilt to Mattaniah.
I’m still learning to guard my emotions through the new connection.
It’s harder than I expected. Amos catches my eye over Mattaniah’s head and the look he gives me tells me he felt something even if the Omega didn’t.
“Morning, firefly.” I press my mouth against the mark on his neck and his eyes flutter shut. Amos groans from the other side.
“You’re doing it on purpose now.” Amos shifts against the pillow.
“I’m greeting my mate.” I press my lips to the mark again and the sensation pulses through all three of us, Mattaniah’s shiver traveling through the bond into Amos and back into me in a loop that makes the Omega’s breath stutter. “The mark is right there. I can’t help where my mouth lands.”
“Your mouth lands with military precision and we both know it.” Amos sits up and pushes his glasses on. “How are you feeling, Niah?”
“Sore.” Mattaniah stretches against me and winces. “I’m sore everywhere. Like I ran a marathon and then got hit by a truck and then the truck backed up and ran over me again.”
“That’s approximately what happened to your body over the past three days.” Amos' hand finds Mattaniah’s forehead. “Your fever is gone. Your scent has stabilized. The bond marks are inflamed but that’s normal for the first forty-eight hours.”
“They hurt.” Mattaniah’s hand comes up and touches the mark on the left side of his neck, the one I left, and when his fingers graze the scar tissue I feel the contact through the bond as a pressure in my own chest. “But it’s a good hurt.
Like a bruise you keep pressing because it reminds you of something. ”
I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The apartment is quiet and for a few minutes everything is exactly what it should be.
Then I pick up my phone from the nightstand and the screen lights up with forty-seven missed calls.
My stomach drops as I scroll through them, communications from twelve different contacts, the oldest timestamp at two in the morning, the most recent from three minutes ago.
Father’s number appears fourteen times and the PR director’s nine.
Three board members, the company’s outside counsel, and Amos' assistant account for the rest.
“Amos.” My voice changes and Mattaniah flinches against the pillows before the word has left my mouth. “Check your phone.”
Amos reaches for the nightstand on his side. His screen lights up with a similar wall of notifications and his expression goes flat.
“What’s happening?” Mattaniah sits up between us, the blanket falling to his waist, the bond marks vivid against his throat. “I can feel something through the bond. Something just changed in both of you.”
“Give me a minute.” I scroll through the text messages, each one worse than the last. The PR director’s texts are professional: PHOTOS LEAKED.
TABLOIDS HAVE THEM. CALL ME IMMEDIATELY.
Father’s texts are a single repeated command: CALL ME NOW.
The board members’ messages are variations on the same theme, ranging from concerned to furious.
I open the link the PR director sent, the images loading on my screen one by one.
The first image shows Mattaniah in the kitchen of our house, my hand on the back of his neck, his body pressed against mine.
The angle is from above, taken from the second-floor landing looking down through the open archway.
The second shows Mattaniah on the couch with Amos’ arm around him, his face turned into Amos’ chest. The angle is from the hallway, partially obscured by the door frame.
The third makes my blood freeze. Mattaniah is curled in the nest in the closet, my cardigan visible beneath him, his eyes closed.
Someone photographed him sleeping in his nest.
“Dom.” Amos has the same images on his screen. “The photos came from inside the house, the angles only possible from someone living there. The kitchen shot is from the second-floor landing and the closet shot is from inside the bedroom.”
“It was her.”
“She was never going to stay bought.” Amos sets his phone down. “We should have known.”
Mattaniah has gone rigid between us. He can’t see the phones from where he’s sitting but his face has drained of color.
“Tell me what’s happening.” His voice is small and tight. “I can feel you both going into threat mode and it’s making my chest hurt. Tell me.”
I hand him my phone. He looks at the images and the sharp intake of breath that follows hits me through the bond. His hand goes to his throat, covering the bond marks.
“My mother.” He says it flatly. “She took these.”
Amos sits on the edge of the bed beside him. “Being controlled by us must have been intolerable for her. When she realized she couldn’t use you as leverage against us anymore, she went nuclear.”
“So she burned everything down.” Mattaniah’s fingers tighten on the phone. “If she can’t have security through me, nobody gets anything.”
The pain that pulses through the bond from him hits me in the sternum. It isn’t surprise or shock. The resignation underneath it is old. He expected this.
“How bad is it?” He asks it without looking up from the phone.
“The tabloids have them.” I take the phone back and set it face-down on the nightstand. “By tonight every outlet in the city will be running some version of ‘CEO’s sons in relationship with CEO’s stepson.’ The board is already calling. Father has been trying to reach me since two in the morning.”
“The company.” Mattaniah’s voice catches. “The stock price, the board presentation you’ve been building, everything you’ve worked for...”
“All of it is still there.” I sit beside him and my hand finds the back of his neck, the grip firm enough that the bond mark throbs under my palm.
He shivers. “The photos are embarrassing but they’re not criminal.
The forensic evidence against Father is on three separate drives and none of it is connected to these images. ”
“But the timing.” Amos' analytical brain is running ahead. “If Father uses the scandal to discredit us before we can present the forensic data to the board, he controls the narrative. Two sons caught in a relationship scandal become unreliable witnesses.”
“He’ll try.” I keep my hand on Mattaniah’s neck because the bond is transmitting his panic in waves that are making it hard to think. “He’s been trying to undermine us since the day we started this. The photos give him ammunition but they don’t change the evidence.”
“Let me call her.” Mattaniah reaches for his phone on the nightstand and I catch his wrist.
“You’re not calling her.”
“She’s my mother, Dominic.”
“She’s the person who just leaked intimate photos of you to the press to punish you for having a relationship with us.” I don’t release his wrist. “She doesn’t get a phone call. She gets a legal response.”
“He’s right.” Amos' hand rests on Mattaniah’s knee. “Your mother made a strategic move and responding emotionally is exactly what she wants.”
Our Omega’s jaw tightens and loosens, fury building in his expression.
“What do we do?” He asks it looking at both of us and the trust in his face makes the guilt in my chest burn hotter.
Because we do have a plan. We’ve had a plan since before he arrived at the house. Everything Amos and I have been building for months predates Mattaniah’s arrival. The part that involves our Omega currently looking at me with bonded trust in his eyes is the part we haven’t told him about yet.
We used him. Not the way his mother did, not with the same cruelty.
But we positioned him in Father’s household knowing his presence would create the instability we needed.
We noticed him and wanted him and fell for him.
All of that is true. But the scheme came first and the feelings came second, and telling him that twelve hours after he let us mark his throat is going to break something the bond can’t fix.
I push the guilt down because there’s a crisis to manage and confessions can wait.
“Amos handles PR. Call the PR director, get ahead of the narrative. Frame the relationship as genuine and longstanding, which it is. The photos show intimacy, not abuse. We control the story by confirming the relationship before the tabloids can spin it.”
“Father will be furious.” Amos pulls out his phone. “Confirming publicly means we can’t walk it back.”
“We were never going to walk it back.”
“And the board presentation?” Amos' fingers hover over his phone.
“We accelerate. Father is going to use the next forty-eight hours to try to discredit us. We need the forensic evidence in front of the board before he succeeds.” I stand and cross to the closet where my spare clothes hang.
“Call your assistant. Get the drives from the office safe. I want the presentation deck finalized by tomorrow morning.”
“Dom.” Mattaniah’s voice stops me at the closet door. Through the bond I can feel him reaching for me.
I turn. He’s sitting in the destroyed nest with the blanket pooled around his waist. The panic from the photos has settled into something harder, a resolve that looks startlingly like he’s ready to fight rather than retreat.
“Whatever comes, we handle it together.” He says it with a steadiness that the bond confirms is genuine.
The guilt burns, eating at the foundation of the trust he just placed in me. I should tell him now.
But the Omega in the nest is looking at me with bonded eyes and the mark I left on his neck is still bleeding at the edges and the words die in my throat because I’m a coward about exactly one thing in my life.
Amos is already on the phone with the PR director. I pull a shirt over my head and sit on the edge of the bed beside Mattaniah.
“Your mother.” I keep my voice low while Amos talks. “She’s going to escalate. The photos are her opening move.”
“I know.” Mattaniah leans against my shoulder and the contact pulses warm through the bond. “She doesn’t have a retreat position. She’s not wired for it.”
“Neither am I.” I press my mouth against the top of his head. “But I’m better at it than she is.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.” My arm wraps around his shoulders and I hold him against me while Amos paces the apartment hallway with his phone pressed to his ear, his voice carrying fragments of damage control strategy through the open bedroom door.