Chapter 34 Mattaniah
Mattaniah
The mansion looks different pulling up to it bonded. Every window is a potential vantage point, every shadow behind the curtains a possible watcher. Dominic parks in the circular drive instead of the garage.
"Stay close to me." Dominic kills the engine and his hand finds the back of my neck. The contact sends warmth through the bond mark. "We go in, we get your things, we leave. Twenty minutes at most."
"He can't touch you now that you’re fully bonded . Any Alpha who puts hands on a bonded Omega can face criminal charges."
"That assumes he cares about criminal charges.
" Amots leans forward from the back seat and his hand rests on my shoulder.
"But Dominic is right. The marks change the legal weight of everything he does.
Father is many things but he's not stupid enough to assault a bonded Omega in his own home with witnesses. "
The three of us walk through the front door together but the house smells wrong.
Four days away and the absence of our combined scent has let Richard's dominance reassert itself through the whole ground floor.
The scent of leather and whiskey and the sharp undertone of an Alpha who has been drinking heavily permeates the walls and the furniture.
Richard is in the living room. He's sitting in the armchair by the window with a glass of something amber, his suit jacket buttoned despite the fact that it's eleven in the morning.
Everything about his composure feels forced, from the crossed ankle to the newspaper folded on the side table as if he's been reading rather than waiting.
He doesn't stand when we enter. His eyes move from Dominic to Amos to me. He catalogs the bond marks, his expression remaining neutral.
"You've made your choice." His voice hardens a little. "Live with it."
Dominic's hand tightens on the back of my neck, his fury bleeding through the bond.
"We're here for Mattaniah's things." Dominic keeps his voice level. "We'll be gone in twenty minutes."
"You'll be gone now." Richard sets his glass down and the crystal rings against the side table. "Both of you are no longer allowed in the house."
Richard's Alpha authority fills the foyer.
"Mattaniah comes with us." Amos steps forward.
"Mattaniah stays." Richard's eyes don't leave mine. "He has twenty minutes to pack his belongings. You two wait outside. If you're still in my house in sixty seconds I'll have security remove you."
The bond stretches as Dominic and Amos move toward the door. The pulling sensation in my chest tightens with every step they take away from me. Dominic's fury burns through the connection, followed by Amos' concern.
Dominic stops in the doorway and turns back, his gaze finding mine. Mild relief builds in my chest as I pick up that he's not going far.
The front door closes behind them and the house goes quiet.
Richard stands, moving to button his jacket, an unnecessary gesture since it's already buttoned.
His face contorts and then restructures before he crosses the living room toward the stairs.
My Omega recoils with the proximity of a hostile Alpha, every muscle bracing for the hand that has found reasons to land on me for weeks.
He doesn't touch me. He walks past without slowing, his shoulder not quite brushing mine, and climbs the stairs. The study door opens and closes on the second floor.
The silence is worse than any confrontation. He's calculating, and when he's finished, the response will be aimed at whoever has the least protection.
My legs carry me up the stairs on autopilot. The bedroom door is open and the room looks exactly as I left it three days ago, the bed made by staff, the closet organized. My suitcase is in the closet and I pull it onto the bed and start filling it.
The closet is empty. The absence of the nest in the corner of the closet makes the space look naked, every trace of the person I was becoming in this house packed into a bag and driven across the city while I was in heat.
"Mattaniah."
My mother's voice from the doorway stops my hands mid-fold. She's dressed as if she's going somewhere, everything about her current image completely perfect. The triumph on her face is barely concealed.
"I told you submission was weakness." She leans against the door frame with her arms crossed. "Look what you've done."
"I bonded with two Alphas who love me." I set a shirt in the suitcase and keep folding. "That's what I've done."
"Bonded to two Alphas." She repeats it the way she corrects everything I say.
"Do you understand what that means? You'll never be free of them, Mattaniah.
A bond doesn't break. A bond means every time they're angry you'll feel it in your chest. Every time they're disappointed you'll carry it.
Every time they decide you're not enough, you'll know before the words leave their mouths. "
"Sounds like you're describing marriage, Mom. The kind you thought you'd have with Richard." I keep my back to her because looking at her face will either make me fold or make me scream. "How's that working out for you?"
"Don't you dare compare me to you." Her voice sharpens. "I made strategic choices. You made an emotional one."
"You leaked those photos to the press."
The silence that follows confirms it. She didn't expect me to know this soon.
"Your Alphas told you." She says it flatly.
"The angles were from inside the house. The kitchen shot was from the second-floor landing. Who else has access to that vantage point at night, Mom?"
"I did what I had to do. You left me no choice when you decided to have a relationship with those two instead of..."
"Instead of letting Richard claim me?" I turn from the suitcase. "Instead of lying still while your chosen Alpha bit into my neck for your financial gain?"
"You think those two are any different?" Her composure holds but something shifts in her eyes, the cold recalculation I've watched her perform a thousand times. "You think they bonded you out of love? Mattaniah, they were using you from the beginning. It was a scheme."
My hands stop moving as the shirt I'm holding crumples in my grip.
"You're lying."
"Ask them." She pushes off the door frame and steps into the room.
"Ask them what they discussed the day after you arrived.
Ask Amos about the strategic value of getting you into their bed.
Ask Dominic why an Alpha who has never looked twice at an Omega suddenly couldn't keep his hands off you.
You moved into his father's house the same month they started plotting against their father. "
The bond marks pulse on both sides of my neck.
"They approached me to protect me from Richard." The words come out through the tightness in my chest. "They told me that. They said they intervened on purpose."
"Intervened." My mother's laugh comes off humorless.
"Is that what they called it? They positioned you as a destabilizing element in Richard's household.
Your presence created exactly the kind of chaos they needed to accelerate their father's downfall.
Every spike Richard responded to, every confrontation over your body, every escalation of his behavior was evidence they were collecting.
" She tilts her head. "You weren't the rescue, Mattaniah. You were the bait. Sound familiar?"
The word hits me in the center of my chest.
"You trained me to be a honey trap and called it survival." My voice climbs despite my effort to keep it level. "You were grooming me for Richard. For the man who puts his hands on me every day."
"I was securing our future!"
"You were selling me the way you always have." The suitcase is forgotten and I'm facing her with my fists at my sides and the bond marks throbbing on my neck. "Every mark you pointed me at, every time you told me to smile and be useful. And you called it protection."
"You ungrateful, naive..."
"You're a pimp." My mother's face goes white. "You pimped your own son to the highest bidder. When the bidder turned out to be a predator, you called it courtship."
Her hand moves and I flinch backward before I realize she's not going to hit me. It stops in mid-air, trembling. She's looking at the bond marks on my neck and for the first time in my life she has nothing to say.
"You'll regret this." She says through gritted teeth.
"Maybe." I pick up the suitcase and zip it shut. "But I'll regret it bonded to two Alphas who walked through glass for me. You'll regret it alone in a house that belongs to a man who's about to lose everything."
I lock myself in the room and sit on the bed with the suitcase beside me, phone in my hand. Through the bond I can feel Dominic pacing and Amos standing still beside the car.
My mother's words circle in my head: scheme, strategic value, bait.
They told me there were things I didn't know yet. Things that would make me angry.
They bonded me knowing that this conversation was coming.
The anger hits in waves that the bond carries to both of them, and through the connection I feel Dominic's response, a spike of something that tastes like guilt. Amos' response follows with the same undertone.
They feel guilty because my mother is telling the truth.
I press my palms against my eyes and breathe through the nausea. The bond marks pulse on my neck. Through the connection I can feel them both, the love real even underneath the guilt.
My mother told me they were using me. My body tells me they love me. Both things might be true.
I pick up my phone and text Dominic: I'm ready.
The response is immediate: We’re here.
A heavy breath falls from my lips as I grab my suitcase and march down the stairs, not stopping until I’m out the door to wait for my Alphas. Whatever they did before the feelings were real, the feelings are real now.