Epilogue 1
Six Months Later
Mattaniah
The argument has been going in circles for twenty minutes and I still can't say what I actually want.
It starts over the apartment. Dominic finds a listing for a condo in the city with four bedrooms and a balcony and brings it up over dinner as if it's a discussion rather than a decision he's already made.
Amos pulls up the listing on his phone and starts analyzing square footage.
I push linguine around my plate trying to figure out why the idea is making my chest tight instead of making me happy.
"The nursery needs to be adjacent to the master bedroom." Amos scrolls through photos. "This layout has the nursery across the hall, which adds fifteen seconds to response time for nighttime needs."
"We'll renovate." Dominic doesn't look up from his own phone. "The contractor can move the wall between the second and third bedrooms."
"You haven't even asked me if I want to move." The words come out sharp and both of them look up from their screens. "You found a listing. You brought it to dinner. You're already planning renovations. Nobody asked me if I want to live in a condo."
"Do you want to live in a condo?" Dominic sets his phone down.
"I don't know. That's not the point."
"Then what's the point?"
The point is something I can't articulate because the words for it were trained out of me. Dominic is planning a future I'm included in and nobody has said out loud that the inclusion is guaranteed.
"We've been living in this apartment for a few months now and you're planning a condo and a nursery and a renovation and at no point has anyone..." I stop. My scent is going sour, I can feel it, the distress leaking into the kitchen before I can pull it back.
"Has anyone what?" Dominic's eyes narrow.
"Nothing. Forget it." I stab a piece of chicken and put it in my mouth.
"Mattaniah." Dominic's voice drops. "Finish the sentence."
"I said forget it."
"You said nothing and forget it within three seconds of each other, which means whatever you were about to say is the most important thing you've said all night." He leans forward. "Finish the sentence."
"Nobody has asked me to stay." It comes out too loud for the kitchen and my face heats immediately.
"You're planning a condo and a nursery and talking about contractors and the whole time you're assuming I'll be there because we're bonded and I'm pregnant.
Where else would I go." I look between them.
"But nobody has actually said 'Mattaniah, we want you to be here permanently, not because of the bond or the baby but because we chose you. '"
The kitchen goes quiet as Amos sets his phone down slowly. Dominic stares at me across the table with an expression I can't read even through the bond.
"I know it's stupid. I know the bond is permanent and the baby is permanent and legally I'm your mate. I know all of that. But I spent twenty-six years being told I was temporary, a placement, a tool that gets used and returned." My throat closes. "I need someone to ask me to stay, not assume it."
Dominic pushes his chair back from the table and stands. He walks out of the kitchen and my stomach drops.
"Great." I mutter it at my linguine. "Excellent communication skills, Mattaniah. Really nailed that one."
Amos reaches across the table and covers my hand with his, his thumb tracing my knuckle but he doesn't speak. Dominic comes back into the kitchen. His hand slams down on the table beside my plate hard enough that the water glasses rattle. I flinch before I register what's beneath his palm.
A small, black ring box sits on the kitchen table beneath Dominic's palm.
"Is this better?" He lifts his hand and the box sits between my plate and the water glass, dented at one corner from the impact. "Is this enough of an ask?"
I stare at the box. My hand is still in Amos' across the table and I'm holding a fork with chicken on it. The baby chooses this exact moment to kick me in the bladder.
"You've been carrying that."
"For three weeks." He drops back into his chair. "I've been waiting for the right moment and there hasn't been one because every time I think the timing is right you say something that proves it's been wrong."
"You've had a ring in your pocket for three weeks." I set the fork down.
"Open it." His jaw is set.
The ring is a simple white gold band with no stone. The inside is engraved but the lettering is too small to read in the kitchen light.
"What does it say?" I hold the ring up.
"It says 'firefly.'" Dominic's voice has gone rough.
His scent is filling the kitchen, leather and smoke so thick I can taste it, and underneath the smoke there's something raw I've never smelled from him before.
"Because that's what you are. I'm not asking you to stay, firefly.
I'm telling you that I want you to stay.
This apartment and whatever comes after it belongs to you as much as it belongs to me or Amos.
The bond and the baby aren't why you're here.
You're here because I chose you and I choose you every day.
Put that ring on your finger so I can stop carrying it around like a coward. "
My eyes blur with happy tears as I stare at the metal. I don’t know why I needed to hear those words and I have no idea why I end up blurting out the next. "I'm not wearing a dress." The words come out through the tears and a laugh that surprises all three of us.
"Nobody asked you to wear a dress." Dominic's mouth twitches.
"I'll wear it." Amos' hand shoots up from across the table. "The dress. I'll wear the dress. I look excellent in formal wear."
The laughter breaks through the tears and the tension. The kitchen fills with something loud and graceless and punctuated by hiccups because I'm crying and laughing at the same time and Amos is miming a fashion pose from across the table.
"Put the ring on." He commands and then he clears his voice, softening his tone as he says it a second time. “Put it on.”
"You're proposing to me like you're closing a deal."
"I close every deal I make. Put the ring on."
I comply, loving how it feels against my skin. "You could have just asked." I hold up my hand and look at the ring. "You didn't have to slam it on the table like a subpoena."
"I've been trying to ask for three weeks. You kept changing the subject every time the conversation got close to commitment." He reaches across the table and turns my hand so the band catches the kitchen light. "I decided the table method was more efficient."
"Amos." I turn to look at him with my hand still in Dominic's. "Did you know about this?"
"I helped pick the ring." He pushes his glasses up. "I also wrote a statistical analysis of the optimal timing for the proposal based on your emotional patterns over the past eight weeks. Dominic ignored it."
"The analysis said to wait until after the birth." Dominic doesn't take his eyes off the ring on my finger. "I wasn't willing to wait."
"You wrote a statistical analysis for a proposal." I look between them. "You two are the most insane people I have ever bonded with."
"We're the only people you've ever bonded with.
" Amos stands from the table and crosses to my side.
He kneels beside my chair and his hand rests on my stomach where the baby is still performing her bladder assault.
"Niah. You are not temporary. You are not a tool.
You are the person Dominic carried a ring for three weeks without sleeping properly and the person I wrote a seven-page analysis for.
" His hand presses against my stomach. "And the person growing our baby in my old sweatpants. "
"Our daughter." The words are out before my brain has caught up and both of them go still.
"What?" Dominic's hand tightens on mine.
"Wait." Amos' head lifts from my stomach. "Did you just say yes?"
"He said daughter." Dominic is staring at me. "You said our daughter."
"He said yes to the ring." Amos looks at Dominic. "He put the ring on and he said our daughter, which means he's saying yes and he's saying—"
"Is it a girl?" Dominic's voice cracks on the word.
"Are you saying yes?" Amos says it at the same time and their voices collide over my lap. I have never seen them like this. Dominic's composure is gone and Amos' careful analytical calm is gone and they're talking over each other like two people who have forgotten they know how to take turns.
My laugh comes out wet and wrecked and I have to press my hand over my mouth because the sound of these two Alphas tripping over each other is the funniest thing I've ever witnessed in my life.
"Yes, I'm saying yes." I hold up the hand with the ring.
"I put it on, didn't I? And yes, it's a girl.
I had a doctor's appointment this morning.
" I press my free hand over Amos' on my stomach.
"I was going to tell you after dinner but then the condo happened and the argument happened and the ring happened.
I forgot I was holding an entire piece of information because my fiancé decided to propose by slamming jewelry on the table. "
Dominic's face finishes coming apart. His eyes fill and his jaw trembles and his hand on mine tightens until the ring digs into my finger. His scent cracks wide open, the leather going soft, the smoke thinning into something warm and unguarded that makes my own eyes sting all over again.
"I told you." His voice breaks. "I told you it was a girl."
"A daughter." Amos says it from beside my chair, his hand still on my stomach. "We're having a daughter." He pulls his glasses off and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I'm going to need a bigger file."
Another laugh pulls from me as Dominic rounds the table and drops to his knees beside Amos on my other side. Dominic's hand covers mine on my stomach and Amos' covers his. The baby kicks against all three palms and the timing is so perfect that I'm convinced she planned it.
"She kicked." Dominic says, mild surprise coating his words.
"She kicks all the time." I wipe my eyes with my free hand. "She kicked me in the bladder four minutes ago while you were proposing, which was very romantic."
"Our daughter has opinions about timing.
" Amos presses his ear against my stomach.
His pine and cedar scent is warm and steady beside me, mixing with the leather and smoke from Dominic's side, and my own scent has gone sweet and heavy between them.
"At this gestational stage she can hear external voices.
She's been listening to this entire conversation. "
"Great." I look down at the two Alphas kneeling on my kitchen floor. "Our daughter's first memory is going to be her father proposing by slamming a ring box on a table and her other father calculating response times for nighttime needs."
"And her third parent was making a joke about wearing a dress." Amos lifts his head. "She's going to be fine."
"She's going to be impossible." Dominic presses his mouth against my stomach through my shirt. "She's ours. She doesn't have a choice."