"And if it turns out Father's angle is what you think it might be?"
A snarl sits at the back of my throat but I temper it down, refusing to let myself dwell over an issue that hasn’t even arisen yet. "Then we deal with it. But we need to be in position first, which means right now we go check on our new stepbrother and make sure he survives his first night in this house."
Amos' mouth curves. "Our stepbrother. Is that what we're calling him?"
"That's what he is, Amos."
"If you say so." He stands and tilts his head toward the hallway. "Let's go see how he's holding up with those dishes."
We find him at the farmhouse sink with his hands submerged in soapy water, shoulders hunched, his body shaking with the effort of silent crying. The scrubbing is rhythmic, relentless, the motions of someone trying to clean away more than dirty pots. His scent is barely detectable through the blockers, but what comes through is coconut gone sour with distress.
I stay in the doorway. Amos crosses the kitchen and stops just behind Mattaniah's left shoulder.
"Hey. You've been at this for a while. The pots can wait."
Mattaniah's spine goes rigid. He doesn't turn around. "Please leave me alone. I'm fine, I just need to finish this."
"You're not bothering anyone." Amos reaches out slowly, and rests his hand on the Omega's shoulder.
Mattaniah's whole body locks up for one taut second, every muscle braced against what's coming. Then something gives way. His shoulders drop, his spine softens, his head tips back slightly, and a low whine escapes his throat as he leans into the touch like his body has been waiting for permission all night and just received it.
Amos makes a sound low in his chest and pulls Mattaniah gently away from the sink. The Omega goes without resistance, the rigid performance of the entire evening dissolving as his eyes close and his scent shifts beneath the blockers into something sweeter than anything I've smelled from him yet.
"There you go," Amos murmurs, turning him and pulling him against his chest. "You don't have to fight so hard."
Mattaniah presses his face into the curve of Amos' neck as his hands come up to fist in the fabric of Amos' shirt, another whine escaping him, higher and more desperate than the first. His whole body shudders with what looks unmistakably like relief, like he's been holding his breath for hours and just remembered how to exhale.
This is what all that rigid control must be designed to keep locked away. This is what his mother must have been trying to bury.
Silence filters into the kitchen as I catalog every last piece of Mattaniah and the way he’s holding onto Amos until he jerks away from Amos like he's been burned.
He stumbles backward until his hip hits the counter, his scent crashing sour so fast it makes my head swim.
"I'm sorry." The words pile on top of each other. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that, I don't know why I did that, please don't tell my mother, please, I can't..."
"Mattaniah." Amos holds up both hands. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"I did. I'm not supposed to, she told me never to..." He breaks off with a choked sound and bolts up the stairs. A few seconds later, a door screams as it’s shut, the broken hinges protesting the moment.
Amos turns to me. "He's going to be difficult."
"He's going to be worth it. His mother taught him that wanting gets you hurt, so every time he responds to us, the shame is going to hit and he's going to bolt." I push off the doorframe. "So we make sure that every time he runs, the thing he's running from feels better than the place he's running to. We stay close, we keep pushing, and we make the wanting worth the fear."
"And Father?"
"Father pushes to break. We push to open. There's a difference, and Mattaniah's body already knows it even if his brain hasn't caught up." I turn off the kitchen light. "Come on."
Mattaniah
Thelockclicksbehindme, though I'm not sure how much good it does with the frame still splintered from last night. Anyone who wanted in could shoulder through it without breaking stride. But even the illusion of a barrier is better than nothing, and I'm on the floor before I've finished turning it, my back against the door and my legs folding against my chest.
My whole body is shaking so violently I can hear my teeth chattering against each other, a sound that belongs to someone standing outside in a blizzard, not someone sitting on the floor of a mansion bedroom that probably costs more per square foot than my old apartment's entire rent.
What the hell happened in that kitchen?
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes until stars bloom across the darkness, trying to overwrite the memory of Amos pulling me against his chest and the way his scent wrapped around me like a blanket I didn't ask for but couldn't stop burrowing into.
The sound that came out of my throat when my body gave in, that humiliating, involuntary whine that emptied every thought from my head and replaced it with a single, screaming need to get closer. I melted into him, and the worst part isn't that it happened in front of Dominic. The worst part is that for three full heartbeats before the panic set in, it felt like coming home.
