"I know." Amos' arm tightens around me. "That's what happens when the drop is deep."
A sort of uncomfortable quiet settles between us. My fingers are still threaded through Amos', gripping harder than I mean to, Dominic's gaze on me from across the bed even with my eyes closed.
"Has that ever happened to you?" I turn my face further into Amos' chest as I ask it, my voice muffled against his shirt. "The... subspace."
"Once." His hand keeps its rhythm in my hair. "With Dominic. If the Alpha handles it right, it feels incredible."
"It didn't feel incredible." My grip on his hand tightens and my eyes burn. "It felt like I was drowning in something warm and I couldn't find the surface."
"Because I fucked up." Dominic's voice comes from across the bed, stripped raw. "I wasn't watching you. I was too deep in my own shit and I missed every sign that you were going under." A low growl rumbles through his chest. "I had no idea you'd go under that fast," he says.
"Neither did I." My voice comes out ragged and I press closer to Amos' chest. "I've spent my whole life keeping a grip on everything. White-knuckling it through every shitty situation my mother put me in." The tears spill over, slipping onto Amos’ skin. "Tonight my body just let go without asking me first."
Amos' arms tighten around me as he presses his lips against the top of my head, his thumb wiping a tear from my temple.
"You trusted me." Dominic's voice cracks. "And I wasn't paying attention."
"Dom." Amos says it gently over my head. "Come closer. He needs you."
Dominic moves to the edge, my hand leaving Amos' shirt and stretches across the mattress toward him. My fingers find his and his close around mine so carefully it makes the tears come faster. He raises my hand to his mouth, leaving a soft kiss across my knuckles.
"I'm sorry." The authority that usually lives in his voice is completely absent. "Mattaniah, I'm sorry."
"You stopped when Amos told you to." I squeeze his hand through the tears, my voice hitching. "You stopped."
"I should have known before he needed to tell me."
"But you did stop." I pull his hand toward me and press it against my chest where he can feel my heartbeat hammering against my ribs. "I'm here. I'm okay."
Amos adjusts his position and reaches for Dominic, pulling him closer until the three of us are tangled together. Dominic's arm comes around my waist from behind while Amos stays pressed against my front, Dominic's forehead pressing between my shoulder blades with his breathing uneven against my skin. We lie like that for a while, the three of us breathing together in the dark, and my body should be winding down. Amos' knot broke the spike. I've been held and talked through whatever the hell just happened to me.
Instead, my skin starts crawling. The restlessness begins as a twitchiness in my legs that makes me shift against the mattress, then spreads until my whole body feels like it's vibrating. My hips move without my permission, pressing backward against Dominic, then forward against Amos, searching for something deeper than skin contact. The spike is gone, but something inside me is still hollow and aching and I don't understand why.
"What's happening to me?" My voice comes out thin and panicky. "Amos, something's wrong. The spike broke. I felt it break, so why do I still feel like this?"
Amos' hand finds my face. "Your body went through a lot tonight, Niah. The spike, the knot, the drop. Your nervous system is overloaded and it's looking for something to anchor to."
"That's not helpful." My legs are shaking again, a bout of fresh slick gathering, my body doing things I haven't authorized while I grit my teeth against the humiliation. "I don't understand what it wants. I already had a knot, so why am I still..."
My hips jerk backward against Dominic, his cock twitching against my lower back. A sound escapes me that's half whimper and half frustrated groan because I just went through something terrifying with this Alpha but my body is pressing against his cock like nothing happened.
"What is wrong with me?" I whisper it into Amos' chest. "Seriously, what is actually wrong with me, because this doesn't feel normal, and I'm scared."
Dominic's mouth presses against the back of my neck. "Nothing is wrong with you."
"Everything feels too open and too empty and my body keeps reaching for something and I can't figure out what it is." My voice climbs higher, an edge to it that doesn’t feel like my own. "I can't sleep like this."
"Settle." The command is gentle but firm against my skin.
"I can't, Dominic." The tears are back, pressing hot behind my eyes. "I'm trying and I can't, and I don't know what's happening to me and I'm scared and I need..." My breath hitches. "I need something and I don't even know what it is."
His hand slides down my stomach to my hip. His thumb traces the bruise he left earlier before shifting behind me, his cockpressing against me, thickening, the head finding the slick mess between my thighs.
"I'm going to fill you up." His voice drops low. "I'm going to push inside you and you're going to feel my knot at the base, and you're going to fall asleep exactly like that. Full of me. With Amos holding you and my cock so deep inside you that you'll feel me with every breath."
The words short-circuit my brain before I come back online and realize what I’m looking for. My Omega needs to fix this, he needs to know we didn’t break whatever this is between us and Dominic. "Yes." My voice breaks on the word. "Please."
He pushes in slowly enough that I feel every inch of him slide past the oversensitive rim and fill the emptiness that's been driving me crazy. My body opens around him without resistance, the sensation of being filled again wringing a sound from me that I muffle against Amos' chest. He keeps pressing forward until his hips are flush against my ass and I can feel his knot, uninflated but thick at the base, stretching me just a little wider.
