"Yes, Niah." I settle my chin on his shoulder from behind. "Dominic is my Alpha."
Mattaniah's eyes widen and his cheeks flush a deep red that spreads to his ears. He buries his face in his hands.
"Oh my god." His voice comes out muffled through his fingers. "Oh my god, I've been sleeping with both of you this whole timeand I never... I mean I knew you were together but I didn't realize it. It didn’t click that those marks were... he's yourAlphaAlpha? The way an Alpha is an Omega's Alpha?"
"Exactly like that." I can't keep the amusement out of my voice.
"And I've been... with both of you... while you're..." He presses his hands harder against his face. "Every time you two looked at each other over my head, that wasn't just... you were actually..."
"Communicating?" Dominic's voice carries the edge of a smirk. "Yes."
"I thought I was imagining it." Mattaniah drops his hands and stares at the ceiling. "I thought the coordinated sex thing was just Alpha instinct or something. You're telling me you two have been in a relationship this entire time and I've been the third person in your bed and neither of you thought to formally mention that?"
"You seemed to be enjoying yourself." Dominic's thumb traces his cheekbone. "We didn't want to complicate things with labels while you were still adjusting."
"Adjusting." Mattaniah's voice goes flat with sarcasm. "I was adjusting to being fucked by my two stepbrothers who are also in a committed Alpha-Alpha relationship. That's what I was adjusting to. Without the relevant information."
"To be fair," I say against his shoulder, "the relevant information wouldn't have changed anything. Would you have said no?"
His mouth opens, closes and opens again as the flush on his face deepens. "That's not the point."
"It's exactly the point." Dominic pulls him closer. "You would have said yes regardless. The label doesn't change what this is."
"What is this, then?" Mattaniah looks between us, the question underneath the question visible in his eyes. "If Dominic is your Alpha, and I'm whatever I am to both of you, then what are we?"
"You're ours, Niah." I say it against the curve of his ear. "Whatever label you need for that, we'll figure it out. But you're ours, and tonight proved that we'll walk through broken glass for you."
"Literally." Mattaniah glances at Dominic's feet, which are bleeding from multiple cuts that the Alpha hasn't acknowledged or apparently noticed. "Dominic, your feet are shredded."
"I'm aware."
"You walked across broken glass in bare feet to pick me up."
"I'm aware of that too."
"That's the most insane and stupidly romantic thing anyone has ever done for me."
"Don't call me romantic." Dominic's voice carries a growl. "I'll deny it."
"You carried me up a flight of stairs with my legs around your waist."
"I carried you up a flight of stairs because you were an Omega standing barefoot in broken glass. There's a difference."
"There really isn't." Mattaniah's face crumples into something between laughter and tears. He presses his face into Dominic's chest again, his shoulders shaking, the sounds half-sob and half-laugh.
The shaking subsides and his breathing evens out, the longer he lies between us.
"I need to clean Dominic's feet," I say eventually. "And then we're all going to sleep, and tomorrow we're going to have a conversation about what happens next."
"What happens next with us?" Mattaniah asks.
"What happens next with Father." I press my lips against the back of his neck. "Because what Dominic did tonight drew a line, and Father doesn't let lines go unanswered."
Mattaniah's body tenses at the mention of Richard. Dominic's hand finds his nape again and squeezes, the tension draining as fast as it arrived.
"Tomorrow." Dominic says it with enough finality to close the conversation. "Tonight you're safe."
I clean Dominic's feet at the end of the bed with antiseptic and band-aids, the Alpha's jaw tightening with every dab of the washcloth. Mattaniah watches from the middle of the bed with his chin propped on his hands, his eyes tracking my movements.
