His breathing evens out within a minute, his body going heavy between us. Dominic's knot deflates and he pulls out with care, his release adding to the mess that the nest has become. Neither of us moves to clean up. The effort isn't worth the risk of waking him when the next wave is probably twenty minutes away.
Dominic is quiet for a long moment, his thumb keeping its circle on Mattaniah's hip. "When the heat breaks, if he asks again." Dominic states, the muscles in his jaw pulling tight before releasing. “I need him, Amos.Weneed him.”
"Then we talk about it." I meet his eyes over our Omega's head. At some point, during this heat, Mattaniah has become trulyoursin my head because I want for nothing else than to claim him as well. "All three of us with clear heads and full sentences."
"And if the answer is yes?" Dominic looks up at me, hopeful for my answers. It’s one of the first times he’s truly asking for my opinion in order to make his decision.
"Then the answer is yes, Dom.”
Mattaniah
Thewaveshavebeenspacing out for the past six hours. The gap between the last two was almost ninety minutes, long enough that I slept through most of it without waking up screaming or grinding against whoever was closest. My body still burns but the fire has banked into something manageable, a constant low simmer instead of the inferno that's been consuming me for three days.
Dominic notices the change before I've fully registered it. He sits up in the destroyed nest and presses his hand against my forehead, then my neck, then my chest over my heart.
"Your fever dropped." His voice is rough from three days of minimal sleep.
"I'm starving." The last thing I ate was half a protein bar that Amos pushed into my mouth between waves sometime yesterday. Or the day before.
Dominic lifts me off the bed. His arms scoop under my knees and behind my back as he transports me to the bathroom, the Alpha carefully setting me on the counter.
The granite is freezing against my bare thighs and I hiss at the contact. Dominic pulls a dish towel from the drawer and folds it under me without comment, then opens the fridge and starts pulling things out. Bread. Peanut butter. A banana that's seen better days.
"He needs high-calorie food that's easy to digest." Amos appears in the doorway, shirtless, his hair wrecked, his glasses crooked on his face. He looks as destroyed as I feel. "Start with the banana. Your stomach needs something gentle before we introduce protein."
He peels the banana and hands it to me, and I eat it in four bites while Dominic makes peanut butter toast with the focus of a man performing surgery.
The food hits my empty stomach and the rush of energy is so immediate my hands stop shaking for the first time in days. I reach for the toast before Dominic has finished cutting it and he lets me take it from the knife, his mouth twitching.
"Chew. You're going to make yourself sick."
"I've been sick for three days. Being sick from toast would be an upgrade." Amos' eyebrows rise and Dominic's mouth twitches further into what might be a smile on someone less committed to looking intimidating.
"There he is." Amos leans against the counter beside me and his hand rests on my bare knee. "Welcome back, Niah."
I eat the toast and Dominic hands me water and for a few minutes the kitchen is just a kitchen, three people eating in silence with the fluorescent light buzzing overhead and the refrigerator humming. My brain is the clearest it's been since I woke up on fire. The heat is still there, simmering beneath my skin, but the fog has lifted enough that I can form complete thoughts and look at both of them without my vision going glassy.
"I need to talk to both of you while I can still think." My voice comes out steadier than I expected.
Dominic sets the knife down and turns to face me while Amos straightens beside me.
"I asked you to bond me during the heat." I hold Dominic's gaze because this conversation requires eye contact even though his eyes make my pulse stutter. "You said no. You said wait until I could think."
"I remember."
"I can think right now. And I'm asking again."
The silence that follows is deafening. Dominic's gaze moves to Amos, who meets it with an expression I can't fully read.
"Mattaniah." Amos says my full name. "We're not perfect, Niah."
"Neither am I." The words come out smaller than I want them to. "I was raised by a woman who trained me to be a honey trap. Every skill I have for reading people and making myself useful came from ten years of learning how to manipulate Alphas for profit." I set the crust down on the counter. "I'm not innocent in this. Whatever you've done, I walked into this house already shaped into a tool."
"You're not a tool." Dominic says it with a finality that leaves no room for argument.
"I was built to be one. That's not the same as being one, but the parts are still there." I look at both of them and the clarity in my head is sharp enough to cut. "I know who you are and I know you're not perfect. I'm asking you to bond me anyway. The alternative is going back to that house unbonded, and the thought of Richard getting to me before you've marked me as yours makes me want to crawl out of my skin."
"Is that what this is about?" Dominic's eyes narrow. "Fear of our father?"
