The space matches the rest of the house, all stainless steel and marble, but the staff have already cleared most of the dishes, leaving just a few pots and pans soaking in the sink.
"It's not as bad as it looks," Amos says, releasing my arm. "He likes to make things seem harder than they are." He lingers in the doorway, then sighs and pushes a hand through his hair. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about tonight. You caught him on a bad day."
I seriously doubt that. But I appreciate the attempt. "Thank you," I whisper.
The moment he disappears into the hallway, tears streak down my cheeks at the utter humiliation of being treated like agoddamn child. I’ve always known my mother wouldn’t come to my rescue but having her watch while Mr. Hale just…
A sob catches in my throat as my face heats. Even as much as I hated being molded like that, my body kept reaching for Dominic and Amos, their stares, their approval, and their assessment of the situation.
This isn't supposed to happen and fuck, I have no idea how to counteract it.
Dominic
Thediningroomisquiet now, emptied of everyone except me and my thoughts, needing somewhere to be that wasn’t the office or my bedroom. I swirl the whiskey in my glass, watching the amber liquid catch the light from the chandelier overhead, and try to make sense of what I just witnessed.
Dinner was revealing. That's the most precise word for it. Not a disaster, not an embarrassment, but a revelation deliveredcourse by course across an expensive table while Father demonstrated exactly what kind of man he is and Mattaniah demonstrated exactly what kind of Omega he's been made into.
I take another sip and let the burn settle in my chest.
Mattaniah. Even turning the name over in my mind feels like something I should examine more carefully. He's nobody. He should be nobody. Just another person Father dragged into our lives without warning or consideration, another variable in whatever game the old man is running this time. I should be cataloguing ways to remove him and his opportunistic mother from our orbit as quickly and cleanly as possible.
Instead I'm sitting here turning over a problem that doesn't have a clean answer yet.
My father does not do things without reason. He does not make impulsive decisions, act on sentiment, or allow anything into his house that doesn't serve a specific and calculated purpose. The image of this household, the Hale name, the perception of control and propriety that he has spent decades constructing — these things are not negotiable to him. They are the foundation everything else is built on.
So why has he brought two Omegas into this house?
Not one.Two. A woman he's known for a matter of weeks and her grown Omega son, dropped into our lives like it costs him nothing, like the disruption to the household and the questions it will raise and the scrutiny it will invite are all perfectly acceptable prices to pay.
For what? For a woman he could have installed in a separate residence if he simply wanted a companion? For an arrangement he could have handled quietly, at a distance, the way he handles everything else he doesn't want examined too closely?
It doesn't add up. And things that don't add up are the most dangerous kind of problem.
The first possibility surfaces in my head before I can push it away. Is this a test? Has Father caught onto something about me and Amos, found some thread he's been pulling on quietly, and arranged this to see what we'll do when an Omega is placed directly in our path?
It would be elegant in the way Father's cruelties tend to be elegant, to give us exactly what we'd want and watch us destroy ourselves trying to take it. I sit with that possibility long enough to feel its weight, turning it over carefully.
Then I put it down. The edges are wrong. Father doesn't use uncontrolled variables to test things he wants confirmed. He's too precise for that. If he suspected something concrete about Amos and me he would already have moved on it, not constructed an elaborate domestic arrangement and hoped we'd incriminate ourselves at the dinner table.
So that's not it.
Which brings me back to the question of what is.
I think about the woman. She smiled at the right moments and said the right things and positioned herself on Father's arm with the ease of someone who has rehearsed that exact performance. She knows what she's doing. She came here knowing exactly what she was walking into, which means she came here wanting something specific enough to be worth the risk.
And then I think about how she sat at that table tonight while her son got corrected into the floor. Not a twitch. Not a flinch. Not even the involuntary tightening around the eyes that happens to people who are trying to hold themselves still against an instinct they can't entirely suppress.
She kept eating while watching Father crack her son's hands and turned back to her soup like it was background noise.
Mattaniah never looked to her once. Not during the corrections, not when the whine escaped him, not even when Father's command locked him back into his chair. He didn't lookto her the way even the most trained Omega looks to a safe person when they're cornered. The reflex simply wasn't there. Whatever she is to him, she isn't safe. Whatever arrangement exists between them, protection isn't part of it.
Which means she isn't here despite what Father does to Omega son. She's here because of it. Or at the very least, she walked into this house knowing exactly the kind of man she was handing her son to and decided the price was acceptable.
Fucking bitch.
I pick up my glass and take a longer pull than I intended. The woman is running something, that much I'm certain of. But I don't think Mattaniah is in on the scheme. I think Mattaniah is the offering.
The question is who she's offering him to.
