Amos
Thecarridetothe apartment is silent because the words I owe him need Dominic present. We told Mattaniah we’d be right there when he was ready but Dominic was too wound up. I had to force him to meet us at the apartment just so he wouldn’t absolutely terrify our Omega. DI’m hoping the separation will give him time to pull himself together and give me a few minutes with our Omega before everything detonated.
Mattaniah asked me once to explain and I told him we needed to wait for Dom. This confession belongs to both of us. He hasn't spoken since. His forehead rests against the window with his arms crossed over his chest, the bond marks visible above his collar.
Dominic is waiting at the apartment door when we arrive. He reaches for Mattaniah and the Omega lets himself be pulled into Dominic's chest for three seconds before stepping back. Through the bond, I can feel Mattaniah holding himself apart, the new bonds aching with the distance.
"I need you to tell me the truth." Mattaniah stands in the middle of the living room with his arms crossed and his chin lifted. Despite the swollen eyes, he looks ready to fight. "I want all of it right now."
"Sit down, Niah." Dominic gestures toward the couch.
"I don't want to sit down." Dominic's eyebrows rise. "I want to stand here and look at both of you while you tell me whether my mother is right that I was a scheme."
Dominic and I exchange a look.
"Yes." Dominic says it first. "That was the original plan."
Mattaniah's face doesn't crumble. It goes still, the bond transmitting a pulse of pain so sharp that both Dominic and I wince.
"Tell me everything." His voice is steady despite what the bond is showing me underneath. "From the beginning."
Dominic sits on the arm of the couch as I lean against the kitchen doorway and between us, we lay it out. We started building the fraud case against Father eight months before Mattaniah arrived. When Father's new relationship brought a young Omega into the household, we recognized he would become a target. We decided to intervene before Father could claim him, partly to protect him and partly because a bonded Omega would be a witness the board couldn't dismiss.
"His escalation would produce evidence we could use." I keep my voice level even though the bond is feeding Mattaniah's pain back to me in real time. "Your presence in the house was going to destabilize him whether we intervened or not. We chose to intervene because..."
"Because it served the plan." Mattaniah finishes the sentence for me.
"Because we couldn't watch him touch you." Dominic's voice is raw. "The plan I made was to let him escalate and document everything. The plan was to keep our emotions locked down but let you be the catalyst. I lasted less than a week before I had my hand on the back of your neck in the kitchen. Watching my father put his hands on you made me want to kill him."
"So the touching was real."
"The touching was real before I wanted it to be." Dominic's hands grip the arm of the couch. "The plan fell apart the second you looked at me with those fucking eyes and I realized I wasn't pretending anymore."
"When?" Mattaniah's voice cracks. "When did it change?"
Dominic goes quiet as his hands press flat against his thighs.
"The subspace incident." I answer for him. "He went too far and you dropped. The look on his face when he realized what he'd done was something I'd never seen from him since we've been together. He got on his knees beside the bed and apologized. He didn't do that for the plan."
"And you?" Mattaniah turns to me and his eyes are wet but his voice holds. "When did it stop being strategy for you?"
"The night you caught the financial fabrication in the Southeast accounts. You looked at the numbers for thirty seconds and found what my team missed in three weeks. Then you looked at me like you couldn't understand why it was impressive." I push off the doorway and take a step toward him. "You were brilliant and you didn't know it because nobody hadever told you that your brain was worth more than your body. That's when it stopped being strategy."
"But you still didn't tell me." The tears are falling now, cutting tracks down his cheeks. "You fell in love with me and you still let me bond with you without telling me the truth."
"Yes." Dominic meets his eyes. "We did that."
"You used me." Mattaniah's voice rises. "You made me fall in love with you and it was a game. You let me think I was special when I was just useful."
"You were so much more than that." I take another step toward him.
"Don't." He steps back and the distance sends a spike of pain through the bond that makes both Dominic and me flinch. "Every time you touched me, every time you said 'firefly,' every time you looked at each other over my head and communicated in that silent way you do. Was that strategy too?"
"No." Dominic stands from the couch. "The name wasn't strategy and neither were the touches. Falling in love with you was not part of the fucking plan, Mattaniah."
"How am I supposed to believe anything you've ever said to me?" His voice breaks on the last word and he presses his palms against his eyes. "My mother trained me my whole life. Every relationship I've ever had was transactional. She told me people use Omegas and I spent years trying to believe she was wrong. Now you're standing here confirming that the two Alphas who bonded me started the whole thing as a scheme."
"We started as a scheme." Dominic crosses the room toward him. Mattaniah's hands drop from his eyes and he steps back, his spine hitting the wall. "We ended as your mates. Both of those things are true and you can feel through the bond which one matters more."
