Dominic reaches for him and Mattaniah flinches.
The flinch stops Dominic in his tracks, his hand hovering in the air between them.
"Don't." Mattaniah's voice is barely above a whisper. "Don't touch me right now."
Dominic's hand drops to his side.
"I need to be alone." Mattaniah pushes off the wall and walks past both of us toward the hallway. "I'm going to the spare room. I need the door closed and I need neither of you to follow me."
"Niah." I say his name and he stops in the hallway without turning around. "The bond is new. Sleeping apart is going to hurt."
"I know it's going to hurt." He still doesn't turn. "It already hurts. But I need to feel something that's mine right now instead of something that belongs to the three of us."
The spare room door closes, the lock clicking behind him.
Dominic stands in the living room with his hand still at his side. His expression is locked down so tight that without the bond, I'd think he felt nothing. Through the connection, the truth is different. He's gutted. The flinch broke something in him that I don't know how to fix.
I cross to him and press my forehead against his shoulder, his arm coming up to wrap around me.
"He'll come back." Dominic says it against the top of my head.
"He'll come back." I press my face against his chest. "He can feel us, Dom. The bond won't let him stay away forever."
"And if he hates us?"
"Then we earn it back the way we said we would."
Dominic's hand finding the back of my neck and squeezing.
Through the wall, the bond pulses with Mattaniah's anguish. But underneath the anguish, buried so deep I almost miss it, the love hasn't gone anywhere. It's angry and hurt and betrayed, but it's still there, beating through the marks on all three of our bodies.
The bond will bring him back, even if the anger tries to keep him away. I just don't know what shape any of us will be in when he does.
Mattaniah
Thebondwokemethree times during the night. They weren't spikes or cramps or the biological urgency that drove the heat. These were emotional surges bleeding through the marks on my neck from two Alphas on the other side of a locked door. Dominic's guilt hit me at one in the morning, a sharp flare that jerked me out of a shallow sleep. Amos' grief rolled in at two thirty, settling into my chest and staying there. At foursomething shifted in both of them simultaneously. I pressed my face into the pillow and cried until my throat was raw.
The spare room smells like me and only me. The absence of their scent in the sheets and pillows is a physical discomfort I can't ignore. My bond marks ache with a throb that hasn't let up since I closed the door.
I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the locked door for ten minutes before I stand up and unlock it.
Dominic is sitting on the floor in the hallway with his back against the wall opposite my door. His legs are stretched across the narrow corridor, his head tipped back against the wall. He's still wearing the clothes he had on last night. His jaw is shadowed with stubble, the circles under his eyes deep.
He opens his eyes when the lock clicks.
"You didn't have to..." I trail off. He did have to.
"Yes." His voice is rough. "I did."
Amos appears at the end of the hallway carrying two cups of coffee and a plate of toast. His glasses are crooked and his shirt is wrinkled. He looks as wrecked as Dominic.
He holds out a coffee without speaking. I take it. The warmth of the mug against my palms grounds me enough that the ache in my bond marks drops from unbearable to merely awful.
The three of us end up in the kitchen. Dominic sits at the table. Amos leans against the counter. I stand in the doorway because the table feels too much like forgiveness.
They wait for me to speak. Neither of them pushes or fills the silence with explanations.
"I'm still mad." The words come out too loud for the quiet kitchen. "I'm so fucking angry I can barely look at you."
