Page 15 of Knot Their Safe Haven

Time is ticking and I’m reaching the age where Omegas become invisible, worthless, forgotten.

I pour the last of the wine, staring at my reflection in the dark window.

Still beautiful by most standards—money and good genes will do that—but I can see the signs. The fine lines around my eyes, the single gray hair at my temple I haven't plucked yet, the way my body doesn't recover as fast as it used to.

What am I waiting for? For them to realize they could do better? For age to make the choice for me?

The movement passed. The world is changing.

Omegas are claiming power, demanding respect, rewriting the rules.

So why can't I claim what I want?

Because wanting means vulnerability.

It means admitting I need them—Knox's steady strength, Malcolm's brilliant care, Adyani's fierce devotion, and hell, who knows if there’s anyone else out there for me to bring us together a unit, because at this rate, are we missing the glue needed to put us together?

That only forces me to admit the lingering truth.

I'm not the untouchable Rebel Queen. I'm just an Omega who wants to be loved before it's too late.

I stand, leaving the office in its chaos.

Tomorrow I'll clean up, face the investors, save more Omegas, fight more battles.

Tonight, I'll go to my empty bed and pretend I don't regret every wall I've built between myself and happiness.

The greatest rebellion would be surrendering to love.

Too bad I've forgotten how to lose.

DREAMS AND DISTANCE

~VELVET~

The silk clung to my fevered skin like a lover's promise — soft, deceptive, and entirely inadequate for the inferno building beneath.

I twisted in the sheets, consciousness floating somewhere between dream and nightmare, my body a battleground of sensations I couldn't control. The wine from earlier had done nothing to dull the edges of this torment. If anything, it had stripped away my last defenses, leaving me raw and exposed to the hunger that gnawed at my very bones.

"Qalbi..."

Adyani's voice drifted through the darkness of my mind, that rich baritone that still made my stomach clench even after all these years. But as the sound wrapped around me, it shifted—deepened and softened simultaneously, morphing into something distinctly feminine yet retaining that commanding presence that had always undone me.

"My beautiful Scar,"she whispered, and I could almost feel her breath against my neck, could almost taste the saffron and desert rose that clung to her skin."Let me show you what you've been missing, my sweet."

My back arched involuntarily, nipples hardening to painful peaks against the delicate fabric. The silk might as well have been sandpaper for how it abraded my oversensitive flesh. Every brush of material sent lightning skittering across my nerve endings, pooling liquid heat between my thighs.

I could only imagine, from the labyrinthine corridors of my own fevered mind, how she might look—how she might feel—now, after all that she had undergone. At first, it was the old memory of her body, the one etched into my flesh and my heart from a hundred half-remembered nights, that took shape in the darkness.

The breadth of her shoulders, the sculpted angles of her arms, the way her long, elegant hands could crush or cradle with equal skill. In dreams I remembered how she—the he that had been before—would pin me under the full weight of her authority, her pressing presence, until I broke or yielded or, god forbid, melted. That was how I had loved her, once.

That was how she had conquered me: completely, and absolutely.

But now, in the shifting, unanchored logic of this dream, her body became mutable, evolving with every shuddering breath until I no longer knew what was memory and what was hope.

Her hands, at first as large and certain as I remembered them, began to shrink and soften, the calluses giving way to silkier skin. The wrists narrowed. The fingers became more graceful, more delicate— but never frail. She cupped the side of my face with this new, gentle palm, and I marveled at how small it seemed, how right.

My dream-self shivered at the contradiction: the touch was softer, yes, but the force behind it was undiminished, if anything more commanding for its restraint. The mind of Adyani was still there, ferocious and brilliant and utterly in control, but now thepackaging was different, a reimagined vessel for the same old storms.