Page 2 of Knot Their Safe Haven

I should have let her claim me then. Should have said yes to the private ceremony she offered, the protection of royal status. But I was too proud. Too afraid.

And Alessandro...

Fuck.

Alessandro Lucien Devereaux. No longer the eighteen-year-old boy I tutored in French, all gangly limbs and nervous energy. Thirty-five now, built like a weapon wrapped in Armani, with that raven hair that catches auburn in the light and those emerald eyes that see too much.

My scent match.

The universe's cruelest joke—giving me a perfect match seventeen years younger, someone I'd helped raise from boy to man, someone whose trust fund has been secretly funding my operations for a decade.

"You still wear scarlet lipstick sometimes," he'd murmured at the last gala, standing too close, smelling of amber and espresso and everything I can't have. "It drives me fucking insane, Scar."

"You're too young for me, Alessandro."

"I'm thirty-five. You're thirty-nine. That's four years, not forty."

"It's not about the number?—"

"No," he'd said, cutting me off with that dangerous smile. "It's about the fact that you're terrified of being happy."

He was right. They all were.

The blade shifts against my throat, drawing me back to the present. To the reality that I'm going to die in a warehouse in Dubai, and none of them will know until it's too late.

Icarus—my son, even if the world doesn't know it—is on tour with his rock star friends. He won't find out until after the concert in Tokyo, maybe Bangkok if Knox tries to keep it quiet. I can picture him destroying whatever room he's in, that controlled fury he inherited from both his parents finally unleashed.

I should have told him I was proud of him more. Should have said 'I love you' without it being followed by logistics and strategy.

Kamari might be on her honeymoon by then, finally free of the arranged marriage that almost destroyed her. Or maybe she'll have had her first child, a little girl with her mother's fierce spirit. She'll name her something beautiful, something that means freedom.

She'll cry when she finds out. That girl who's like a daughter to me, who I saved from her family's cruelty—she'll blame herself for not being there.

Astraea will probably find out at the gym, Knox barely holding it together as he tells her. She's got that same defiant spirit I had at her age, that refusal to let the world break her.

They'll survive without me. They're all stronger than they know.

But God, I wish I'd let myself be weak just once. Let myself be claimed, protected, loved the way Omegas are supposed to be. Let myself experience what I've spent forty years ensuring others could have.

What a fucking waste.

"Any last words?" The Alpha's patience has run out. The blade is steady now, positioned perfectly to sever my carotid. Professional, like I said.

I open my eyes—when did I close them?—and meet his gaze with every ounce of defiance left in my broken body. Let him see that he hasn't won. That killing me won't give him what he wants. That the Haven will survive, the Omegas will endure, and his kind will always lose in the end.

A smirk pulls at my split lip, and I taste fresh blood.

"Va te faire foutre."

Fuck you.

The French rolls off my tongue like silk over steel, elegant even now. Even with death millimeters away.

His eyes narrow. The blade presses deeper.

And I think of scarlet lipstick, of silver-grey hair, of midnight blue eyes, of desert roses, of emerald gazes that see too much.

I think of all the love I was too frightened to accept, too proud to surrender to, too damaged to believe I deserved.