Page 41 of Knot Their Safe Haven

Too late now.

Too late for everything.

The song faded to silence, and Velvet Morclair disappeared into the dark water, leaving nothing but ripples and regrets and the ghost of what might have been.

Above, the city screamed and sirens wailed and people searched for survivors in the rubble. But below, in the forgotten depths where broken things came to rest, there was only quiet.

Only ending.

Only eyes like emeralds in the darkness, watching something precious sink beyond reach.

Where have you been all my life...

Gone. I'm gone.

And with that final thought, consciousness fled, leaving only meat and bone and dreams that would never be realized, sinking through dark water toward a bottom that might not exist.

The last rebellion of Velvet Morclair wasn't against society or Alphas or expectations.

It was against death itself.

And like all her rebellions, she faced it alone.

THE WEIGHT OF WAKING

~VELVET~

Consciousness was a tide I couldn't control, pulling me under and spitting me out at intervals that made no sense.

Time had become meaningless—minutes could be hours, days could be seconds, and the only constant was the mechanical beeping that followed me through every layer of awareness.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The sound should have been annoying, but it had become an anchor. Proof that I was still here, still fighting, still stubbornly refusing to let go despite everything. Each electronic pulse matched a heartbeat I couldn't quite feel, a rhythm that belonged to someone else's body because surely this broken thing couldn't be mine.

Voices drifted through the fog like smoke—hushed, careful, the way people spoke around the dying or the dangerous. I couldn't make out words, just tones. Concern. Frustration. And underneath it all, a tension that made even unconsciousness feel unsafe.

Sometimes there were touches. Fingers brushing hair from my forehead with a tenderness that made something deep in my chest ache. A hand holding mine, thumb tracing circles on skin Icouldn't feel. Once—or maybe I imagined it—lips pressed to my temple, and someone whispered words in Arabic that sounded like prayer.

But the memory scattered before I could grasp it, dissolving back into the darkness that had become my world.

Other times, rougher hands checked my pulse, adjusted something that tugged at my arm, muttered curses that sounded like someone I can’t put my finger on when he was worried. And sometimes, clinical touches that catalogued and assessed, accompanied by that particular silence another wore when he was thinking too hard.

I remember these men…just struggling to grasp their names…that’s all. Not a big deal.

The question floated through my consciousness without context. Here where? Why? What had happened that brought them together when twenty years hadn't been enough?

I tried to remember, diving deep into the murky waters of memory, but all I found were fragments.

Traffic. A text message. French words that made my heart race even now.

And then...

Emerald eyes in darkness.

The image burned bright even in unconsciousness, more real than the bed I couldn't feel or the voices I couldn't quite hear. Those eyes had been the last thing I'd seen before—before what? The memory slipped away like water through fingers I couldn't move.

Darkness claimed me again, soft and seductive, and I let it.