Page 55 of Knot Their Safe Haven

I had seventeen years of patience, three days of fury, and an entire pack ready to go to war for a woman they'd never met but had already accepted as ours.

Fate is truly an entertainer.

The billionaire in the novel was now apparently capable of healing his Omega through the power of his "alpha essence," whatever that meant. I snorted, but kept reading.

Even ridiculous fiction was better than thinking about what would happen when Velvet woke up and chose violence.

Because she would.

The Rebel Queen didn't accept anything without a fight.

Good thing I'd always been dangerous.

It’s about time she witnessed what it was like to have a pack in your corner who will fight the world for you.

The monitor beeped as Velvet, shifted slightly. Deep in sleep and burrowing into the blankets.

As for me, I waited, like I'd been waiting for seventeen years, for the war that was coming.

A war was most definitely coming, and with all the pieces laid out on the battlefield, I was certain the battle would be glorious.

LET THE GAME BEGIN

~VELVET~

"Who the fuck are you to waltz in here and say you're now her Alpha? She doesn't fucking know you."

Knox's voice cut through the medical haze like a serrated blade, each word dripping with the kind of fury I'd only heard once before—when he'd found me bleeding in an alley twenty years ago, three Alphas having learned the hard way that I bit back.

But this was different.

This wasn't protective rage. This was possession challenged; territory threatened — the growl of an Alpha who'd just realized another predator had claimed what he'd spent decades circling but never taking.

A Truly hypocrite.

I kept my breathing even, steady, the rhythm I'd perfected over years of feigning sleep while Malcolm touched me in darkness. In through the nose, hold for three, out through barely parted lips. The machines monitoring my vitals would betray any change, any spike in heart rate that suggested consciousness.

If I can just feign this a little longer, I’ll be able to know their true intentions…

The thought makes my stomach sink in uncertainty, yet I’m scared to admit I know where this is going.

Unless life and death was going to change my men’s behavior.

The air in the room was thick with competing pheromones— Knox's smoke and cedar now edged with something acrid, like wood burning too hot. Malcolm's eucalyptus and mint had gone sharp, medicinal in the way that meant his control was slipping. And Adyani... saffron and desert roses, but underneath, that particular scent that came with transition, pheromones still finding their balance. I could tell it wasn’t even at the strongest scent, slightly muted yet still present thanks to the familiarity of it all.

All of them together in one room.

When had that last happened? The charity gala three years ago? That disaster of a dinner four years back when they'd all shown up separately and spent the evening pretending they weren't measuring each other?

And now they were here, unified in their outrage that someone else had done what they couldn't.

A page turned.

The sound was crisp, deliberate, like everything about Alessandro seemed to be.

He was reading something, and the silence that followed suggested he was making them wait. Making them stand there in their fury while he casually perused whatever held his attention.

The scent situation was... odd. I could identify my three—former? Were they former now?—lovers easily, their scents as familiar as my own skin. But Alessandro's was muted, barely there. Not absent, just... diluted. Like catching perfume through three layers of glass.