Page 15 of Knot Their Safe Haven (The Omega Rebellion Movement #3)

The orchestrated remix that had played on my last ride home from the gym, the one that had felt like mockery then and felt like prophecy now. It was coming from somewhere close, maybe the car's speakers, maybe my phone, maybe just my oxygen-deprived brain providing a soundtrack to disaster.

I've been everywhere, man, looking for someone...

Dread crystallized in my chest, sharp and cold despite the growing numbness in my limbs. This wasn't random. This was orchestrated, planned, targeted.

This was for me.

I tried to move, to reach for the door handle, to do something other than sit here like a drugged princess waiting for rescue. But my body had become a prison, muscles refusing commands, neurons firing into nothing.

A woman ran past my window, mouth open in a scream I could barely hear through the fog descending on my senses. But one word cut through clear as crystal, sharp as the glass that would soon cease to exist.

"BOMB!"

The word registered in slow motion, understanding coming in pieces. Bomb. There was a bomb. Near me. Maybe under me. Maybe?—

The world exploded.

Not outward, like movies had taught me to expect. Not heat and fire and dramatic flames. Instead, the ground simply ceased to exist, and I was falling.

The car disintegrated around me like a house of cards in a hurricane.

Windows became diamonds of safety glass, catching sunlight like tears.

The leather seats tore apart in strips of expensive hide.

The roof peeled away like paper, revealing a sky that was suddenly too far above and getting further.

Down.

I was falling down, not out. The bomb hadn't thrown me—it had removed whatever was beneath me, created a void that gravity was eager to fill.

Time stretched like taffy, each second lasting hours. I could see everything with crystalline clarity—the other cars tumbling around me like toys, the debris creating a deadly ballet in the air, the faces of people above growing smaller as I plummeted toward whatever waited below.

The screams were muted now, like someone had turned the volume down on reality. But that song—that fucking song—kept playing, following me down into the darkness.

Where have you been all my life, all my life...

My body wouldn't respond. Whatever drug had been in the air—because that's what it had been, I understood now, a paralytic agent to keep me compliant—had locked my muscles in useless stillness. I was a consciousness trapped in dead weight, aware but unable to act.

The fall felt endless until it wasn't.

The impact drove every molecule of air from my lungs as I hit water— water, there was water beneath the street —with enough force to rattle my teeth. The paralysis that had been curse became blessing for a single moment, keeping me limp enough to avoid shattering on impact.

But then I was sinking.

The water was dark, murky with debris and diesel and God knew what else. Light filtered through in broken beams, already fading as I descended. My lungs screamed for air I couldn't draw, muscles begged for movement I couldn't provide.

This is how I die.

The thought came with surprising calm. Not in my bed at ninety, surrounded by the pack I'd never had. Not in some dramatic confrontation defending my Omegas. But here, at the bottom of whatever hidden reservoir lurked beneath the city, alone except for a song that played like a funeral dirge.

Where have you been...

I tried to move, pouring every ounce of will into just flexing a finger, twitching a toe, anything to prove I wasn't already dead. But the drug held firm, chemical chains stronger than any physical restraint.

Water pressed against my lips, seeking entrance. I held my breath through pure instinct, but I could feel the countdown starting. Thirty seconds, maybe forty before my body overrode my mind's commands. Before survival instinct forced me to inhale death.

The ringing in my ears grew louder, heartbeat thundering like drums at my own execution. Twenty years of fighting, of building, of saving everyone but myself, and this was how it ended. Not with bang or whimper, but with lungs full of murky water and a love song playing somewhere in the distance.

At least the others are safe. Knox at his gym. Malcolm at the clinic. Adyani across the ocean. They'll mourn, but they'll survive.

The thought should have brought comfort. Instead, it brought rage. They'd survive because they'd never really lived with me anyway. We'd all been so careful, so distant, so fucking afraid that we'd never actually been together. And now we never would be.

My vision started to tunnel, darkness creeping in from the edges. The need for air had become everything, consuming thought and reason and even fear. My mouth opened without permission, water rushing in like an eager lover, filling spaces that should have held breath.

This is it.

The weight that had haunted me for years—that crushing loneliness, that sense of being unclaimed and unwanted—became literal as water filled my lungs.

I was sinking not just through water but through every regret, every missed opportunity, every night I'd spent alone wondering what it would feel like to be truly loved.

Peace came with acceptance. The frantic beat of my heart slowed. The screaming need for air faded to whisper. Even that damned song seemed to grow softer, more lullaby than taunt.

Where have you been all my life...

I'd been here. Waiting. Working. Wanting. And now I was dying, having experienced everything except the one thing I'd craved most—being claimed, being chosen, being someone's everything instead of everyone's sometimes.

My eyes started to close, the last bit of light fading to memory. But in that final moment, in that space between life and whatever came after, I saw them.

Emerald eyes in the darkness.

Green like forests, like promises, like the boy who'd seen me clearly seventeen years ago and never forgot.

Alessandro.

His name formed on lips that could no longer speak, a prayer to a god I'd never believed in. Those eyes grew closer, or maybe I was falling toward them, or maybe death just looked like the last beautiful thing I'd wanted to see.

Either way, as the darkness claimed me completely, as my heart gave its last stuttering beats, as water replaced everything I'd ever been, those eyes were there.

Watching.

Waiting.

Where have you been all my life...

The question echoed into nothing, and Velvet Morclair—Omega, revolutionary, woman who'd saved hundreds but couldn't save herself—finally stopped fighting.

The water won.

The darkness won.

But those emerald eyes remained, burned into retinas that would never see again, a last gift or a first glimpse of whatever came after.

Where have you been...

Right here. Waiting for someone brave enough to claim me.

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.