Page 21 of Knot Their Safe Haven (The Omega Rebellion Movement #3)

LET THE GAME BEGIN

~VELVET~

" W ho 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.

Has to be the drugs.

They probably dampened olfactory input to prevent sensory overload during recovery. Smart, actually. The last thing a healing Omega needed was to be bombarded by Alpha pheromones while trying to mend.

Another page turned.

Then another.

The silence stretched past uncomfortable into insulting.

"Are you going to sit there and read unnecessary documents this whole time?" Adyani's voice carried that royal edge that surfaced when she felt disrespected. Even transitioning, even having given up a throne, she still expected certain protocols.

"Those appear to be medical records." Malcolm's observation was quiet, but I heard the undercurrent.

He recognized the format, the particular way medical files were bound.

"Why does that fucking matter?" Knox again, still radiating fury. "Answer my question."

Another page turned.

Then, with the kind of calm that preceded hurricanes:

"She only had six months to live, and you completely dismissed it."

My heart stopped.

W…What?

My heart hammered so hard I had to focus every ounce of control on keeping my breathing steady, on not letting the monitors betray the earthquake happening inside my chest.

Six months?

Six fucking months?

I forced air through my lungs in the same measured rhythm, but internally, I was screaming.

Six months to live.

Less than a year before my body just... gave up. Shut down.

Stopped fighting the biological imperative it had been denied for almost four decades.

"That's..." Malcolm's voice cracked slightly. "That's not possible. I would have noticed?—"

"Would you?" Another page turned. "Multiple symptoms documented in the last ten months of checkups.

Omegas require monthly evaluations regardless of age—you know this, Doctor.

Yet here we have reported dizziness, sudden weakness, episodes of confusion, unexplained fatigue, irregular heat cycles, and notably, three instances of complete sensory shutdown lasting over twelve hours. "

The sleeping pills nights. When I'd wake up after half a day, confused and disoriented. I'd blamed the wine. The pills. The combination.

But it had been my body failing.

"We weren't aware—" Knox started.

"I was out of the country—" Adyani cut off.

"I wouldn't invade her medical privacy without cause—" Malcom interfered.

They all spoke at once, excuses tumbling over each other like broken glass.

"Interesting." Alessandro's voice cut through their protests like a scalpel.

"If she was my Omega—which she is now—I would ensure I knew every detail about her health.

Every change, every concern, every whisper of something wrong.

Because her wellbeing would be my priority.

As it should be for any Alpha who claims to love their Omega. "

"She isn't—" Knox started, then stopped.

The silence that followed was deafening.

"Right." Alessandro's tone could have frozen hell.

"She isn't your official Omega. Never was, despite twenty years of proximity.

But I suppose that's a convenient excuse, isn't it?

You three grown men have been circling her for decades, claiming love, claiming devotion, yet not one of you prioritized the woman you supposedly couldn't live without enough to notice she was literally dying. "

"That's not?—"

"We didn't?—"

"You can't just?—"

They spoke over each other again, but even I could hear how hollow their protests sounded.

Something closed with a decisive snap—the medical file, probably.

"The recent specialist's report confirms it," Alessandro continued, his voice carrying the particular weight of someone delivering a death sentence.

"Without intervention—without a pack bond, without claiming, without the biological support her body has been screaming for—she would have experienced complete organ failure before her fortieth birthday.

Six months on the outside, probably less given the acceleration noted in the last two evaluations. "

I would have been dead before forty.

The thought sat in my chest like lead. All my fears about aging out of desirability, about becoming invisible, about missing my chance—and I'd actually been dying. Literally withering away while the three men who claimed to love me watched and did nothing.

"Since I requested an Omega specialist who actually specializes in deterioration prevention, Dr. Weiss, flown in from her practice in Munich, she now has options.

A few weeks to find an appropriate pack and mate properly, maybe months if we're fortunate and aggressive with treatment. But time is still a factor."

"We can—" Knox's voice was rough. "We can step up. Make it official. If that's what she needs?—"

Alessandro's laugh was soft and infinitely cruel.

"No."

Just that. One word.

Final as a coffin nail.

"You don't get to make that decision—" Knot tries to fight off but is cut off.

"Actually, I do. You had your chance…twenty years of chances…and when the moment came to step up, you chose cowardice. You literally stood in that hallway for six hours debating while she was dying. You forfeited any claim to her the moment you refused to sign those papers."

"You can't just?—"

"I can. I did. It's done." His voice hardened. "She's registered as pack Omega to the Noctuary. My pack. My Omega. My responsibility. You made your bed when you chose your reputations over her life. Now you get to lie in it."

Knox's voice rose to nearly a shout. "You fucking child, you don't understand?—"

A soft giggle cut through the room like silver bells, feminine and amused and somehow more threatening than any growl.

Every muscle in my body wanted to tense, to react to this new presence, but I forced myself to remain limp, breathing steady.

Who—?

"Well, well. The cowards have gathered to defend their non-existent territory."

The voice was pure honey over steel, feminine but carrying the kind of authority that made you want to either kneel or run. The scent that accompanied it was subtle; roses, but not Adyani's desert variety.

These were wild roses, the kind that grew despite adversity, all thorns and defiant beauty.

"I believe your interference is no longer necessary," the voice continued, moving closer. "And I'd appreciate it if you'd lower your voices. Our Omega is resting, as she should be after the trauma you've subjected her to through your neglect."

"Who the hell are you?" Knox demanded.

"Alexis Rosenberg. Though professionally, I'm known as Alexander." A pause, then with evident amusement, "The gentlemen flanking me are Dante and Damon Corleone. Say hello, boys."

"Hey," two masculine voices said in perfect unison, and something about their synchronization made my skin prickle.

"And we," Alexis continued, her heels clicking on the linoleum as she moved further into the room, "are the Noctuary Pack. The fearsome leader you've been snarling at is the one sitting beside our new Omega, ensuring she recovers from what your cowardice nearly cost her."

The silence that followed was electric. I could feel them processing — the Noctuary wasn't just wealthy, they were powerful in ways that transcended money. The kind of powerful that made governments nervous and corporations genuflect.

And they'd claimed me.

This stranger's pack had claimed me while the men I'd loved for decades stood by and watched me die.