Page 25 of Knot Their Safe Haven (The Omega Rebellion Movement #3)

SCENT OF DESTINY

~ALESSANDRO~

The deck has been transformed into something from a director's wet dream.

Crystal glasses catch dying light like trapped fire.

Bone china so thin it's translucent waits on charcoal linen.

Candles in hurricane lamps flicker against the coming darkness, their flames steady despite the mountain breeze.

The table is set for two, intimate without being presumptuous, elegant without ostentation.

Behind me, the glass cottage glows like a lantern, every surface reflecting the sunset's theater. The rain stopped twenty minutes ago, leaving the world washed clean and performing its apology in the form of a perfect rainbow arcing across the valley.

I adjust the burgundy pocket square— chosen to match the dress I left for her —and check my watch.

Seven-thirteen. She's been awake for over an hour according to the cottage's discrete monitoring system. Showered for twenty-three minutes. Applied the lotions and cosmetics I'd instructed the staff to provide—La Mer, Chanel, Tom Ford, brands that whisper luxury without screaming it.

The suit is Brioni, tailored to millimeter precision in oxblood so dark it appears black until light catches the fabric. The shirt beneath is crisp white Egyptian cotton, no tie because formality has its limits. Italian leather shoes that cost more than most cars, though she won't care about that.

Velvet appreciates quality but despises waste, a contradiction I've spent years parsing.

Everything choreographed, calculated, perfect.

Which is why the universe chooses this moment to throw its curve ball.

The click of heels on engineered wood sends electricity down my spine.

Measured steps, confident despite recent trauma.

The sound of a woman who's decided to play the game rather than flee the board.

I turn.

And forget how to breathe.

She's weaponized the dress. That's the only explanation for how fabric can transform flesh into pure devastation.

The burgundy silk clings to curves that shouldn't exist on someone who nearly died, creating architecture where trauma tried to destroy.

Her skin glows—not from the lotions but from something internal, some decision made in front of a mirror that changed everything.

The silver hair is a revelation. No purple remains, just moonlight spun into waves that frame her face like she's stepped from a Renaissance painting.

The stylist gene in our DNA recognizes perfection—the subtle wave, the shine that speaks of health returning, the way it catches light like precious metal.

Glasses perch on her nose—cat-eye frames in black that make her look like a librarian with secrets. No contacts tonight. She's choosing comfort over convention, authenticity over armor.

Her lips are war paint in crimson, the exact shade of the wine in my glass, the exact shade of fresh blood, the exact shade of promises about to be made.

Black Louboutin heels add four inches she doesn't need, bringing her to the perfect height for?—

No. Focus.

She stops ten feet away, and that's when it hits.

The scent.

Black orchids in full bloom, but underneath, a layer of addiction begins to sprout like in full bloom.

Cinnamon and amber, vanilla and something indefinable that makes my hindbrain scream MINE in frequencies only Alphas hear.

It's not just her natural scent amplified by recovery.

It's an aroma that makes my mouth water and my control fracture.

I stand, intention focused on pulling out her chair like a gentleman, like Alexis threatened me to be. Three more steps and the scent intensifies, wrapping around me like silk rope. My body responds instantly—pupils dilating, pulse accelerating, every Alpha instinct roaring to life.

Her nostrils flare.

She's scenting me too, those dark eyes widening behind designer frames as she processes what her omega biology is screaming.

The realization hits us simultaneously.

Her jaw drops, a soft gasp escaping those crimson lips.

No way in all heavens…

Scent match.

"No way." Her voice comes out breathy, disbelieving.

The universe's most sadistic joke— making us scent matches now, after everything. After twenty years of her suffering with incompatible alphas versus my seventeen years of waiting. For all of it to come full circle after she nearly died believing no one truly wanted her.

And viola. Fate brings us together in the best unity to emphasize how destined we are to one another.

"This has to be a prank." She says it like a question, hope and suspicion warring in her tone. "Right?"

"I've never been the pranking type." My voice comes out rougher than intended, Alpha pheromones already flooding the space between us. "That's the twins' domain."

I close the distance between us, each step deliberate despite every instinct screaming to rush. This close, her scent is devastating. It bypasses logical thought, speaks directly to the primitive parts that existed before language, before civilization, before anything except need.

She tilts her head back to maintain eye contact—even in heels, I tower over her.

The height difference puts her at the perfect angle to?—

Control yourself.

I slide my jacket from shoulders that suddenly feel too broad, draping the Brioni over her smaller frame. The gesture is protective, possessive, and practical. Mountain evenings are cold, and that dress, while perfect, offers little warmth.

But it also serves another purpose.

I lean in, ostensibly to adjust the jacket, and inhale deeply at the junction of her throat and shoulder.

The scent there is concentrated, pure, undiluted by perfume or product.

Divine.

The word is inadequate.

She smells like everything I've craved since I understood what craving meant. Like safety and danger combined. Like home I've never had and adventures not yet taken. Like the answer to questions I didn't know I was asking.

"Alessandro." My name on her lips is barely voiced, but the submission in it?—

I bite my bottom lip hard enough to taste copper, the pain barely keeping me from claiming that mouth, from discovering if she tastes as extraordinary as she smells.

Instead, I offer my hand.

"As much as I'd love to be a typical Alpha and kiss you until neither of us can breathe, Alexis threatened to kick my ass if I don't behave. She's probably watching through the security system to ensure compliance."

Velvet laughs—not the careful chuckle of recent days but something genuine and delighted.

"Alessandro Lucien Devereaux is afraid of a female Alpha?"

"Absolutely,” I don’t even deny how confident I am with that truth. “She's a male-dominating psychopath in Prada." I lean closer conspiratorially. "Don't tell her I said that. She'll find out anyway when she reviews the surveillance, but plausible deniability and all."

Her laughter intensifies, and the sound does things to my chest that violate several laws of physics.

When she finally catches her breath, her eyes hold something soft, something I haven't earned yet but desperately want to.

She held my gaze with a glint that signaled mischief, then gestured with the smallest finesse.

“Lean down for a second.”

I obeyed, drawn as if by gravitational force, bending so we stood truly eye to eye.

The world narrowed to a tunnel—our faces, her perfume, the impossible shade of her lips.

She closed the last inch, standing on tiptoe so the black Louboutins nearly wobbled beneath her, and placed her hand on my cheek.

Fingertips cool, but the heat behind them was instant.

Her lips contacted mine with an audacity so subtle it transcended seduction—nothing like the desperate, possessive kisses Alphas traded when the scent-matching hit.

It was a scientist’s test, a painter’s first brushstroke.

The contact was feather-light, so brief my mind threatened to discount it as a daydream.

But my body documented every microsecond.

Taste: wild cherries and the mineral tang of blood orange, then a crescendo of cinnamon—her favorite, the telltale of her scent profile.

Scent: amber caramelizing in the firelight, vanilla and black orchid colliding.

Feel: velvet, of course, absurdly fitting, and soft as myth.

For all my years of training, all my discipline, nothing prepared me for the synaptic overload.

The kiss was a flicker caught in a hurricane, and the hurricane was inside me.

I wanted more, and that wanting was a physical force—limbic, primal, so close to violence it made my hands shake.

Yet her hand remained, steadying me, soft thumb tracing the line of my jaw as if to say: Remember this is real. Remember this is me.

She pulled away only a centimeter, but her breath stuttered in my own mouth. Her eyes, close enough for me to see the individual filaments of her lashes, brimmed with emotion— anticipation, terror, an almost adolescent hope. If she’d been born less ferocious, I could have ruined her with a word.

But then she smiled— a smile so private it was a secret told only to me.

“That’s all I needed,” she whispered, voice trembling with some inner thrill. “At least…for now.”

Taunting.

It occurred to me, somewhere in the background, that I was probably supposed to say something clever to break the tension or reassert control. Instead, I just stared, stupefied, lips tingling with aftershock and mind gone gloriously blank.

In that moment, I wasn’t an Alpha or a Devereaux or even a man with a plan.

I was just the sum of what she made me feel.

When she pulls back, my face is burning like a teenager's. Thirty-five years old, master of billion-dollar deals, and one barely-there kiss from Velvet Morclair reduces me to blushing incoherence.