Page 41 of Knot Their Safe Haven (The Omega Rebellion Movement #3)

TRUTHS IN PUMPKIN PATCHES

~ALEXIS~

T he cobblestone path winds away from the main festival chaos, following a creek that babbles about secrets the mountains keep.

Velvet's hand fits perfectly in mine—smaller but strong, fingers interlaced like we've been doing this for years instead of days. Her silver hair catches afternoon light, and every third person we pass does a double-take, recognizing the Rebel Queen even in her autumn disguise.

"Where are we going?" she asks for the fourth time, practically bouncing in those ridiculous pumpkin-print stockings.

"Patience is a virtue."

"I'm almost forty and recently dead. Patience is for people with time to waste."

The logic is flawless, but I maintain mystery for another hundred yards before the path opens into a clearing that took three phone calls and a questionable amount of money to secure.

"Oh my god."

Her whisper carries the same awe she had for the breakfast spread, but multiplied. The private garden spreads before us—part of some historical society's property that normally requires membership and appointments. But money talks, and the Rosenberg name shouts.

Orange and white checkered blankets cover the grass beneath an ancient oak whose leaves burn gold.

Pumpkins of every size create natural borders—some carved with intricate designs that must have taken hours, others painted with metallic swirls.

String lights wrap through branches despite the afternoon sun, waiting for dusk to justify their presence.

The picnic spread looks like Pinterest achieved sentience—finger sandwiches cut into leaf shapes, pumpkin soup in miniature gourds that serve as bowls, cider in mason jars with cinnamon stick stirrers.

"Alexis." She turns to me with eyes bright enough to rival the lights. "This is..."

"Excessive? Ridiculous? Everything you wanted?"

"Perfect."

She launches herself at me, arms around my neck, and I catch her easily. Her kiss tastes like apple cider and joy, brief but devastating in its sincerity.

"How did you even arrange this?"

"Called ahead while you were getting ready. The historical society loves donations." I set her down but keep her close. "Plus I wanted photos without strangers in the background."

I pull out the Polaroid camera—vintage because aesthetic matters—and her squeal could shatter glass.

"Yes! Oh, we need one by the carved pumpkins. And under the tree. And?—"

We spend twenty minutes taking photos with the dedication of teenagers documenting their first relationship.

Velvet draped over my shoulders. Me lifting her while she laughs.

Both of us attempting serious faces before dissolving into giggles.

The Polaroids scatter across the blanket like evidence of happiness.

"My cheeks hurt from smiling," she complains, dropping onto the blanket with zero grace.

"Tragic." I settle beside her, pulling the picnic basket closer. "Hungry?"

"Still full from breakfast, but walking helped." She selects a sandwich shaped like a maple leaf. "Plus everything's tiny and adorable. Finger food doesn't count as real calories."

"That's definitely not how biology works."

"Shh. Let me have my delusions."

We eat in comfortable quiet for a few minutes, the creek providing soundtrack while leaves occasionally drift down like nature's confetti. Velvet shifts, moving to lay her head in my lap without asking, and the casual intimacy makes my chest tight.

"This is nice," she murmurs, eyes closed.

"Just nice?"

"Nice in ways I didn't know existed." Her fingers find mine, playing with my rings. "Can I ask you something?"

"Always."

"What made decide to be a bold female Alpha? Like I know the twins and even Alessandro mention you go back and forth as Alexander in the public eye because it’s just easier for diplomatics, but like what made you confident in being Alexis?

Not the gender part—I understand that. But the public part.

The risk to your career, your family's reputation. Like if you jus decided to be like fuck this, I’m a female, get used to it, weren’t you afraid of the outcome? "

I consider how much truth to offer, then remember this is Velvet—she deserves everything.

"Woke up one morning when I was thirty-five and realized I was dying.

" Her eyes snap open, concern immediate, but I continue.

"Not literally. But living as Alexander was killing everything real about me.

You just wake up one more and get tired of all the bullshit.

The suits, the boardrooms, the careful masculine performance—it was suffocating.

I'd built an empire as someone who didn't exist. I wanted to wear dresses, to embrace my feminity as well.

The only ones that mattered was the family and friends close to me who read right through the facade.

Everyone else, I realized what was the grand show for? "

"So you just... changed?"

"Took three years of therapy and one spectacular family intervention that ended with my father disowning me for six months." I trace her jawline with careful fingers. "Then he realized I was still the same ruthless bastard who'd doubled the family fortune, just in better shoes."

She laughs, catching my hand to press it against her cheek. "And the pack?"

"Alessandro never blinked. Said he'd noticed years ago and was waiting for me to be ready. The twins..." I smile at the memory. "The twins sent me a cake that said 'Congratulations on your promotion to goddess' and supported me as usual. No questions needed."

"They sound perfect for you."

"They are. Which is why when Alessandro said he'd found his omega, we paid attention. Seventeen years of waiting meant she had to be extraordinary."

"I'm not?—"

"You are." I shift so I can look at her properly. "Which is why I need to ask, what romantic experiences did you actually have with them? With Knox, specifically?"

Her expression shifts, walls trying to rise before consciously lowering.

"Why?"

"Because I need to understand what you think love looks like. What you've been taught to accept."

She sits up, creating distance, but I don't chase. This has to be her choice.

"Knox and I were... physical. From the beginning.

Angry sex in the gym after hours. Desperate fucking in storage rooms. Quick, hard, hidden.

" She picks at the blanket's edge. "I got pregnant during one of those encounters.

We never talked about it properly. Just..

. continued the pattern for twenty years. "

"No dates? No public acknowledgment?"

"He said public would complicate things. The gym, the Haven, our arrangement." The word drips bitterness. "Everything was always too complicated for daylight."

"And Adyani?"

"Adyani visited sometimes. Before transition, we had a few nights that felt like more. After..." She shrugs. "Everything became theoretical. Someday. Eventually. When she was ready."

"Malcolm?"

The silence stretches long enough that I almost withdraw the question. When she speaks, her voice is small.

"It's not... it's hard to explain without making you angry."

"Try me."

She meets my eyes, searching for judgment and finding none.

"We... developed a routine," Velvet said, voice so low I had to lean forward, as if closing the inches between us would make the words any less malignant.

"I'd take sleeping pills. Leave my door unlocked.

He'd come in hours later, always after I was unconscious, and.

.." She trailed off, the rest unspoken, but the implication so loud it rang in my skull.

For a moment the air felt thick with rot, the citrus and spice of the picnic overtaken by the sour memory of old sorrow, dread, and shame.

It was, in a way, jarringly mundane—Omegas, in every circle I’d ever known, developed maladapted strategies for love or its imitation.

But Velvet was not just any Omega. She was the one we'd waited for, the one who broke every mold and reassembled the shards into a stained glass window. And here she was, admitting she’d spent years being taken, nightly, in a manner that required her anesthesia.

I could see her hands, knotted in the blanket. The pale knuckles. The way she pressed her tongue against her canine, drawing a bead of blood to anchor herself in the now.

"Velvet," I said, because I had to say something. Because in the absence of words, abusers always win.

She didn’t look at me; her eyes stayed fixed on the creek, as if the water might carry her confession downstream to be lost among the stones.

"I know how it sounds," she said, rushing the words as if to outrun what they meant. "But I wanted it. Needed it. It was the only way he’d touch me—when I couldn’t respond, couldn’t ask for more. Like he needed me helpless to want me."

The silence that followed was not the companionable sort that had blanketed us all afternoon. This was a hollowing, suffocating kind, and I realized with horror that I was witnessing the moment an Omega confessed a secret so warped it still bled even after years of daylight.

My voice was calm, even as my vision narrowed to a pinprick.

"He conditioned you to accept that as affection. That doesn't make it right."

She shook her head, a lock of silver hair falling across one eye. "I know. But it’s what I thought I deserved. It’s what I thought love was—being needed only when you’re silent and still."

I wanted to tear that story from her like a spoiled bandage, to find the version where she’d been loved gorgeously, loudly, with honest hands and mouths and laughter. But the past is a tattoo; you can cover it, but it’s always there.

At the edge of my vision, Alexis’s posture shifted—her jaw set, her fingers drumming minutely against her knee. She had the look of a wolf who’d scented a trespasser at the pack’s border. When she spoke, it was in the measured, lethal tone that usually preceded someone losing a limb in a boardroom.

"Did he ever apologize?"