Page 134 of Knot Their Safe Haven
My driver pulls into the circular drive with practiced ease, gravel crunching beneath tires in that particular rhythm that means arrival, means safety, means the end of performance and the beginning of truth.
"Would you like me to wait, Ms. Morclair?" His voice carries professional concern, the kind that comes from years of driving someone who rarely remembers to care for herself.
"No, thank you, Marcus. My pack will handle everything from here."
The words still feel foreign on my tongue—my pack—but they taste like honey and possibility and everything I'd convinced myself I didn't deserve. He nods, understanding more than I've said, and I slide from leather luxury into mountain air that tastes like pine and promise.
Every muscle aches with the particular exhaustion that comes from emotional marathons rather than physical ones. Six hours of interviews after the press conference, each reporterhungry for different angles of the same story. The betrayed omega finding love. The Rebel Queen's spectacular revelation. The attempted murder that became resurrection.
My hands shake slightly as I punch in the entry code—our anniversary date, Alessandro had insisted, even though we'd only been together days—and the lock disengages with that expensive silence that speaks of German engineering and paranoid security.
The door opens to unexpected color.
Rose petals scatter across the polished concrete floors, but these aren't the white ones that haunted twenty years of careful distance. These are deep burgundy, the exact shade of wine I prefer, dark enough to look like spilled Merlot in the dying light, rich enough to make my breath catch with the deliberation of the choice.
Someone knew. Someone paid attention to preferences I'd never voiced, noticed the wines I selected, the lipsticks I wore, the particular shade that made me feel powerful rather than pretty.
The trail leads deeper into the house, each petal placed with intention rather than haste. Not the desperate scatter of last-minute romance but the careful choreography of something planned, something that required discussion and consensus and multiple hands working toward singular purpose.
I bend to collect one petal, rubbing it between fingers that still smell faintly of the makeup remover I'd used to strip away the press conference mask in the car. The rose is fresh—hours old at most—and the scent rises clean and sweet without the cloying funeral parlor intensity of older blooms.
"What have you done?" The question escapes as whisper to the empty foyer, though I know the house isn't truly empty. Can feel the presence of pack even in their absence, their scents layered through space like signatures on a love letter.
The rose trail curves toward the floating staircase, and that's when I notice the candles.
Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, lining each step in glass hurricanes that protect flames from the drafts that ghost through this temple of transparency. The light they cast is warm gold against industrial steel, transforming the stark modern lines into something softer, something that invites rather than impresses.
My heels click against each step, the sound echoing in the vertical space that usually feels like a gallery but tonight feels like a cathedral. The candles continue up the second flight, their flames creating shadows that dance across walls like celebration, like every birthday I celebrated alone was being retroactively honored.
The exhaustion that pressed against my spine moments ago transforms into something else—anticipation threaded through with wonder at the effort this required. Someone had to buy hundreds of candles. Someone had to light each one, timing it so they'd still be burning when I arrived. Someone had to place each rose petal with deliberation that speaks of care rather than obligation.
Multiple someones, from the scope of it.
The second floor hallway continues the trail, petals creating a burgundy river that flows toward the east wing—a section of the house I'd barely explored, assuming it was storage or guest quarters that would never see use. But there's light spilling from beneath a door at the hall's end, warm and golden and inviting in a way that makes my chest tight with recognition of something I can't quite name.
As I move closer, scents begin to separate from the general perfume of roses and candle wax. Leather and storm clouds—Alessandro's signature that makes my pulse quicken even exhausted. Gunpowder and cordite wrapped in espresso—thetwins' matched yet distinct markers. And there, threading through it all like silver through tapestry, Alexis's wild roses mixed with something indefinably female Alpha that makes my omega instincts purr before I can suppress them.
The door is cracked just enough to spill light without revealing what waits beyond. A pause at the threshold, my hand trembling slightly as it finds the handle. Not from fear but from the weight of whatever waits beyond, the sense that this is a moment that will divide my life into before and after, the kind of threshold that once crossed can never be uncrossed.
The door opens on silent hinges to reveal impossibility made manifest.
The room shouldn't exist—not in this glass house of hard angles and modern minimalism. Yet here it spreads before me like every Pinterest board I'd ever created at 3 AM, every Instagram post I'd saved while pretending I didn't want exactly this, every dream I'd dismissed as childish when biology reminded me I was running out of time.
Black bookshelves line three walls, floor to ceiling, the wood gleaming with the kind of finish that speaks of craftsmen who take pride in permanence. But it's what fills those shelves that stops my breathing entirely. Books I'd mentioned in passing during recovery—the complete works of Octavia Butler I'd said I'd always meant to read. The leather-bound editions of Mary Oliver's poetry I'd admired in a shop window twenty years ago. First editions of Angela Carter that cost more than most cars but that I'd added to wish lists I thought no one saw.
Between the books, small lights create constellation patterns, not bright enough to read by but perfect for navigation, for finding specific spines in darkness, for the kind of midnight wandering that happens when sleep refuses its comfort.
The floor is covered in rugs that overlap like tectonic plates of comfort—Persian designs in jewel tones, thick sheepskins thatbeg for bare feet, a massive circular rug in burgundy so deep it looks black until light catches the fibers. They create a pathway toward the room's heart, where impossibility compounds into something that makes my knees weak.
The nest—because that's what this is, what this has to be, what this absolutely is—spreads like an invitation to finally rest.
Massive knitted blankets in textures that range from cloud-soft to substantial enough to hide beneath create the base layer. The knitting is the kind that takes months to complete, each stitch an intention, each row a promise that someone would eventually need this much comfort. They're in shades of cream and caramel and chocolate, with threads of burgundy and gold woven through like veins of precious metal.
Pillows of every possible size create topography—some small enough to tuck behind necks, others large enough to use as body pillows, several that are essentially cushions masquerading as pillows. The fabrics vary from velvet to linen to something that might be cashmere, each one inviting different kinds of touch, different kinds of comfort.
But it's the center that makes my throat close with emotion that threatens to spillover.
A cushion—though that word feels inadequate—that could swallow three people whole dominates the nest's heart. It's covered in fabric that shifts between brown and burgundy depending on angle, like expensive wine held to light, like comfort given form. The shape defies physics, somehow maintaining structure while promising to conform to any body that trusts it with weight.
