Chapter 25 SAGE
SAGE
“Look what we have here, gentlemen.”
The voice crawled into my skull like smoke slipping beneath a door—thick, suffocating, and impossible to ignore. Muffled at first, distant, but with each word, it sharpened. Clearer. Closer.
I tried to move. I tried to run. But my body…
it wasn’t mine anymore. It felt foreign.
Heavy. As if I’d been submerged in quicksand, dragged under by invisible hands.
My limbs refused me, weighted by an unnatural stillness that made my mind thrash in its place, screaming orders that my body would not obey.
I was paralyzed.
A cold surface pressed against the length of me, biting into my skin with a cruel indifference.
Dirt. I could feel it now. Damp and gritty beneath my cheek, sapping the warmth from my bones.
My breathing rasped out unevenly. Shallow, jagged pulls of air scraped through my throat like broken glass. Every exhale burned.
What happened?
Where was I?
How had I even gotten here?
Fragments of memory flickered in my mind. Footsteps in the hall. Being given some punch from the party. Fingers on my skin. Then nothing. Until now.
A shadow moved in front of the dim, moonlight that shined above me, blotting it out like an eclipse.
I blinked, struggling to focus, my lashes sticky with tears I hadn’t realized had fallen.
And then… a figure crouched beside me, his shape distorted by the haze of half-consciousness.
His hand came up, rough fingers prying one of my eyes open.
I flinched as much as I could, which wasn’t much.
His gaze raked over me—cold, clinical, unfeeling. A predator assessing the weight of its catch.
“She’s alive,” he said after a beat, his voice dark with something that wasn’t relief. It was hunger. Satisfaction. A malicious kind of glee that made my stomach twist violently.
I wanted to close my eyes. To disappear. But I couldn’t.
“Where… am… I?” My voice cracked, a ghost of a sound. It hurt to speak, like dragging words across raw flesh. My chest ached under an invisible pressure, every shallow breath a battle I was steadily losing.
“Don’t worry about it,” another voice snapped from behind him. This one was sharper. Younger. Meaner.
“You’ll be in hell soon enough,” sneered someone else, this time from my left.
Laughter erupted around me, cutting through the thick air.
It was coarse. Harsh. The kind of laughter that wasn’t human.
It rattled the walls and reverberated inside my skull until I thought I might shatter from the sound alone.
The section of woods—wherever I was—felt suddenly smaller. Closer. Suffocating.
I couldn’t see them all, but I could feel them.
Four. No—five.
Five dark shapes moving around me like vultures circling something long dead.
I wasn’t dead yet.
But they were patient.
“So pretty,” one of them said, his voice dripping with mockery. He was close—so close I could feel his breath against my cheek. It smelled like liquor and cigarettes. “How rude of our little brother not to introduce us sooner.”
“Our duty,” another chimed in, and there was a sickening click as something metallic snapped open. A switchblade? A knife? “We have to vet all his toys.”
The word hit me like a slap.
Toy.
That’s what I was to them. A plaything. A game. A distraction they would tear apart for fun.
“Please…” I whispered. My voice trembled, breaking on the word. “Don’t…”
My legs refused to move. My arms wouldn’t lift. I was locked inside my own skin, screaming silently as I lay helpless beneath their shadows. I tried to twist away, but I had nowhere to go. The ground was cold and unyielding. And so were they.
“God, I love it when they beg,” one murmured with perverse delight.
The man in front of me—his grin widened, splitting his face into something monstrous. He shared a glance with one of the others, something unspoken passing between them. A plan. A decision.
And then, they moved.
Slow. Deliberate.
Their shadows swallowed the thin slivers of light, plunging me deeper into darkness.
Panic surged, wild and feral. It tore through me with brutal force, a scream trapped in my chest. My pulse thundered in my ears, fast and erratic, drowning out every other sound.
Rough hands closed around my ankles. Another gripped my wrists, twisting them painfully.
Their fingers were calloused and cruel, leaving behind bruises I couldn’t yet see as they trailed over my skin, touching places they had no right to claim.
Fingers slid into my hair, yanking my head back hard enough to snap my vision to the dark sky.
“Shhh,” one of them whispered, mock-gentle, as his thumb traced the line of my jaw. “You’ll like this part.”
I wanted to fight. I wanted to scream and claw and bite. But I couldn’t.
I was helpless.
And they were hungry.
Their laughter turned low, almost reverent.
As if this was sacred to them.
As if tearing me apart was their god-given right.
I was prey.
And they were the hunters.
And in that moment, I knew—there was no one coming to save me.
***
I burst awake, lungs burning, dragging in sharp, ragged breaths like I was clawing my way out of the depths of an endless pit.
My heart hammered a brutal rhythm in my chest, my fists clenched so tightly around the sheets they might tear through them.
I couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop feeling them—their hands.
Their laughter. The suffocating weight of being prey again.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force it away, but it was no use.
The memories sliced through me like glass, relentless, jagged, and cold.
A scream tore from my throat, raw and broken.
I clutched at my scalp, nails digging in hard enough to sting, wishing—desperately—that I could dig deep enough to rip them out.
The images. The sounds. The way their fingers had stripped away my humanity like I was a thing. An object.
I just wanted it gone.
I wanted it all gone.
A thought came to mind, though it seemed like a far-fetched idea.
If I could just replace their touch with someone else’s…maybe I wouldn’t feel so hollow.
Maybe the scars wouldn’t ache so viciously.
Maybe I could breathe again.
A soft creak snapped me out of my spiral, sudden and sharp. My gaze shot toward the sound. My pulse jumped when I saw him.
Reich.
He stood by the window, half-cast in shadow, the morning light bringing a brightening warmth across his features.
His frame was casual, deceptively so, leaning against the window frame like he belonged there.
An open book hung loosely in his hand, his thumb keeping his place.
His presence should’ve sent me deeper into panic, but instead—it stilled me.
Infuriated me. Grounded me in ways I hadn’t asked for.
And yet… I wasn’t sure I wanted him to leave.
"How long have you been there?" My voice was sharp, laced with humiliation. Rawness scraped along every syllable.
He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.
He simply closed the book in his hand with slow, deliberate precision, “Long enough.”
The silence that followed was thicker than it should’ve been. A pause loaded with things neither of us wanted to address.
Then softer, he asked, “Bad dream?”
His words shouldn’t have mattered. They shouldn’t have dug beneath my skin. But the way he said them… not mocking, not dismissive… it disarmed me.
I tugged the sheets tighter around myself, as if they could shield me from him. From the way his eyes never looked away, like he was peeling me open. “I just… can’t get certain things out of my mind.”
Reich arched a brow, the hint of a challenge flashing behind those unreadable eyes. “The certain things you refuse to talk about?”
I shrugged, trying for indifference. Trying and failing.
I kept my gaze averted, but it drifted anyway—lingering too long on the sharp cut of his jaw and the way his muscles flexed as he shifted his stance.
Even beneath the simplicity of joggers and a plain black t-shirt, he was lethal.
Dangerous. And God, help me, my body responded to it.
He smirked like he knew. Like he felt the pull just as much as I did, “I came to check on you after—”
“After my ridiculous meltdown,” I cut him off, the words snapping like brittle twigs. The sting of shame made my skin burn.
“No,” he said evenly.
His eyes flickered with something I couldn’t name. Something I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
A silence stretched between us, thick and uneasy.
Then he broke it, his voice low but sharper than a knife, “I have a different question now.”
I braced myself for what he was about to say.
“Why are you so scared to tell me what happened?”
I shook my head, but it wasn’t enough. “Because…” My voice faltered. I swallowed. “Because you won’t see me the same.”
He studied me, long and hard, before his tone shifted. Quieter. More dangerous. “And how is it you think I see you now?”
I held his gaze, but it was like holding on to the edge of a blade, “I don’t know,” I lied.
I knew exactly how he saw me.
As something he wanted.
His lips twitched into something close to a laugh, dark and knowing. “Oh, I think you do.”
I bristled. My walls snapped up instinctively, before saying, “As someone you can control.”
The accusation flew out like a dagger and I continued with it, “You want to know me because you can’t control someone without understanding their weaknesses.”
There was no flinch. No defense.
Reich simply tilted his head, amused and infuriating, as he retorted, “You don’t need to know someone to control them. People are simple. They just need a little motivation.”
The conversation was slipping into dangerous territory, and I knew it.
So, I veered, “How did my things get here?”
Blunt. Deflective. I regretted asking the moment it left my lips, knowing he was probably going to hit me with, “A deal’s a deal, Sage.”
But instead, he tilted his head again, considering.
So, I added, “Some of the books—”
“Are mine,” he interrupted, a wicked smirk playing at his mouth. “I put them here for you.”
My throat tightened. “Why?”
“I watched you for months out in my field, you know?” he said, like that explained everything. “And you only ever read the same things. Figured you could use something new.”
I clenched my jaw, his admission hitting harder than I expected. Watching me?“I don’t like new,” I snapped.
“Says the girl who ran away from everything familiar just to chase something new.”
His words landed deeper than they should have, and he let the silence stretch.
Then he added, quieter now, “Maybe you’d actually find what you’re looking for if you stopped hiding behind what’s safe.”
I shot him a glare, sharp and scathing, but he didn’t stop.
“You know the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?”
He tilted his head slightly. “Whatever you’re doing… it isn’t working. I watched you repeat the same routine—day in, day out. And every night, you went home looking just as hollow as you did the day before.”
He was right, and I hated that he was.
The conversation was getting too close, too personal. I couldn’t let him see it was working—couldn’t let him see me. So I deflected.
“And the clothes?” I asked, sharpening my tone. “Am I supposed to believe they’re yours?”
Reich let out a low chuckle. “They’re for you.”
“I don’t need hand-me-downs from your last house slave,” I spat, venom sharp in my voice.
That got him.
His smirk faded. His knuckles whitened against the windowsill, not from anger—but from something worse.
Restraint.
The air thickened between us. My pulse raced.
And even knowing it was dangerous, my gaze drifted lower.
His joggers did little to hide what I shouldn’t be looking at.
He noticed but he said nothing. He moved instead. Slow. Purposeful. Like he was stalking something fragile and wild.
Me.
He stepped between my knees, his body heat coiling around me, suffocating. His hand gripped my chin, tilting my face toward his with a slow, commanding touch.
“Look at me,” he murmured.
I did.
And it felt like drowning.
He was too close. I could feel every hard inch of him against me, the rough fabric doing nothing to soften the impact. His breath ghosted over my skin, hot and deliberate.
“What is it you need, Sage?”
My pulse stuttered. My body answered before I could.
I wanted him. I needed him to erase everything.
But I forced myself to say, “I… I don’t know.”
His grip tightened just enough to make me gasp.
“If you keep lying to me,” he said, his voice a dangerous promise, “I’ll make it so you can’t speak… only scream.”
A shiver raked through me.
I knew he meant it.
I swallowed hard. “I… need to forget,” I whispered.
For a heartbeat, something flickered in his expression. Something unguarded. But it was gone as quickly as it came.
“And what is it you want me to help you forget?”
I hesitated before relenting, “The last time I was with a man… it wasn’t a good time.”
There.
The truth. Kind of.
Silence stretched taut between us.
Then—he laughed. Low. Dark. Dangerous.
“I’m sorry he didn’t satisfy you, wildflower,” he said, but his voice darkened, before continuing, “But we both know that’s not the full story.”
His eyes bored into me, stripping me bare.
Then he turned for the door.
Unimpressed by my half-truth.
“Reich—” My voice cracked.
He stopped, glancing back.
“—I haven’t heard music since… since coming here,” I said, hating how small I sounded. “If it’s okay, I’d like to.”
His eyes softened. Barely.
But he said nothing.
He just left.
And as the door clicked shut behind him, I wondered if I’d just handed him another weapon to use against me.