Chapter 47 SAGE
SAGE
Everything was a blur when I came back.
A haze thick enough to suffocate me. The air was dense, heavy, pressing in on me like an unseen weight I couldn’t shake loose. My body was here—breathing, existing—but I wasn’t sure if I was really alive anymore. I was a void wearing my own skin, hollow and cracked.
I had survived.
But survival wasn’t freedom.
It wasn’t peace. It wasn’t relief. It was just existence.
A raw, aching thing you carried day after day until you couldn’t remember how to set it down.
And as I lifted my head and met Reich’s gaze across the room, that truth settled into me like cold iron in my bones.
This wasn’t the end.
It never had been.
And maybe it never would be.
The fear was still there, insidious and suffocating, curling cold fingers around my throat every time I closed my eyes.
Klay’s brothers—the ones still alive—they were waiting.
Out there in the dark.
Lurking in the silence, slipping like shadows beneath the hollow recesses of my mind.
Whether I was awake or asleep, they were there—taunting me, promising they would pull me back under.
Promising they would finish what they’d started.
There was no escape. No peace.
Only the slow, crushing certainty that one day they would come for me.
And maybe this time, I wouldn’t make it back.
But Reich was always there.
His presence was a tether, an anchor to something real in the middle of all this chaos.
Something solid and warm when everything else was cold.
I found him in the quiet moments—silent, unmoving, watching me like I was something fragile, something he couldn’t afford to lose.
Like he didn’t trust himself to look away for even a second.
And maybe he didn’t.
Maybe I didn’t trust myself either.
“I’m going to play some music,” he said suddenly. His voice was soft but unwavering, cutting through the haze like a knife. It was gentle. But it was also absolute. There was no argument. No space to protest. Only his voice and the promise inside it.
That he wasn’t leaving.
That I wasn’t alone.
My mind twisted against it, rebelling the way it always did.
Whispering the lies that had become too familiar.
It won’t help. Nothing will. You’re tainted. Haunted. Wasted.
I closed my eyes and breathed out the truth I couldn’t swallow anymore.
“They’re going to find me one day.” My voice cracked around the words.
Because it wasn’t fear anymore. It was fact.
Reich’s jaw tightened, a flash of something dark crossing his expression as his hands clenched at his sides.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t soften. But his voice—it was sharper now. Unbreakable.
“I won’t let them.”
Simple. Final.
As if it was that easy. As if just saying it out loud would make it true.
“Just focus on feeling better,” he continued. “Let me worry about them.”
The words slammed into me.
They hit like a tide, crashing against the fog clouding my mind.
And for a moment— I wanted to believe him. I wanted to let him carry the weight.
But wanting something doesn’t make it yours. And belief is a fragile thing.
Too easy to lose.
Too dangerous to hold.
So, all I could do was collapse into him.
Let my body go limp against his, my eyelids too heavy to keep open as the darkness tried to swallow me whole.
I didn’t fight it.
Not this time.
So, I said, If something happens to me—”
“Don’t.” The word cracked like a whip. Reich’s grip on my wrist tightened, almost painful.
He wasn’t pleading.
He was commanding.
“I need to say this,” I whispered, my throat tight, raw. “You need to hear it.”
His eyes burned into mine.
Something desperate. Something close to wild.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “Because nothing is going to happen to you.”
But I shook my head slowly, forcing the words past the lump in my throat. “But if it does…”
He closed the minimal distance between us, his breath hot against my cheek as he lowered his voice to something dark and feral. “Then I burn the world down.” His fingers brushed my jaw, tilting my face toward his. “Understand?”
I wanted to hold onto that moment.
I wanted to believe the fury in his voice.
The certainty in his promise.
But it slipped through my fingers like sand, vanishing before I could grasp it.
I was slipping away. Fading.
Being pulled back into the abyss, inch by inch.
But there was his voice again. Rough. Desperate.
“Stay with me, Sage.”
I clung to it. To him. To the raw desperation in his tone, letting it anchor me.
Just enough. Just barely. To sink into him. To feel the warmth of his skin and the steady beat of his heart.
“Reich, please,” I murmured. My voice was too small. “I just… hold me. Just for a little while.”
He exhaled, the sound of it heavy against my ear like he was breathing for both of us and then his arms closed around me, pulling me into the shelter of his chest. Tighter. Grounding me in a way nothing else could.
His head rested against mine and I buried my face in the warm curve of his neck, breathing him in.
Counting his breaths like lifelines.
For a moment, the world disappeared. The chaos quieted. The storm inside me stilled.
Just long enough to make me think maybe it could stay that way. Maybe I could find my way back to myself.
But then—Klay’s words echoed in my mind, “Reich kidnapped you to hand over to me.”
And a chill swept through me. Tightening my muscles. Banishing the fleeting calm.
The silence stretched between us. Pressed in. Suffocating.
“Reich…” My voice barely made it out. “Klay said you were planning to deliver me to him.”
He stiffened instantly like a wire pulled too tight.
“Sage…” His voice was careful. Measured. Like he was choosing his next move on a battlefield.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” He continued, standing slowly, posture rigid with unease. Guarded but not hiding.
“The men who hurt you… they were never supposed to get that close.” He ran a hand through his hair, pacing. “My work… it requires that I handle threats before they become problems.”
“Handle?” I asked, already knowing the answer. But needing to hear him say it.
His jaw clenched. “Yes.”
“You mean kill,” I clarified and there was no question in my voice.
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate. His gaze locked onto mine, unwavering, as he continued, “but I made a mistake.”
A shadow crossed his features. Something broken.
“I hurt other people,” he whispered. Quiet. Haunted. “And I’m sorry, Sage. I’ve made so many mistakes. But that one…” His throat worked around the words. “That one will haunt me for as long as I’m alive.”
I didn’t speak.
A million thoughts crashed through me, one after the other.
But none of them came out.
And the fear?
It slipped away for a moment, replaced by something else.
Relief. Recognition.
“So what you’re saying is…” I exhaled, letting the reality settle like a stone in my gut.
“I’ve been kidnapped by a serial killer?”
Reich blinked. Then his mouth twitched into something dangerously close to a smirk. “I guess… if you want to put it that way.”
“An orange is an orange,” I said with a shrug.
A flicker of amusement crossed his face and I let it ground me. Let it make me feel a little more alive.
“Fair enough.” He conceded.
I pushed myself up, pacing. Each step heavier than the last.
He watched me carefully. Like he wasn’t sure if I was going to run or not.
“Say something,” he pleaded. His voice rough. Fraying at the edges.
I stopped and exhaled shakily, “Well,” I said, “it’s not exactly an ideal situation. But I think we can work through it.”
His laugh was dry. Disbelieving, “Work through it?” He shook his head. “Sage… I just told you—I take lives for a living. I’m the reason this happened to you.”
“But you don’t kill good people,” I said quietly.
His expression darkened, “How do you know that?”
I stepped closer. Pressed my hands to his chest and felt his heart racing beneath my palms. “Because I trust who I’ve seen you to be.”
His eyes searched mine.
Desperate. Conflicted. Wanting.
“Why aren’t you scared of me?” he rasped.
“Do you want me to be?” I whispered.
“Sage…”
“Reich…”
The corner of his mouth twitched. And I hadn’t seen him smile in days. But there it was. Small. Wrecked.
And it made something inside me feel a little less broken.
He chuckled. Shook his head.
“What?” I asked, watching the way his gaze softened.
“I think I’m in love,” he said quietly. Like a secret.
My pulse skittered and my breath caught. I smirked, arching a brow, “And I think you’ve spent too much time around your brother.”
“Perhaps,” he murmured. But there was something deeper in his voice now.
Something real.
And before I could talk myself out of it, I closed the minimal space between us letting His lips meet mine and then nothing else mattered.
We fell into each other.
Desperate. Breathless. Hands pulling, clothes falling. Until there was nothing left but skin against skin. And the sharp, sweet ache of belonging.
We collapsed to the floor, and he moved over me like he was made for it. Like I was made for him. His fingers slid between my thighs, teasing, testing. Before pressing inside.
A gasp tore from my lips, and he caught it in his mouth.
“So fucking beautiful,” he growled.
And I shattered around him. Lost in the heat of us. In the reckless, brutal need of it.
As we lay tangled together, his breath warm against my skin, I whispered, “I think I’m in love too. I think I don’t ever want this to end.”
Reich stirred, his voice rough with sleep and something more.
“You’re thinking too much, wildflower.” He asked.
I met his gaze.
My heart twisting.
Before saying, “But I think we just made everything worse.”
He smirked as he pulled me back into his arms. “Perhaps…or maybe,” he murmured, “we just finally got it right.”
And more than anything—I wanted to believe him.
Because in his arms, the chaos stilled.
The noise in my head faded.
And for the first time, the world felt quiet.
Like maybe peace wasn’t a place.
Maybe it was a person.
And somehow, I had found him.
Maybe—just maybe—that’s where love begins.
In the wreckage. In the uncertainty.
In the hope that this time... it’s real.