63. Sage
SIXTY-THREE
SAGE
Knox and I walk down the stairs together.
The kitchen is already in motion. Holden is at the stove, cracking eggs into a pan like he’s been training all his life for this moment.
He’s showered and changed, which means he’s been up since before dawn, which means he probably didn’t sleep at all.
There’s coffee brewed, bacon draining on a paper towel, and a stack of plates set out on the counter in a line so neat it looks like a crime scene diagram.
“Morning,” he says without turning around.
I cross the kitchen and slide my arms around him from behind, pressing my cheek to his back. He stiffens for half a second—Holden always stiffens, like affection is a surprise he hasn’t prepped for—and then his hand comes down over mine and squeezes.
“You sleep?” I ask.
“Enough.”
“Liar.”
“Enough for me.” He turns his head to look at me sideways. His eyes are tired but steady. “How’s our boy?”
“Making dick jokes. So. On the mend.”
“Thank God.” He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my knuckles, slow and firm, then goes back to the eggs. “Protein first. Then we all talk.”
“Gloria’s orders?”
“Common sense. But yes, also Gloria’s orders.”
Eli appears from the living room, coffee already in hand, looking like he slept in his clothes. He takes one look at me and what can only be described as pained tenderness flickers across his face.
“Come here,” he says.
I go. He sets the coffee down and pulls me in, one hand at the back of my head, his chin resting on top of my skull. He doesn’t say anything. Just holds me and breathes and lets the silence do the work.
“I’m okay,” I murmur into his chest.
“I know.” His lips press against my hair. “I’m the one who’s not.”
“You will be.”
“Give me a minute.”
I give him a minute. Then I pull back and he cups my face in both hands and studies me—the bruises, the scratches, the fact that I’m standing and talking and alive—and kisses my forehead with deliberate care.
“How was Amy when you left?” I ask, and he bounces a shoulder.
“She was sleeping. Dean stayed with her all night.”
“I’m glad.”
“Sit down,” he says, kissing my forehead again. “Eat. We’ll check on Amy later.”
Milo was sitting at the table when I came downstairs. But now he’s hovering beside Holden at the stove, reaching for a spatula.
“I can help—”
“Sit,” Holden says.
“But I’m really good at—”
“Sit, Milo.”
“What if I stir the—”
“Milo.” Holden points the spatula at the chair. “Sit down or I’m calling your mother.”
That works. Milo heads back to the dining room and drops into the chair like he’s been put in the naughty corner.
But his knee is bouncing and his fingers are drumming the table and I can see the restless energy building.
Milo doesn’t do sitting still very well.
He needs something to keep his hands occupied.
So I walk over and straddle his lap.
His whole body stills. Arms wrap around my waist automatically.
“Oh,” he says. “Okay. Hello, kitten. I like this.” He leans his head forward and buries his face in my cleavage, adding a muffled, “I like this a lot.”
I drag my nails across his scalp. He goes boneless, closing his eyes and practically purring. On my other side, Eli slides a mug of coffee my way. “Drink,” he says, then adds, “Let him breathe. Maybe switch to lap adjacent.”
“Never,” I say. “Lap forever.”
Milo lifts his head. “She stays.” He’s so completely serious that I can’t help laughing. He grins. “You’re warm and smell incredible.”
Eli’s brow arches. “She’s covered in your sweat and tears.”
“That’s how I like her.”
I lift my knee and turn so I’m sitting side-saddle, thanking Eli for the coffee as I wrap my hands around it and take a sip. Milo nuzzles my neck, and I let him—even though it makes drinking harder—because after what he did for me, he can have anything he wants.
Holden sets out breakfast. It’s an absurd amount of food: eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, even a token bowl of fruit. We all pile in.
Micah steals the mug Eli’s drinking from and sips it without asking.
“Hey,” Eli protests.
“You poured it for me,” Micah says, leaning in and kissing Eli on the cheek.
Milo’s arms tighten around my waist. “I love this,” he says quietly. Into my hair, so only I hear it.
“The breakfast?”
“Everything. All of it. Them. You. The messy kitchen.”
I turn my head and kiss his jaw. “Me too.”
Everyone takes their seat. Milo refuses to let me off his lap, so I eat with my plate on the table and his chin on my shoulder and his arms around my middle, which is logistically challenging but emotionally nonnegotiable.
For a while, nobody talks. Just the sound of forks and chewing and Milo making obscene noises about the bacon. Holden keeps putting food on his plate until he’s eaten enough protein to satisfy Gloria, then lets him have the pancakes and butt-ton of syrup.
The morning light fills the kitchen. The coffee is hot. The food is good. And for a brief, fragile window, it almost feels normal.
By the time I set my fork down, the plates are mostly empty and some of Milo’s color has returned.
“So,” I start. “The fourteen men last night. How confident are we that one of them was Stephen?”
“Tyler was Stephen,” Milo snaps immediately, and I feel his pulse quicken where his body is pressed into my side.
Forks pause midair. Holden and Eli exchange a look. Knox stops chewing.
Holden sets down his coffee. “Knox got the devices to Odin before he came home. The local yard went dark while you were sleeping.”
“Already?”
“Twelve members answered the same invitation and didn’t report in,” Eli says. “Their admin noticed.”
“So Fenrir lost them?”
“He lost access to the local yard,” Holden says. “He still has everything he pulled before they terminated that group. The recovered devices should give him new threads to pull.”
“But the other twenty-four local accounts are gone?”
“For now. But the wider platform is still active, and Fenrir still has access to the public areas.”
“But we can’t see the other accounts?”
“Not anymore. Not until a new yard is established.”
The words come out flat. “Great. Love that for us.”
Milo shifts beneath me. “Fenrir’s good. He’s the best. If there’s a thread, he’ll pull it. He pulled my threads once, and I’m basically a ghost with better hair.”
Nobody laughs.
He deflates a fraction, and I squeeze the forearm banded across my middle.
“And Stephen?” I ask. The name tastes like copper. “If Tyler was Stephen, and Tyler’s dead, then—”
“Tyler’s known Kennel profile wasn’t SMAN69,” Holden says. “You know that.”
“I know.” Milo’s fingers tighten against my waist. “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t running both.
At Pinecrest, Tyler touched his phone and Stephen lit up Brock’s cloned one.
The timing matched. Then Tyler came back for Sage the one time she was alone with Amy.
He knew she was there, had access, motive, and the same fucking pattern. ”
“It’s strong evidence,” Holden says. “It isn’t proof that the same man controlled both accounts. SMAN69 could have belonged to one of the twelve members who came last night. Or someone who never came.”
Milo goes rigid beneath me.
“What if Stephen’s still out there?” His breathing turns shallow and fast against my back. “What if I killed fourteen guys and none of them were the guy? What was the point, kitten? What was the point of any of—”
“Fourteen men came to assault two women they believed had been drugged and delivered to them,” Holden cuts in, his voice a blade slicing through the spiral. “That was the point.”
Milo stops.
His heart hammers through my spine, a trapped-bird rhythm.
“Fenrir will identify every device owner he can and recover any Kennel sessions still authenticated,” Holden continues. “If one of those devices carried SMAN69, we’ll have a direct link.”
“And if none of them did?” I ask.
His eyes meet mine. “Then we keep hunting. The work doesn’t change. Only the timeline does.”
“Timelines are manageable,” Micah says, reaching across the table to still Milo’s drumming fingers with his own. “It’s what we’ve always done. One thread at a time.”
Knox hasn’t moved. He’s watching me, reading the arithmetic happening behind my face, and I force myself through the count—in four, hold four, out four—while his gaze holds me steady like a hand on the back of my neck.
“Okay,” Milo says. He exhales against my shoulder, some of the wire coming out of his muscles. “But for the record, if Stephen’s still alive, I’m going to be extremely upset, and I reserve the right to make it everyone’s problem.”
“Noted,” Eli says dryly, refilling his coffee.
“It’ll be my problem first,” Knox rumbles.
The way he says it—flat, absolute—makes it sound less like reassurance and more like a eulogy for a man who doesn’t know he’s dead yet.
Milo relaxes another degree. His chin settles back onto my shoulder.
“Tyler can’t come back.”
Nobody argues with that.
But nobody says Stephen can’t.
“I’m guessing this means the surveillance remains?” I ask.
“It does,” Holden says.
“Are we adding new trackers?”
“No new trackers. But after last night, one of us stays close until we know whether we got the person targeting you. You go to work, live your life, and we stay alert.”
“And Odin?” I look toward Knox. “How pissed was he when you gave him the devices?”
“He didn’t say,” Knox answers. “He wants a full explanation next meeting.”
My stomach tightens. We broke Odin’s stand-down the moment Tyler died. Now Milo and Knox have turned that breach into a massacre and cost Fenrir his live access. This could damage more than my initiation. It could damage the Hangmen.
I lean closer to Milo.
“He’ll be pissed,” Micah says. “But thirteen local account holders are dead if we include Tyler. Plus the two men who came along hoping to join the party. Whatever it cost, fifteen predators can’t hurt anyone again. Worth it.”
“Worth it,” I repeat.
I stare into my coffee.
It’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole. Take out one rapist and a bunch of others pop up. The threat against me ends once we know Stephen is gone.