Sage's Point of View
I don't sleep for two days.
The black card sits on my nightstand and I keep staring at it like it's going to tell me what to do. Like it's going to save me from having to make the hardest choice of my life.
I'm listening, I told that man. I'm listening to an offer from someone I don't know. An offer that sounds like salvation and probably smells like death.
My apartment looks different now. The walls are closing in. The mattress on the floor feels like a grave. Everything that seemed like survival six months ago now looks like a very slow way to disappear.
On day one of not sleeping, I call in sick to Rookie's. Riley texts me asking if I'm okay. I don't answer.
On day two, Riley shows up at my apartment.
She's standing outside my door with coffee and a worried face and I realize I'm about to lose the one person who actually matters to me. The one person who chose to care about me even though she doesn't know who I am.
"You look like death," Riley says when I open the door.
"Tired," I say.
"This is more than tired. This is something else." She pushes past me into my apartment. She's only been here twice. She looks around at the emptiness like it's the saddest thing she's ever seen. "Soph, what's going on?"
I want to tell her. I want to sit down and explain that I'm a werewolf in hiding from my pack. That I was rejected and humiliated. That someone just found me and offered me a way out of this basement apartment and this dying life. That I'm considering taking it even though it might destroy me.
Instead I say, "I'm thinking about moving."
Riley's face falls. "Moving where?"
"Somewhere new. Starting over again."
"But you just started here. You've been here almost six months."
"I know."
"Sage." She uses my real name and it hits me like a punch. She's only called me Sophie until now. "Whatever this is, wherever you're running from, you can talk to me."
I can't. I can't because if I tell her the truth, she'll be in danger. She'll know too much. She'll become leverage. That's what happens to people who get close to broken creatures like me. We destroy them.
"I just need to go," I tell her.
Riley looks at me with tears in her eyes and I can see her doing the math. She's putting together that I'm not just running from a bad relationship or a bad job. She's seeing that I'm running for my life.
"Okay," she finally says. "Okay, if you have to go, then go. But wherever you're going, whatever you're running from, you're not broken. I don't know what happened to you before I met you, but I know what I see now. And what I see is someone strong."
She hugs me and leaves. I watch her walk down the basement stairs and out of my life. I don't know if I'll ever see her again.
By day three, I'm awake at 3 AM and I can't stop thinking about what happens if I don't call that number. I'll stay here. I'll work doubles. I'll slowly disappear. I'll become less human every day until eventually I forget that I was ever anything else.
My wolf has been quiet for two days. She's been waiting. Holding her breath. Knowing that I'm making a choice that will determine everything.
I pick up my phone.
I dial the number from the black card.
The man answers before the first ring even finishes. Like he's been sitting in the dark waiting for me to call.
"Sage," he says. His voice is exactly how I remember it. Dangerous and intelligent and filled with promises of things I'm terrified to want.
"I'm ready," I say.
"Good. I have a car waiting outside your building right now. Come alone. Don't pack anything. Everything you need is already waiting for you."
"Where am I going?" I ask.
"Somewhere you belong," he says. "Somewhere you've always belonged. I'll explain when you arrive."
The line goes dead.
I look around my basement apartment one last time. There's nothing here worth taking. Nothing here that belongs to the girl who's about to walk out that door. The mattress. The empty closet. The journal where I've spent six months writing about how tired I am of surviving.
I don't take the journal. I don't take pictures. I don't take memories.
I take nothing.
My phone goes in my pocket. My jacket goes on my body. My hand goes on the door handle. And then I'm walking up the basement stairs and out into the night.
The black car is waiting exactly where he said it would be.
It's sleek and expensive looking and completely out of place on a street full of junky cars and broken dreams. The back window rolls down and I can see the driver. He's not the scarred man from the bar. He's someone else. Someone built like he knows how to hurt people if he needs to.
"Sage Winters?" he asks, even though he already knows.
I nod.
"Get in."
I get in the car. The moment the door closes, I feel something shift inside me. A door closing. A life ending. The old Sage dying so that whatever comes next can be born.
"Where are we going?" I ask as the car starts moving.
"North," the driver says. "To the mountains. To someone who's been waiting for you longer than you know."
The city passes by my window. The bars and apartments and broken promises. The life I tried to build out of scraps and desperation. It all gets smaller as we drive away.
"Who is this Kael?" I ask.
The driver glances at me in the mirror. There's something in his eyes that looks like pity mixed with respect.
"He's the Alpha King," the driver says. "And you're his mate."
The car hits the highway. I'm trapped inside with no windows I can open and no way out. And instead of being terrified, I feel something I haven't felt in six months.
I feel alive.
The mountains appear on the horizon like something from another world. Dark and dangerous and calling to something wild inside my chest.
"What happens when we get there?" I ask.
The driver doesn't answer. He just smiles in the mirror like he knows something I don't.
Like he knows that the girl in the back seat is about to walk into something that will change her forever.
Like he knows that broken things, when they find the right person, become unstoppable.
The car climbs higher into the darkness.