Page 128 of Ruthless Knot

And I?—

I feel something snap.

"You fuckingbonded?—"

"Before you lose your shit," Jett interrupts, his voice that carefully modulated tone he uses when he's about to deliver information I won't like, "the Omega seems to be the one that Sage has been writing to these last couple of years."

I stop.

The rage building in my chest pauses, caught off-guard by this new information.

The pen pal.

I know about Sage's pen pal. We all do. It's been an open secret in the pack for years—the mysterious S.E. who sends letters sealed with blood, who writes with a vulnerability that doesn't match the violence of her seal, who's somehow managedto keep our most guarded member tethered to something resembling hope.

I've always thought it was pathetic.

A fantasy.

Something Sage clung to because the reality of our lives was too bleak to face without some kind of escape.

But if the pen pal isreal?—

If she's here?—

"So they technically know each other," Jett continues, his storm-grey eyes watching me with that careful assessment that means he's calculating how likely I am to explode. "And I guess this afternoon they decided to make that rather physical in a sense, and..."

He trails off.

The implication hangs in the air, heavy and undeniable.

I turn to Sage with narrowed eyes.

He meets my gaze without flinching—that stubborn defiance I've seen in him since the day I pulled him out of the underground circus and gave him a reason to live that didn't involve being someone else's property.

For a long moment, neither of us speaks.

Then Sage reaches into his jacket and pulls out an envelope.

Pink paper.

Familiar to all of us.

We've seen these letters before—watched Sage open them with something that looked disturbingly like reverence, pretended not to notice the way his shoulders relaxed every time one arrived. The seals are always the same: pink wax marked with four droplets of dried blood.

Four.

Always four.

Even number. Safe.

The dedication is... something. I've always found it disgusting—the blood, the ritual, the obsessive commitment to a stranger. But watching Sage handle the envelope now, with that mixture of tenderness and apprehension, I can almost understand the appeal.

Almost.

"I met her at the post office," Sage explains, his thumb tracing the seal like he's memorizing its texture. "Though they're no longer letting her send letters. Or anything, really."

Jett and Blaze frown.