Page 219 of Sage Haven

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SAGE

Ispoke with Samearlier that day, finally feeling steady enough to reach out. My hands hadn’t shaken when I texted her. My lungs hadn’t seized when I waited for her reply.

For the first time in days, I wasn’t drowning in my own head. I wasn’t clawing through the dark just to get from one breath to the next.

I was healing. Not perfectly.

But piece by piece. Day by day. Enough to feel something close to hope again.

But I should have known better.

I should have sensed it the moment the energy in the house shifted—subtle, almost imperceptible, like the quiet before a storm tears the sky open. I should have felt it like the ripple in the air before a bomb goes off, but I was too busy convincing myself I was safe.

That we were safe.

But I still should have known.

Hope was fragile.

And fragile things broke when you let yourself believe in them.

The instant Reich appeared in the doorway, I knew something waswrong.

He didn’t have to speak. He didn’t have to move. His body said it all. Arms crossed like a barricade. Shoulders rigid like he was holding the weight of something impossible. Tension radiating off him in waves, thick and suffocating. A warning shot before the real damage landed.

And then he spoke. Took a breath—slow and heavy, the kind you take when you’re about to burn something to the ground, knowing there’s no coming back from it.

"I think it’s time for you to go home."

One sentence.

Simple.

But they landed like a bullet straight through the hollow in my chest.

His voice was flat. No warmth. No hesitation. Just a death sentence dressed up in casual cruelty.

The words hung there, twisting in the space between us, until they barely sounded real.

But my body registered them before my mind could catch up.

My stomach twisted violently, nausea coiling in my gut like sickness blooming from the inside out.

Home?

He was my home.

How the hell was I supposed to go anywhere when he was here?

I wanted to move. To step toward him. To demand an explanation. But I was frozen.

Trapped beneath the crushing weight of his betrayal.

"No." The word tore free before I realized I was speaking.

A breathless denial.