Page 240 of Sage Haven

***

The night air was heavy—saturated with the scent of damp earth and rust, the sharp tang of something long dead.

I walked the overgrown path like a man heading to the gallows, my boots crunching over weeds and rotted leaves.

The garden shed loomed ahead. Crooked. Splintered. Hollowed out by time and weather.

But it wasn’t the shed I was after.

It was what lay beneath.

I wrenched the door open, its hinges screaming in protest.

Inside, I found the hatch and when I pried it loose, the air that rushed out smelled of decay and secrets long buried.

I didn’t hesitate.

I descended into the dark and there she was. My next task.

Curled in on herself, tucked away in the farthest corner like a secret the world was trying to forget.

Her hair was matted, streaked with blood, and her body—fragile, gaunt—barely clung to life.

But she was alive and that was enough to rip something open inside me.

I knelt. I reached for her. Brushed trembling fingers through the knots of her hair.

She stirred. A shallow breath shuddered through her body, her eyelids fighting to open.

And when they did— those eyes.

Fuck, those eyes.

They weren’t the same but they were hers.

Still hers. Still mine.

“Wildflower,” I whispered, the word cracked and wrecked in my throat.

Her lips parted and I knew.

I had never stopped being hers and she had never stopped being mine.