Page 210 of Sage Haven

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Her breath shuddered. But then she finally leaned into me. Her body shaking. Her tears falling as I held her.

Ran my fingers through her hair. Grounded her in something real.

She wasn’t okay.

Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.

But she was still here.

And for now that was enough.

47

SAGE

Everything was a blurwhen I came back.

A haze thick enough to suffocate me. The air was dense, heavy, pressing in on me like an unseen weight I couldn’t shake loose. My body was here—breathing, existing—but I wasn’t sure if I was really alive anymore. I was a void wearing my own skin, hollow and cracked.

I had survived.

But survival wasn’t freedom.

It wasn’t peace. It wasn’t relief. It was just existence.

A raw, aching thing you carried day after day until you couldn’t remember how to set it down.

And as I lifted my head and met Reich’s gaze across the room, that truth settled into me like cold iron in my bones.

This wasn’t the end.

It never had been.

And maybe it never would be.

The fear was still there, insidious and suffocating, curling cold fingers around my throat every time I closed my eyes.

Klay’s brothers—the ones still alive—they were waiting.

Out there in the dark.

Lurking in the silence, slipping like shadows beneath the hollow recesses of my mind.

Whether I was awake or asleep, they were there—taunting me, promising they would pull me back under.

Promising they would finish what they’d started.

There was no escape. No peace.

Only the slow, crushing certainty that one day they would come for me.

And maybe this time, I wouldn’t make it back.

But Reich was always there.

His presence was a tether, an anchor to something real in the middle of all this chaos.

Something solid and warm when everything else was cold.

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