Page 145 of Piece You Saved

“I know.” Because if anyone understands desperation, Saige would.

“It wasn’t easy,” I say, speaking quietly. “There wasn’t one easy thing in my life. Every day was a constant search for food, a place to sleep where no one would see me as a victim, and warmth. I never realized how cold it could get at night. Cold enough that I considered going to the house more than once. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Better I freeze to death than go back to that.”

Saige doesn’t ask what I’m talking about. I hinted at it in the attic on the day Rylan attacked, but I didn’t say. She knows. Or she can guess. It’s the reason Dariel went to the house that was never a home to kill the man who should’ve been a father and not a predator.

“Instead, he saves our lives.” Kade’s voice, coming from the doorway, makes Saige jump.

I lift my head a little off the pillow to briefly meet his eyes, smiling in relief.

He’s leaning one hip on the doorframe, arms folded. “He was like a white-haired rat emerging from a pile of trash to save the day.”

I bark out a laugh, my body shaking. “Fuck you.”

Grinning, Kade strides in to rest his back on the wall beside the window, re-folding his arms. “That’s my line.”

“I don’t understand. Why did you have to throw a rock in the first place?” Saige sounds like she’s smiling, too.

“Can’t you guess?” Dariel steps in and leans against the wall just inside. “Kade fucked with the wrong people.Again.”

Kade snorts. “I’d saytheyfucked with the wrong person.” His gaze settles on Saige. “They knew me from before.”

Saige sits up, and I reluctantly release her. It’s always hard to let her go, and I can’t imagine a day it’ll ever be easy. She feels too good in my arms.

When she’s sitting upright with her back to the headboard, she lifts her legs and wraps her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees as her long, wavy hair brushes her shoulders. “Before when?”

“Before I was a shifter,” Kade admits.

I snap my head toward him as I sit up to join Saige with my back to the headboard, surprised. He glances over at me and flashes me a mirthless grin. “Ah, the part of the story I never told you.”

A cell phone rings.

We glance over at Dariel. He fishes it out of his back pocket, spares it a cursory glance, and with a blank expression, ends the call, turns the screen off, and returns it to his pocket.

“Anything you want to share?” Kade asks, eyebrows raised.

“Not particularly,” is Dariel’s bland response.

Saige clears her throat. “I thought you all met at the same time.”

“Nope.” Kade gives Dariel a long look and turns to Saige. “Dariel and I met years before.”

“So you were already a shifter when you met Dariel,” Saige says.

I watch Kade curiously. We’re venturing into new waters here. What little he shared over the years amounted to: he got into a lot of fights he kept losing. Then, when he was a shifter, he started winning.

Mona asked him about it once during dinner. He smiled at her and promptly changed the subject.

Kade studies Saige, as if weighing up what he’ll tell her. That he isn’t immediately changing the subject is interesting.

Saige smiles faintly. “If it’s painful, don’t—”

“I was a street fighter,” Kade talks over her. “And not a very good one, but I didn’t have a lot of options at the time. I either fought or I starved. Since I liked to eat as much as the next guy, I fought.”

I glance at Dariel. He’s standing taller, eyes locked on Kade, as if he’s as surprised as I am that he’s talking about this.

Kade shifts his gaze from Saige to the wall. “But I wanted to be better. There’s only so many times you can have your nose broken or pop your dislocated shoulder back in before you decide to do something about it.”

Saige tightens her arms around her legs in response. “What did you decide to do?”

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