Sage Pov:
The restaurant napkin smelled like expensive wine and broken promises.
Sage sat in the back of an Uber, staring at her phone screen. Fifteen texts from Marcus. Ten from Jenna. Her name flashed with notifications she didn't want to read. The dinner had been stupid anyway. Her twenty-third birthday at some fancy place downtown where everything cost too much and nobody really wanted to be there.
She'd excused herself halfway through, claiming a headache. Marcus barely looked up from his phone when she left. Jenna didn't even try to hide her relief.
Sage pulled her leather jacket tighter as the car merged onto her street. The Seattle rain fell hard, turning the sidewalks into dark mirrors. She lived in a cramped apartment in a building that always smelled like other people's cooking and regret, but it was hers. Or mostly hers. She paid the rent while everyone else figured out their lives.
The driver dropped her at the corner. She cut across the parking lot toward her building, already planning to crawl into bed and pretend the whole night hadn't happened. That Marcus hadn't spent the entire dinner on his laptop. That Jenna hadn't whispered to that guy from her yoga class like Sage wasn't even sitting there.
She climbed the back stairs quietly. Nobody else was home. Good. She unlocked the apartment door and heard it immediately.
Laughter.
Not ordinary laughter. The kind that made her stomach drop. High and breathless, mixed with deeper male voices coming from her room.
Her room.
Sage moved toward the sound like her legs belonged to someone else. The bedroom door was half open. She could see the edge of her bed through the crack. The tangled navy sheets she'd bought last month. The white pillows she'd splurged on even though money was tight.
She pushed the door open.
Time did something weird. Everything moved too slow and too fast at once.
Marcus was naked. Jenna was naked. They were tangled together in Sage's bed, her bed, and when they saw her in the doorway they didn't jump apart. They didn't scramble for covers or make excuses. They stared at her like she was the one who didn't belong.
"Oh my god," Jenna said, but she wasn't shocked or embarrassed. She was annoyed. She actually rolled her eyes and pulled the blanket up.
Marcus sat up slowly, completely unbothered. He stretched like he'd just woken from a good nap, completely naked, completely comfortable in Sage's bed with her best friend.
"Sage. Hey." He grabbed a pillow to cover himself. Not because he was ashamed. Because he was being considerate. Like she was the one who should leave.
Words got stuck in her throat. Wrong words. Useless words.
"How long?" Her voice sounded like it belonged to a stranger.
Marcus sighed. Actually sighed. Like she was being unreasonable.
"A few months," he said. "Look, I know this is weird but—"
"Weird?" Sage's voice got louder. "You're in bed with my best friend. With my best friend. In my bed."
"Your bed?" Jenna laughed. That awful high laugh that had been annoying Sage for five years. She'd just never admitted it until now. "Sage, you let me sleep here all the time. You let me stay when I had nowhere else to go. You know what? You need to stop being so clingy about stuff."
"Clingy?" Sage couldn't breathe right. The room was spinning.
Marcus finally had the decency to look uncomfortable. He shifted on the bed, the pillow slipping slightly.
"I never loved you," he said, and he said it like it was a fact, like it was something she should have known. "You know that, right? I mean, you were cool to have around. You helped pay for med school. That was great. But I wasn't ever in love with you."
Sage had spent two years with this person. Two years. She'd worked three jobs to help him through his prerequisites. She'd turned down a better nursing position because it conflicted with his study schedule. She'd made excuses for why he never wanted to go out, why he was always on his laptop, why he never really looked at her anymore.
And he'd never loved her.
"And Jenna," Sage turned to her friend. Her actual best friend. The person she'd lived with for five years, shared everything with. "Why?"
Jenna sat up, pulling the blanket around herself, not bothering to look guilty.
"Because I wanted something nice for once," Jenna said. "And you always had everything. The job, the stupid independence, guys actually thinking you were interesting. I was tired of being invisible next to you." She smiled, that fake smile Sage had trusted for five years. "Besides, you're boring, Sage. You're so needy and boring and honestly this was just easier than listening to you complain anymore."
The words landed like punches.
Sage turned and left. She didn't slam the door. She didn't scream or cry or fall apart like she wanted to. She just walked out of her bedroom, through her apartment, down the stairs, and into the rain.
The Seattle night swallowed her whole.
She ran without thinking. Her birthday dress got soaked, her heels clicked against wet sidewalks, her breath came in gasps. The streets blurred together. Downtown became the outskirts, downtown became alleys she didn't recognize, became parts of the city that weren't on her usual routes.
She didn't know how long she ran. An hour maybe. Two. Her legs burned. Her heart hurt. Every breath felt broken.
She slowed finally, stumbling into an alley between old warehouses. The kind of place that made the smart part of her brain scream to get out. But the smart part had let Marcus lie in her face. Had let Jenna smile and pretend for five years.
The smart part was useless.
She leaned against the brick wall and let herself fall apart. Her whole body shook. Tears mixed with rain. She couldn't tell what was what anymore. Couldn't tell what was real or what was just more stupid hurt piling on top of stupid hurt.
That's when she saw them.
At first, it was just two points of light in the darkness at the far end of the alley. Yellow light. Glowing light.
Eyes.
Sage's breath caught. She pushed off the wall, ready to run again, but her tired legs weren't fast enough.
The shadows moved.
They were huge. Impossibly huge. Shapes that didn't make sense in the dim light from the streetlamps above. Not human. Nothing like human. The eyes got closer and she could see more of them, multiple pairs, surrounding her.
"What the..." She backed away but her back was already against the wall.
They stopped moving. Everything went quiet except for the rain and her own terrified breathing.
Then one of them shifted. Took a form that almost looked human. Tall. Muscular. Scarred. Dark hair that dripped with rain. And those eyes, those impossible yellow eyes that burned in the darkness, fixed straight on her.
"Easy," the man said. His voice was deep. Certain. Like he was talking to a frightened animal. "You're not in danger."
He was absolutely lying.
Sage opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out.
The man moved fast. One second he was five feet away and the next he was right there, his hand clamping over her mouth. His other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her against his chest. He smelled like pine and smoke and something wild that her brain couldn't identify.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into her wet hair. "I know this is terrifying."
The world was terrifying. Everything had already fallen apart tonight. Sage fought anyway. She kicked and clawed and tried to scream into his palm.
Something white flashed in her peripheral vision. Cloth. A cloth covered her nose and mouth. Sweet smell. Sickly sweet.
Her vision started to tunnel. The alley tilted. The man holding her said something but she couldn't understand the words anymore.
"Don't fight it," he said. She could have sworn he sounded sad. "You're exactly where you're supposed to be."
Everything went black.