by Peyton Bogue
“Don't worry about it,” Sage says, eyeing Kai's tired eyes and slumped posture. “Are you sure you should be driving like this?”
“Yes, mom, I'll be fine,” Kai replies, giving Sage a nudge.
“Seriously, Kai. I'd feel better if you just stayed at mine tonight instead of driving yourself home. And then we can go straight over to Hemera Magazine tomorrow without having to fool around with meeting back here. I know that you have an extra set of clothes in your car. Why don't you grab them and just crash at mine for the night?”
“Sage. . .” Kai sighs, crossing his arms. “I don't want to intrude on you and Rhys.”
“Rhys won't mind, Kai, I promise. He's your friend, too, and he cares about your wellbeing just as much as I do.”
Kai arches an eyebrow at him, and Sage chuckles.
“I might care about it more,” Sage relents, “but, seriously, he won't mind.”
Kai gives him another look, “Sage—”
“C'mon, Kai, it'll be like old times, like when we were kids,” Sage says, shaking Kai's shoulder. “You're clearly too tired to drive, and I'm too tired to argue more with you, so just agree.”
Kai exhales roughly through his nostrils, chuckling. “God, you are such a stubborn asshole.”
Sage grins.
◆◆◆
The next morning, Sage wakes before Kai, groggily moving out into his spacious living room as he pulls on a long sleeve shirt and stifles a yawn.
Kai is huddled up on the couch, his face peaceful in sleep as Sage passes through the living room to walk into the kitchen to turn on the coffee machine. Sage keeps his steps light and his movements soft as he opens the kitchen door.
They've got to head out in about forty-five minutes, but that's enough time for the both of them to shower and enjoy a hot cup of coffee.
Sage can hear Kai shuffling on the couch from where he's leaning against the counter in the kitchen, and he pauses in his actions of setting a k-cup into the Keurig when he hears his and Rhys's bedroom door open.
“Why are you on my couch?” comes the gravelly voice Sage was waiting to hear a moment later, his confusion ladled with Rhys's usual deep tenor after just waking up.
Rhys had already been asleep when Sage and Kai had walked into Sage and Rhys's brownstone, trying to keep quiet so as not to wake any of the neighbors. It had been somewhat puzzling that Rhys hadn't waited up for Sage like he normally does when Sage works late, but Sage also didn't get back to their apartment until nearly two in the morning last night, and Rhys had been up early for his shift at his garage yesterday morning.
Kai hadn't even made it to one of their guest bedrooms before he'd curled onto the couch and passed out. Sage had just tossed a blanket over him, retreated quickly to his and Rhys's bedroom, and crawled into their bed hastily, letting Rhys wrap his arms around him in his sleep.
“Good morning to you too, Rhys,” Sage can hear Kai reply, clearly tired and groggy but trying to sound overly cheery just to annoy Rhys.
Even from the next room over in the kitchen, Sage can hear the way Rhys growls warningly at Kai's tone.
There's shuffling and a lot of movement, and Sage becomes mildly concerned—debating if that growl had been a bad growl or just a I'm playing around one—until he sees the kitchen door swing open. Kai walks in slowly, rubbing at his eyes tiredly as he shoves his arms through the holes of his plain shirt. Rhys follows in after him, his stoic face sleep-rumpled and soft from just waking up. A half-zipped jacket is pulled taut against his pale skin and stretches across his broad, muscular chest, and his sweatpants hang low on his trim waist. His mussed hair curls at his ears and falls to his shoulders in dark black waves, and he's clearly only half-awake and tired, but he still looks so gorgeous in the early morning sunlight that just the sight of him makes Sage's heart flutter.
“Jesus, you're growly in the morning,” Kai tells Rhys, moving past Sage from where he's leaned against the island, fist bumping Sage as he passes, and opens the cabinet housing Sage and Rhys's dishware to get down a bowl to make himself a bowl of cereal.
Sage watches as Rhys stares at Kai from the other side of the island, flashing his eyes blood red in warning when Kai meets his gaze again, but Kai just rolls his eyes dramatically. Kai has told Sage multiple times that Rhys does that to him often enough that Kai has lost all fear and intimidation from it.
The thing is—Rhys, Sage's boyfriend, is a werewolf.
And Sage and Kai are the only ones who know.
Sage and Kai had actually met Rhys coincidentally on a case three and a half years ago, where Rhys's cross-species DNA had showed up as a hit through CODIS on the murder of a club bouncer. He'd saved a woman who'd been drugged with a date-rape narcotic, smelling the foul powder when he'd walked past the open club doors.
A violent altercation had occurred, and Rhys had bled all over the club floor, allowing Sage, Kai, and the forensic team to obtain multiple samples of his blood. He was cleared as a suspect, however, when Sage and Kai had interviewed him and found no injuries on his person, due to his enhanced werewolf healing that neither of them had known about at the time of the crime. With Rhys's help, Sage was able to debunk and accidentally contaminate Rhys's werewolf DNA to protect him from being exposed as a werewolf so that his DNA was no longer in the system and wouldn't show up again if he had managed to get in any more legal trouble in the future.
At the time, Sage hadn't known what had driven him to help Rhys. Maybe it was the way Rhys had saved the life of an innocent eighteen-year kid. Maybe it was because Sage's heart had skipped a beat when he'd first seen Rhys's eyes bleed into his werewolf fluorescent red. Or, maybe it was because he hadn't been afraid when Rhys had shifted around him that first time, when his adrenaline was flowing high and their argument over Sage's involvement in Rhys's life had caused Rhys's claws to sprout from his fingernails and his entire face to wolf out.
Regardless of his fascination with Rhys's shift, Sage doesn't remember his reasons for helping Rhys. Nor does he remember what drew him to Rhys in the first place. Or the many times thereafter.
Now, they've been in a relationship together for three years, living together just shy of two and a half.
Kai had discovered Rhys's secret accidentally, of course, even though Rhys had decided to finally tell him only a few days before he'd been exposed. Rhys had finally felt comfortable enough around Kai that continuing to actively hide his werewolfism was starting to become too draining. Rhys knew that he could trust Kai, and he knew that Kai was a part of Sage's family, too. Rhys realized that asking Sage to keep his secret from Kai wasn't fair and that it was eating Sage up inside to continue to outright deceit his best friend. They'd talked for hours about it late one night, and their conversation had finally revealed that Sage didn't want Rhys to feel obligated to tell Kai about his werewolfism just for Sage's sake. He didn't want to force Rhys to potentially expose himself just to make Sage feel like he wasn't lying to his best friend anymore. Rhys had assured him that he wanted to tell Kai, that he knew that Kai was just as important in Sage's life as Rhys was and that they both shouldn't have to keep something as important as Rhys being a werewolf hidden anymore.
They were both nervous as to what Kai's reaction was going to be, but neither one of them were able to tell Kai on their own terms.
Just seven months into their relationship, a suspect wanted for the disembowelment of his mother had broken Sage's leg when he'd been flung from a rooftop after chasing the former psychiatric patient to the rooftop of an abandoned warehouse. The suspect repeatedly claimed it was an accident, that he was having a manic episode, but Sage had been pushed off of a twenty-foot story building and had landed on top of a car and broke his left fibula in half. The suspect received ten more years to his sentence for injuring a police officer.
Kai had cried in the hospital, blaming himself for checking out the rest of the dilapidated warehouse instead of following Sage up the stairs like he should have. Sage had just gripped Kai's shoulde
r and grimaced through the removal of a shard of glass and the subsequent fifteen stitches a resident had sewed into his right hand, not wanting to show that he was hurting like hell.
“It's just me here, man. You can let yourself be in pain,” Kai had said grimly, holding Sage's hand as an orthopedic doctor cast Sage's leg and reset the cartilage of Sage's knee.
Under the influence of the high doses of pain medication he'd been intravenously given, it had somehow slipped Sage's mind to call ahead to Rhys and let him know that not only would he be late getting home, but that he'd also been seriously injured and declared off-duty until his leg was healed.
When Rhys had seen them—Sage, with a deep gash across his left cheek, his hand mangled and somewhat bandaged, his blond hair streaked with blood, his blue eyes glassy from the pain medication working its way through his system, with a great big white cast from the left knee down and Kai, helping to support Sage on his crutches, his hands on Sage's sides, guilt written all over his face—he'd absolutely lost it.
“Oh my, God, Sage, are you okay?” He'd practically shouted, immediately shuffling back to let them through the door. When Sage was within his reach, Rhys had grabbed a hold of him as gently as he could and placed him softly onto the couch.
He was rounding on Kai in seconds. “What the hell happened?”
“A suspect we were chasing pushed him off of a building,” Kai had replied, needing to clear his throat twice before continuing. “He's pretty banged up.”
“What?” Rhys had gasped sullenly, and Sage could see the love, concern, and anger in his beautiful gray eyes.
“I'm alright, Ree,” Sage had replied groggily, his head lolling back against the couch. “Just hurts a bit.”
“Who was it?” Rhys had asked harshly, his breathing picking up. “Who pushed him off a goddamn building?”
“The suspect is in custody now, Rhys,” Kai had replied, his head downtrodden and his gaze fixed on the floor. “He's going away for a long time.”
Rhys was breathing deeply now, worked up and enraged. Even in his loopy state of mind, Sage could see that Rhys's eyes were beginning to start bleeding in and out of that piercing red.
“Rhys, baby, I'm okay. You've got to calm down,” Sage had said, starting to get a little panicked.
Rhys was rapidly losing his grasp on his control over his shift, something that rarely ever happened to him. Rhys never shifted unless he wanted to. He'd been born a werewolf, taught to control his shift from an early age, to find his tether to latch onto so that he could focus enough to pull himself back from giving himself over to his wolf.
But Rhys is also an Alpha werewolf, a hundred times stronger than the normal beta he'd once been. He'd never been prepared for the power he now possessed, but he learned to utilize it effortlessly. All of that power is sometimes hard for him to handle, but he was always in control himself.
Except, apparently, when it came to Sage.
Kai had looked up from guiltily staring at the floor, glancing from Sage's concerned face to Rhys's, and had bit back a gasp at what he saw. Rhys's eyes were glowing blood red, his ears had elongated to points at the side of his head, poking out from beneath his long black hair, and his canine fangs were bared. His fingernails had shifted into long, sharp claws, and he looked absolutely murderous.
“I'm going to rip his throat out with my teeth,” Rhys had growled, animalistic, only it came out slightly muffled around the canine fangs in his mouth.
“What the hell!” Kai had exclaimed, looking to Sage in alarm. Sage didn't look perplexed, alarmed, or scared. No, he was concerned. Like he was worried about getting Rhys to calm down, and not the. . .whatever the hell Rhys had just turned into towering over Sage from his place on the couch.
Rhys was openly growling menacingly as he paced in front of the couch, and somewhere in the very back of Kai's mind, something had just kind of clicked. Rhys had always been very growly, stoic, and almost downright territorial over Sage, but Kai had never guessed the reason was because of whatever this was.
“Rhys,” Sage had said softly, trying to sound level-headed but failing at the airy tone his voice took, “please calm down, baby. Everything's alright, and I'm right here with you. I'm okay, I promise.”
Kai was outright gaping now—unsure if he should try to grab Sage and get the hell out of this situation—because Sage didn't seem afraid at all. No, the bastard was trying to get up and move towards where Rhys was standing, struggling to get his broken leg to cooperate, letting out pained groans and gasps.
The sound of Sage's pain seemed to be what Rhys needed to shake himself from his anger, and then he was at Sage's side—still completely shifted—and supporting Sage before Kai could even blink or move to help keep Sage still. Rhys was careful to keep his sharp claws away from Sage's body, and he was staring deeply into Sage's eyes.
Then Sage did the absolute weirdest thing ever and moved Rhys's right clawed hand off his arm and brought it to rest right over his heart.
It seemed like hours had gone by, but within minutes, Rhys's face had slowly shifted back to his usual brooding frown, his canines retracted, his claws disappeared back into his fingernails, and his eyes slowly slipped back into his normal, familiar gray irises.
“I'm sorry,” Rhys had said quietly, rubbing his hand over Sage's heart, like he was making sure it still beat underneath his palm.
A few seconds of silence had passed, and then Sage and Rhys's eyes quickly snapped to Kai sharply, as if they had abruptly realized that he was still in the living room with them.
“Kai—” Sage had started but wasn't able to continue.
“What the hell, man? What the hell was that?” Kai had asked, his panicked voice betraying how freaked out he was.
“I'm a werewolf,” Rhys said calmly, still rubbing his hand over Sage's chest.
“No shit, man. Just—what the hell?”
Kai had asked a lot of questions that night, and Rhys sat and dutifully answered them for the better part of two hours, frequently checking on Sage as he leaned against Rhys's side and dozed in and out of the conversation.
Rhys's veins had started to turn an oily black from underneath his pale skin a few minutes after Kai had calmed down enough to sit on the sofa adjacent to them, and Kai had about jumped out of his skin when he'd noticed. Rhys just looked up at him from where he'd been sitting with Sage on the couch with Sage practically laying in his lap—oversized and all—and had calmly explained that he was taking Sage's pain away, that he was literally removing it from Sage's body by leaching it out through his skin.
Kai had decided right then and there when Sage had just relaxed further into Rhys's body, his face no longer twisted up in agony, that no matter what was going to happen with the knowledge he now had that his best friend's boyfriend was a werewolf, he was going to support them endlessly.
After almost two hours of questioning Rhys on his wolfy proclivities—“Do you howl at the full moon?” “No.” And, God, what a lie that one was, Sage had thought. “Do you grow into a giant wolf?” “No.” “Where do your eyebrows go when your face gets all wolfy?” “Malakai.”—Kai was finally appeased and was confident that Sage wouldn't get maimed if Kai left him in Rhys's care, and had finally left them in peace after swearing that he wouldn't tell anyone about Rhys's secret.
It was a testament to how much Kai had trusted Sage that he hadn't completely freaked out and ran before either Sage or Rhys could explain Rhy's werewolfism to him. When Sage had asked him about it much later, Kai had told him that no matter how freaked out he'd been in the moment, he would never be able to leave Sage behind if Kai thought that he was actually in danger. With the way Sage had been acting while Rhys was shifted, Kai had realized that there was much more going on than what he'd been exposed to, and he wasn't about to leave until he absolutely knew that both Sage and Rhys were safe.
Sage's leg had healed over the course of two months, and he was able to return to duty after a couple of days of catching up on pape
rwork with Kai.
It had taken a few weeks for Kai to adjust to suddenly being in the know, where Rhys acted normally as a werewolf—like growling more and flashing his eyes and baring his canines more—for Kai to get used to being close friends with a werewolf. Learning about Rhys's enhanced hearing had made Kai feel guilty when he'd asked Sage if he was totally sure that he felt safe enough to live with a werewolf, completely oblivious to the fact that Rhys could hear their conversation as clearly as if he'd been standing right next to them from where he was actually sitting on the couch in the next room over. The first time Rhys had scented him—because, as Kai later would learn, Rhys is extremely territorial around the people closest to him—Kai had jumped dramatically until he realized what was happening, that Rhys wasn't going to try to rip him apart with his very sharp claws.
They've even gotten a lot closer now, much to Sage's continued relief. They had gotten along fine before Kai had found out that Rhys was a werewolf, but it had taken both Kai and Rhys months to warm up to each other when Rhys and Sage had first started their relationship, and Sage was grateful that it seemed like they were closer than ever now.
Kai is used to how Rhys acts now, so Sage knows that Kai is just trying to mess with Rhys because they act like bickering siblings sometimes when Kai just looks towards Rhys and wiggles his eyebrows mockingly when Rhys growls at him again. Kai has told Sage on many occasions that he's practically immune to all of Rhys's wolfy mannerisms now.
So—the growling, the flashy red, luminescent eyes, the claws, baring his teeth—are all a part of Rhys's normal behavior that Sage has been accustomed to for nearly three and a half years now and don't affect Sage, and by extension, Kai, one bit.
“That's kind of true, Ree,” Sage says now, ripping himself from his train of thought and taking a sip of his coffee. Rhys's eyes snap to his, and the red disappears from them completely as Rhys looks at him. Sage just smiles, grabbing the newly filled mug of coffee from underneath the Keurig and handing it out to him. “You are pretty growly in the morning.”