by Peyton Bogue
“You’re doing so good, sweetheart. Keep breathing just like that. You’re safe. You can get through this, baby. I’m so proud of you,” Sage tells him quietly, and Rhys nods at him, keeping his head between his knees as he inhales and exhales deeply.
After a few moments, Rhys’s breathing evens out and he slowly starts to relax against Sage’s hands. Sage presses a soft kiss to the back of Rhys’s neck as Rhys sighs, relaxing his hands and bringing them up to rub at his eyes. He sits up slowly, his face blank as he continues to take deep breaths.
“I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely after a few seconds, blindly reaching for Sage’s hand. Sage entwines their fingers together quickly, pressing another kiss to the top of Rhys’s knuckles.
“Shh, sweetheart. You have nothing to be sorry for. It's okay. You’re okay.”
Rhys nods again, still avoiding Sage’s eyes, and exhales sharply. He stands up harshly and walks jerkily towards the sink. Sage follows him, tightening his fingers in between Rhys’s.
Rhys looks straight out of the window once he settles in front of the sink, releasing Sage’s hand and clenching his hands into fists as he braces himself against the counter. Sage wraps his arms around Rhys’s waist again tentatively.
It’s silent for a few minutes after that. Sage focuses on the sounds of Rhys’s breathing as he rests his head against the back of Rhys’s neck, waiting.
“I broke a glass,” Rhys says jarringly after another minute passes. He’s quiet, stoic in Sage’s embrace.
Sage places a gentle kiss to the base of Rhys’s neck. He pulls his head up, saying quietly, “That’s okay. We have plenty of glasses.”
Rhys nods slowly, staring steadfast out of the kitchen window, before he moves to grab his glass, taking a long sip of the water inside.
He puts the glass back down, exhaling harshly.
“I cut my hand,” he says, and Sage can hear the tension in his voice, how his breathing is starting to tremble again.
“Are you okay?” Sage asks him, moving to glance at Rhys’s hands, but he doesn’t expect to see any evidence of the cut on either of his palms.
Rhys nods again, replying, “It’s already healed.”
They lapse into silence again, but Sage just continues to wait Rhys out. It’s better to be patient than to try and push him at times like these.
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” Rhys says quietly after a few seconds, apologetic and guttural. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“That doesn’t matter, baby,” Sage says, rubbing his thumbs into Rhys’s stomach reassuringly.
“Yes, it does,” Rhys replies, and he sounds pitiful. “I know how exhausted you are, and you need to sleep. But I’m such a goddamn mess,” he bites the words out, growling, “and I’m keeping you up.”
“Baby,” Sage whispers, kissing Rhys’s left shoulder blade, “you’re not a mess. You’ve had a bad nightmare, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
Rhys scoffs, shaking his head sharply and growling, “Yeah, a bad nightmare.”
Sage makes a face and flinches at the harshness of Rhys's words, but it’s really his own fault. Bad doesn’t even begin to describe Rhys’s nightmares.
He kisses Rhys’s opposite shoulder in apology, quietly asking, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Rhys tenses again, and the tautness of his body makes him look even more like the threatening and menacing Alpha werewolf he can be, even though his eyes are still fixed forward and sad, glistening forlornly in the moonlight.
He’s quiet before he forces his body to relax, and he says slowly, “It was the same one I always have.”
Sage remains silent behind him, waiting.
“They killed you right in front of me,” Rhys says, and his voice cracks before he inhales sharply. “I had to watch my entire family be burned alive right in front of me, and then they brought you out, beaten and bloody, and killed you before I could stop them.”
Sage’s heart races in his chest. He knew that Rhys had recurring nightmares about his family’s deaths, but Sage doesn’t normally appear in any of them. It makes his lungs ache in consolation.
“I didn’t know you had nightmares about me,” Sage says. He can’t voice any of what he wants to say over the tightness in his throat.
“Not about you,” Rhys says, shaking his head. “About them taking you from me.”
Sage feels dread curl in his chest as understanding dawns over him, and he tightens his arms around Rhys’s waist hastily.
“I’m right here, Rhys,” he says, his pulse racing in his ears. “I’m not going anywhere, baby. No one is going take me away from you.”
“I’d kill anyone who’d try,” Rhys growls, moving his hands to rest over Sage’s arms. “I’d rip their throats out.”
“You won’t ever need too, sweetheart,” Sage assures him, kissing the side of Rhys’s neck. He can feel the tension draining from him, leaching out of his muscles with every inhale and exhale. “I’m not leaving you. I’m right here.”
Rhys turns around in Sage’s arms, bringing his own up to wrap around Sage, and buries his face in Sage’s throat, inhaling deeply. His lips run over Sage’s pulse point, letting the quick but steady thrum of Sage’s pulse calm his own erratic heartbeat.
“I’m sorry,” Rhys mutters against Sage’s neck. “I’m sorry that I’m a mess, and I’m sorry that I woke you up.”
Sage brings a hand up to card his fingers through Rhys’s hair. “Don’t worry about that, Ree. I’m perfectly content to stand here with you. It’s nice to hold you for a change.”
Rhys’s nightmares are the only thing Sage doesn’t push him to talk about, especially not when the images of his family’s murder are still fresh in his mind like this. Letting Rhys deflect and try to apologize to Sage for waking him up like he always does when these nightmares happen is a way that he calms himself down, no matter how much Sage hates it. He knows that Rhys can’t talk about it right now, that he can’t talk about what he’s feeling, and Sage will never push him to do it. Sage can only try to comfort him, can let his scent cling to Rhys’s senses, and be that soothing presence for him.
Sage can feel Rhys grin against his neck, still shaken up but grounding himself gradually as the seconds pass. Sage presses a kiss into his hair, feeling Rhys grip the back of the cotton t-shirt he’s wearing.
“Thank you,” he hears Rhys say quietly after another pregnant pause, inhaling deeply so Sage’s calming and steady scent can overwhelm his senses. “I'm sorry.”
“Shh,” Sage hushes him soothingly, kissing Rhys’s hair again.
He’s not sure how much longer they stay like that, content in each other’s arms for minutes or hours, but Rhys pulls away slowly sometime later, kissing Sage deeply, before he gently pulls Sage back to their bedroom.
He doesn’t remember falling into bed, but when he feels Rhys’s arms circle around his waist, pulling Sage’s body into the warmth of his chest, he settles into the mattress, feeling warm and safe.
Sage is falling into a deep sleep only a few minutes later.
SIX
“The ink you saw on Aldridge’s body is actually a tattoo,” Hazel confirms that next evening, moving around the steel slab in her lab to lift up the sheet covering Aldridge’s left bicep, showing the mangled skin to both Sage and Kai. “Unfortunately, it’s mangled beyond recognition.”
“On purpose, right?” Kai asks her, bending down to get a better look at the deep lacerations etched into the section of Aldridge’s skin. “I mean, look at the rest of these scratches on his body. The crow nips couldn’t have done this.”
Hazel nods, moving to show them more scratches on Aldridge’s neck. “The skin here is pulled, probably from where the talons were dug in. The cuts over here, though,” she motions to the tattoo, “are clean, like they were made from a blade of some sorts. Or,” she picks up a small evidence cylinder, “a shattered beer bottle. I pulled this out of the lacerations.”
She shakes the cylinder, and the tiny shards insi
de jingle loudly in the room.
Sage shakes his head, looking back at the piece of the tattooed flesh on the tray in front of them. “The killer wanted to obscure this tattoo.”
“Mission accomplished,” Kai says sassily, flailing his hand to motion dramatically at the markings. “We can’t tell what it is now.”
“Not in its current state,” Hazel says, and both Sage and Kai look up at her questioningly. She smiles smugly, shaking the cylinder again. “That’s the thing about tattoos, though. You better be sure about getting one, because they last forever.”
“Do you have a secret tattoo on your ass that we don’t know about, Hazel?” Kai asks, wiggling his eyebrows at her. Sage rolls his eyes, but the tips of his ears turn pink bashfully. He's a little uncomfortable with discussing such private and definitely unprofessional information.
Hazel’s smirk widens, but she doesn’t elaborate. Kai’s eyes widen, and he whoops and hollers, shoving his fist into the air.
“Anyway,” Sage says, trying not to flush deeper, “how does this tattoo help us?”
Hazel smiles, turning to Sage and tucking a stray piece of her hair out of her face. “Since I’m awesome, I’ve already analyzed the tattoo.”
“Analyzed?” Sage repeats, confused. “How?”
“Well, normally, the type of equipment I have only lets me analyze worn or altered paper to isolate one part of the color spectrum at a time. Luckily for you, I’m not above going about things the hard way,” Hazel replies, setting the cylinder down.
Kai looks at the strip of Aldridgr's flesh, his eyebrows furrowed, before realization dawns over his face. He looks at Hazel, a horrified grimace curling at his mouth, and says, “You put this thing into one of your machines?”
“Yep,” Hazel, confirms, smiling widely. “A tattoo’s ink goes down to the dermis, right?” When Sage nods and Kai continues to look at her, green around the edges of his forehead, Hazel shrugs nonchalantly. “I just adjusted the machine to look for different ink colors.”
“And then you could pull out the tattoo fragments one color at a time,” Sage finishes for her, and she gives him a blinding smile, nodding enthusiastically.
“It took a little luck and a lot of computer enhancement,” Hazel says, turning around and grabbing a piece of paper and laying it down in front of Sage, “but this eagle has finally landed.”
“That was cheesy,” Sage says offhandedly as he pulls the paper towards him so that he can get a better look at the image printed on it. The tattoo itself has little color, just in the green hues of a banner below the eagle's beak and a yellow tinge to the three numbers inside it, but the wings and its head are colorless, and the entire thing is probably no bigger than Sage’s fist.
“It’s military,” Hazel notes.
“It’s a skeleton with a beret,” Sage replies. “It’s definitely military. The bird’s airborne.”
“What’s this two hundred and thirty-two?” Kai asks, tracing over the numbers on the green banner with his pointer finger.
“Two hundred and thirty-second division,” Sage replies.
“So, the killer tried to carve out Aldridge's tattoo with the beer bottle. Why?” Kai says, moving his hands on his hips. “You think he had something to hide?”
“Maybe he had the same tattoo,” Sage counters, looking up from the paper to glance at Hazel. “Same division, a brother in arms. Someone you’d share a beer with.”
“Gotcha, Detective,” Hazel smiles, grabbing the paper. “I’ll run it through an image search engine and see if I can dig up anyone who’s got the same ink.”
“You’re the best, player,” Kai says, high fiving her. She laughs, shooing them out of her lab.
They’re barely out of the door of the lab when Kai turns to him, arching an eyebrow. “You look like a dead man walking, dude. You’ve been sluggish all day. What’s up with you?”
Sage sighs, running a hand down his face. “Rhys had a nightmare last night,” he says, and Kai immediately frowns. “I don’t know what time we ended up getting back to sleep last night, but it had to have been really late. I’m just really tired. And I don’t even think Rhys slept at all.”
“That sucks, man. Is Rhys okay?” Kai asks sympathetically. He knows well enough how bad Rhys’s nightmares are.
Sage shrugs. “Yeah, I hope so. I got him calmed down last night, and he seemed a little out of it this morning and looked awful, but he was otherwise okay when I left. He kept apologizing to me last night for keeping me up. He says he doesn’t like how tired I smell.”
“Was it the same nightmare he’s been having since you met him?” Kai asks as they climb up the stairs to the main level.
“At first, I think. Then he said he was forced to watch those people who killed his family kill me, too.”
“Aw, man,” Kai whistles lowly, grimacing. “That’s awful. He was pretty torn up then, huh?”
Sage nods. “Yeah. We’d had a good night up until he woke up trembling. I don’t know how I didn’t realize that he was going to have one last night, but he hasn’t had a nightmare like that in months, Kai. It was. . .not good.”
“I hate it for him,” Kai says, shaking his head. “And I hate that you’re not sleeping.”
Sage shakes his head. “I know. It breaks my heart to see him so shaken like that. Don’t worry about me, though, Kai. We’ve just got to get this case solved, and then I’ll be able to catch up on my sleeping.”
“I hope it’s soon, man,” Kai sighs, stepping into the lobby of the precinct and turning in the direction of their desks. “I’m already sick of this case.”
Sage nods his agreement, huffing.
Mikalina is standing besides their desks when Sage and Kai round the corner, clearly waiting for the both of them. Her shoulders are heavy with tension, and she’s biting the inside of her cheek impatiently as she waits.
She rounds on them immediately when they get close enough.
“We’ve got company,” she says harshly, keeping her voice low.
“Is it more feds?” Kai whines, looking around the precinct petulantly. “What’s worse than the feds?”
“Aleksander Kharkovy is in my office,” Mikalina bites out, frowning as she sighs.
Sage and Kai both look at her sharply, and she raises her eyebrows as if to say Yeah, that’s exactly my point.
“Why did he come all the way down here?” Sage asks, glancing towards the door of Mikalina’s office. The blinds are closed tightly, so he can’t see who’s lurking behind the ominous shades.
“To defend his company, I guess. I didn’t think the most powerful man in New York City would come down to a police station when we requested for someone to meet with us on behalf of Sirin Logistics,” Mikalina sighs. “If this gets out to the press, this place will be swarming with reporters before the ten o’clock news.”
“It won’t get out, Mik,” Kai says with certainty. “We’ll just interview him like normal. He’s not a suspect or anything. Just someone we need information from.”
“Are Grayson and Richards around?” Sage asks, glancing around the rest of the precinct in search of the two agents. “They’ll want to be in there with us while we interview him.”
“They’re already in there with him,” Mikalina replies, whipping around and heading towards her office.
Sage glances at Kai, giving him a slight wide-eyed look, before they both follow after her towards the far side of the precinct.
When they walk through the door of Mikalina’s office, Aleksander Kharkovy’s cold and calculating hazel eyes immediately greet them, and a smirk is already curling at his lips. He’s got a bored expression on his face even as his eyes pinch in irritation as he watches Sage and Kai. He’s wearing a gray suit with shiny black dress shoes, and the color of the handkerchief inside of his breast pocket is almost the same shade of gray as his hair.
Grayson looks mildly intrigued as Kharkovy just continues to stare at the two detectives, clearly trying to exude intimidation as he eye
s both Sage and Kai with a derisive glare, but Richards looks absolutely terrified from his place next to Mikalina’s desk.
Mikalina takes a seat in her desk chair, resting her hands on top of the wood and locking her fingers together as she smiles politely, if slightly strained. She looks at Kharkovy without any ounce of trepidation in her gaze as she studies him.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Kharkovy. I have to say that when we asked to speak with a representative of Sirin, I didn’t expect the CEO to be the one dropping into my office,” she says, narrowing her eyes even as she keeps her voice steady and professional. She’s clearly trying to gauge his reactions, and judging by the way his face tightens in slight disdain, Sage would guess that he doesn’t entirely appreciate being questioned by the only female in the room.
Kharkovy looks at her, a scrupulous curl to his mouth. He methodically tilts his head, assessing her, before saying coolly in a heavily accented Russian accent, “I take my job seriously, Lieutenant Sinclair, and my job, above all, is to be in service of my country. So, whatever you need to know to help solve your case, I want you and your team to have it. I am at your disposal.”
“That's very much appreciated, sir,” Mikalina says. “These are Special Agents Grayson and Richards with the FBI.” She motions to the two agents, and then nods her head towards Sage and Kai. “And these are my Detectives Kaelan and Tate. We just have a few questions for you.”
Mikalina turns her steely gaze on Richards, who gulps slowly and looks at Kharkovy carefully. Kharkovy smirks at Richards’s obvious show of hesitation. “Mr. Kharkovy, your team processed a crime scene in Tehran two weeks ago where an artillery weapon was implicated. And then, that same weapon showed up stateside a few nights ago in a homicide. Do you have any idea how that might have happened?”
“I can’t speak to scene here, Agent, but I read my team’s report on my plane,” Kharkovy says, bringing his hand up to lean his chin against his palm. "It seemed pretty straightforward to me. It was an insurgent raid, yes?”