Chapter 33 Sage's Confession (Sage POV)
All I could see was Rowan.
She stood in her silver circle, chains binding her wrists, silver marks glowing brighter in the torchlight like they were responding to the danger.
Julian.
The realization hit me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs.
Julian had done this. Was doing this. Right now.
While we were all trapped down here in the Eclipse Chamber arguing about ancient conspiracies and suppressed children, he was upstairs. Hunting. Killing. Creating more chaos to cover his tracks, or maybe just to punish the people who'd created him, turned him into the weapon he'd become.
And I'd helped him.
The thought made my stomach lurch. I'd given Rowan that drink. I'd slipped her the extra suppressants. I'd met with Julian in secret for weeks, believed his lies about helping her, about protecting her, about making things better when all along he'd been using me to keep her weak and confused while he murdered people in her name.
I was an accomplice.
To everything.
The weight of it pressed down on my shoulders like stone, crushing, suffocating. Around me, Silvercrest pack members were talking in urgent whispers… my uncle David was consulting with the other Alphas, trying to establish some kind of coordinated response… but their voices blurred into meaningless noise.
All I could hear was my own heartbeat. All I could see was Rowan's face when she'd asked me who gave me the pills. The moment she'd started to suspect. The moment I should have told her everything.
I'd chosen to protect Julian instead. To trust him over her. And now people were dead.
My hands shook. I pressed them flat against my thighs, trying to make them stop, but the trembling spread up my arms, through my chest, until my whole body vibrated with the force of what I'd done.
Tell them, the rational part of my brain whispered. Tell them now. Before more people die.
But the words stuck in my throat. Because telling them meant admitting I was complicit. Meant facing Rowan's betrayal. Meant watching my uncle look at me with disappointment and disgust. Meant losing the only friend I'd ever had at this school, the only person who'd seen past the weak wolf who couldn't shift properly and valued me anyway.
I'd already lost her. I'd lost her the moment I gave her that first drink.
The thought broke something inside me.
I stood.
No one called on me. No one asked me to speak. I just stood, legs barely supporting my weight, and the movement drew eyes. First the people near me in the Silvercrest section. Then others. Then Rowan, turning to look at me with those silver-rimmed eyes that could see too much.
"I have information." My voice came out thin. Reedy. Not the strong, confident tone I'd practiced in mirror for years trying to sound like a proper wolf instead of a defective failure. "About the murders."
The chamber, which had been dissolving into panicked disorder, went quiet.
Uncle David turned from his urgent consultation with Garrett. "Sage?"
I swallowed hard. Forced myself to step out of the bench row, into the open space where everyone could see me clearly. The torchlight caught my face, and I knew I looked terrible… tear-stained, pale, shaking like I was about to collapse.
Good. Let them see how broken I was. Let them see what guilt looked like.
"My name is Sage Kimura," I said. Louder this time. "I'm Silvercrest. I'm... I'm Rowan's roommate. Her best friend." The past tense of that statement hit me like a knife. "And I'm the one who drugged her at the Harvest Moon party."
The silence shattered. Shouts. Gasps. Someone screamed "Murderer!" I couldn't tell who.
I kept talking, pushing through the noise before I lost my nerve.
"There was a man. He approached me about a month before the party. Called himself Dr. Julian Cross. Said he was a visiting researcher studying pack dynamics and human-wolf interactions. He seemed legitimate. Had ID. Knew things about the academy, about the packs, that an outsider shouldn't know."
I could see Declan leaning forward, Elena's journal still clutched in his hands.
"He told me Rowan was in danger," I continued. "That pack leadership knew something about her that she didn't. That they were planning to eliminate her before she remembered what she really was. He said he could help her. Protect her. But she needed to... to wake up her wolf. Gently. Safely."
The words sounded so stupid now. So naive.
"He gave me something to put in her drink at the party. Said it would just help her relax. Lower her defenses so the Turning could begin naturally instead of being forced all at once." I looked at Rowan. She was staring at me like I was a stranger. "I didn't know it would make her black out. I didn't know it would start the process that violently. I swear I didn't know."
"You drugged her," someone said flatly. Wesley Morrison, standing in the Ironwood section with murder in his eyes. "You drugged her and she killed my brother."
"No." I shook my head frantically. "She didn't kill Tyler. Julian did. He framed her. He used me to keep her weak and confused while he killed people and made it look like she was responsible."
"Convenient," Catherine Reyes said coldly. "Blame a mysterious stranger no one can verify exists."
"He exists!" I was shouting now, desperation making my voice crack. "I can describe him. Dark hair, sharp features, intense brown eyes. Mid-twenties. Tall. Wears plain clothes, tries not to stand out. We met in the old boathouse. At the chapel ruins. Places off-campus where no one would see us."
"And did anyone else see these meetings?" Garrett asked. "Any witnesses who can corroborate your story?"
"No, but… "
"Then you're asking us to believe that you met with an imaginary researcher who convinced you to drug your roommate and help frame her for murder, but you're not actually guilty because you didn't understand what you were doing." Garrett's voice dripped with contempt. "Do you hear how that sounds?"
"It's the truth!" Tears were streaming down my face now, hot and shameful. "I know it sounds insane. I know I should have questioned him more, should have verified who he was, should have told someone. But I was scared. Rowan was changing, and I didn't understand what was happening to her, and he seemed like he had answers. He seemed like he cared."
"You gave her more than just the first drink," Rowan said quietly. Her voice cut through everything, sharp and clear. "You brought pills to the holding cell. Blue capsules. You said they were from the health center."
I nodded miserably. "Julian gave them to me. Said they'd help you complete the Turning safely. I believed him. I wanted to help you. I wanted to fix what I'd broken."
"By drugging me again." Rowan's laugh was hollow. "Some fix."
"I know." I wiped my face with my sleeve. "I know I messed up. I know I should have listened when you warned me he was dangerous. I know I should have trusted you instead of him. I was just... I was so desperate to make things right. To prove I wasn't completely useless."
The weak wolf. The one who couldn't shift properly. The disappointment. The burden.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm so, so sorry."
Rowan didn't respond. Just stared at me with those too-bright eyes, and the expression on her face was worse than anger. It was grief. Like she was mourning the friendship we'd had, the trust I'd destroyed, the person she'd thought I was.
"Guards," Garrett said. "Take her into custody."
Two guards moved toward me. I didn't resist. Didn't run. Just stood there as they grabbed my arms, twisted them behind my back, fastened silver cuffs around my wrists that burned exactly the way Rowan's must have burned.
"Wait," Declan called out. "She has information about Julian Cross. We need her to describe him in detail, tell us everywhere they met, help us track him down."
"She'll do that from a holding cell," Catherine said. "After we've determined the extent of her involvement in the conspiracy."
"I'm not part of the conspiracy!" I protested as the guards started dragging me toward the archway. "I was being used. Julian manipulated me. He's the one you should be arresting, not me!"
"We'll arrest him when we find him," Garrett said. "If he exists."
The guards pulled me past the heirs' section. I caught Rowan's eyes one last time as they dragged me toward the stairs.
The betrayal there was crushing. Absolute. The kind of look that said you were my best friend and you destroyed me.
"I'm sorry," I said again. Knowing it wasn't enough. Knowing nothing would ever be enough.
She turned away.
The guards hauled me up the stairs, through the archway, into the darkness above. Behind me, I heard the Alphas calling for order, for a coordinated search of the building, for guards to sweep every corridor and secure every exit.
But I knew they wouldn't find Julian.
He was too smart. Too fast. Too good at being invisible.
He'd learned from the best… from seventeen years of watching pack politics, studying their weaknesses, planning his revenge against the system that had created him and thrown him away.
And I'd helped him do it.
The guards pushed me into a small antechamber off the main corridor. Stone walls. No windows. A single torch burning in a sconce. They shoved me down onto a wooden bench and positioned themselves on either side of the door, rifles ready.
I sat there in the flickering light, wrists burning from the silver cuffs, and tried to figure out when exactly I'd become the villain in someone else's story.
Had it been the moment I accepted that first drink from Julian? The moment I'd decided to trust a stranger over my best friend? The moment I'd handed Rowan those blue pills and watched her hesitate before refusing them?
Or had it been earlier? Years earlier? When I'd first decided that being Rowan's friend made me feel less weak, less inadequate, less like a failure? When I'd started relying on her strength to compensate for my lack of it?
Maybe I'd been setting us both up for this disaster from the very beginning.