The parking garage beneath Dr. Morrison's office building feels like a concrete throat, swallowing sound and light in equal measure. Twenty-five weeks pregnant, and every step echoes with the weight of what I'm carrying—not just the baby I've started calling Santiago in my mind (though I haven't told anyone yet), but the ruins of everything I used to be. The fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting shadows that shift and breathe like living things.
My appointment isn't for another twenty minutes. I'm early because sleep doesn't come anymore, just fitful dozing between Santiago's kicks and dreams of drowning in blood that isn't mine.
I smell them before I see them—motor oil and menace, leather and the particular brand of violence that comes from men who've forgotten what mercy tastes like. Three bikes, engines off but still ticking with heat. Not Iron Talons. Not Coyote Fangs. Something else. Something worse because it's unknown.
"Pretty thing to be alone." The voice slides across the concrete like spilled oil. "Especially knocked up and vulnerable."
My hand finds my belly instinctively, the other reaching for my phone. But they're already moving, circling like predators who've scented blood. The leader—if desperate men who hunt pregnant women can have leaders—smiles with too many teeth.
"Heard there's a truce. Heard the great Zane Quinn's gone soft for pussy and babies." He steps closer, and I smell stale beer and fresh cruelty. "Makes a man wonder what's so special about what's between your legs."
The tremor that runs through me has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with rage. But rage won't save us. Santiago kicks, sharp and sudden, like he knows we're in danger.
"I'm nobody," I say, voice steady despite the way my pulse hammers against my throat. "Just a nurse trying to get to her appointment."
"Nobody doesn't have two MCs calling truce over her cunt."
The word lands like a slap, but I've been called worse by better men. My thumb finds Zane's number without looking. One tap.That's all it would take. But calling him feels like surrender, like admitting I can't exist in this world without his protection.
"Leave. Now." I try for authority, but it comes out thin, stretched.
They laugh. The sound bounces off concrete walls, multiplying until it feels like the whole world is mocking me. The leader reaches out, and I know with the kind of clarity that comes with medical training exactly what happens next—hand on throat, consciousness fading, Santiago suffering from oxygen deprivation, everything I've fought for ending in a parking garage that smells like piss and motor oil.
I hit call.
"Baby?" Zane's voice, immediate and alert.
"Parking garage. Morrison's building. Now."
I don't have to say more. The sound of bike engines roaring to life carries through the phone before I can end the call. The men around me exchange glances, calculation replacing amusement.
"Calling your keeper?" The leader's less certain now. "How long you think before he gets here? Ten minutes? Fifteen?"
Three minutes. It takes Zane exactly three minutes.
The sound comes first—not one engine but two, screaming through the garage levels like harbingers. The concrete vibrates with their approach, each level amplifying the roar until it feels like the whole structure might collapse from the sound alone. Then they're there, Zane and Tommy, bikes sideways in controlled slides that leave rubber on concrete, the smell of burning brake pads mixing with exhaust.
Zane dismounts in one fluid motion, his hand already wrapping around the leader's throat before the man can process what's happening. No words. No threats. Just purpose transformed into motion. He drives the man backward into a concrete pillar with enough force to knock the air from his lungs, then grabs his reaching hand—the one going for a weapon—and twists. The wrist breaks with a sound like stepping on dry wood, followed by a scream that echoes off the walls.
Tommy handles the other two with the kind of casual competence that comes from decades of practice. The first one rushes him—mistake. Tommy sidesteps, using the man's momentum to drive him face-first into the side of a parked car. The crunch of nose against metal is wet and final. The second tries to run. Tommy catches him by the back of his cut, yanks him backward, and delivers three precise strikes: kidney, ribs, jaw. The man drops like his strings were cut.
Blood spatters the concrete in patterns that look almost artistic under the failing fluorescent lights—Jackson Pollock if he'd worked in violence instead of paint. The leader tries to speak through his crushed windpipe, but all that comes out is a wheeze. Zane releases him, lets him drop, then steps back like an artist examining his work.
The whole thing takes maybe forty seconds.
"This is who I am," Zane says, knuckles split and breathing steady. There's blood on his shirt—not his—and his eyes hold that particular emptiness that comes after violence. "I know," I tell him, and I mean it.
The tremor in my hands starts only after the threat is gone. Santiago's moving frantically now, responding to the adrenaline flooding my system. Zane steps toward me, then stops, reading something in my posture.
"You okay? The baby?"
"Fine. We're fine." But I'm not. I'm standing in a parking garage, watching blood pool around unconscious men, feeling safer than I have in weeks, and hating myself for it. "I used to heal people. Now I inspire this."
"You inspire protection," he corrects, but we both know it's the same thing dressed in different words.
Dr. Morrison's office feels like sanctuary after the garage. Zane waits outside—I made that clear, needing this space to be mine alone. The ultrasound gel is cold on my belly, a shock that makes Santiago kick in protest.
"Let's see how this little fighter's doing," Morrison says, but her eyes hold concern from the moment she sees my blood pressure reading. "140 over 95. That's too high, Lena."
