Worth fighting for.
Worth everything.
Chapter forty-six
Cruz Blood
Lena
Five months ago, my brother told me I was dead to him.
Chose a motorcycle club President over family loyalty?Dead.
Pregnant with the enemy's baby? Dead.
Walked away from everything Cruz to build something with Zane? Dead, dead, dead.
But now Miguel Cruz—stubborn, protective, impossibly complicated Miguel—is standing in my hospital room holding my two-day-old son, crying like his heart just remembered how to break.
And somehow, impossibly, we're alive again.
Two hours earlier, I watched Zane walk out of this room to defend his Presidency.
Watched him kiss Santiago's forehead like he was memorizing the shape of him. Whisper promises about coming back. About still being President when he did.
Then he left to fight Ghost's challenge while I stayed here—two days post-delivery, holding our hours-old son, praying Zane's right. That choosing us makes him stronger, not the liability Ghost claims.
Because if Ghost wins that vote, if Zane loses his Presidency, everything we've built shatters.
I can't sleep despite the exhaustion that lives in my bones. Santiago nurses, making small content sounds against my chest. Every minute feels like an hour. Every sound in the hallway could be news—good or catastrophic.
Izzy sits in the chair by the window, pretending to scroll through her phone but actually watching me with that expression she gets when she's working up to something.
"I need to ask you something," she says finally.
I look up from Santiago. "What?"
"Do you want me to call Miguel?"
The world stops.
Just stops.
Like someone hit pause on my entire existence and all I can hear is my own heartbeat and Santiago's tiny breaths and the question hanging in the air like a loaded gun.
"He said I was dead to him," I whisper.
"People say stupid things when they're scared."
"It's been five months, Izzy. Five months of nothing. No texts, no calls, no contact. He doesn't even know I was pregnant." My voice cracks on the last word. "Doesn't know about the preterm labor at thirty-three weeks. Doesn't know I spent a month on bed rest terrified I'd lose Santiago. Doesn't know I gave birth yesterday without my family there."
"Exactly. Which is why he should know now. He's an uncle. And you need your brother."
The tears start before I can stop them. Post-partum hormones plus five months of grief plus the fear of Zane fighting for his position plus the exhaustion of seventeen hours of labor—it all crashes over me at once.
"I don't know if I can handle him rejecting me again," I say, voice breaking completely. "Not now. Not when I just had a baby and Zane's fighting to keep his Presidency, and everything is so fragile I feel like one more thing will break me completely."
Izzy moves to the bed, sits carefully on the edge. "Then we don't call. But Lena... you've been waiting for him to reach out for five months. Someone has to make the first move."
