Page 103 of Property of the Bikers

He tells me about the first time Ghost held a newborn, apparently at a club member’s house eight years ago, and how Ghost stood there like a man who had been handed something irreplaceable and was terrified of dropping it.

“He’s going to be exactly like that with Elena,” Jax says.

I laugh despite myself.

The laugh cuts off when another contraction hits.

Reeve is at the foot of the bed, timing on his phone. He announces the intervals with the precision he brings to every measurement he takes, and somewhere around hour three I tell him I don’t need the decimals and he looks up from his phone with an expression that is as close to offended as Reeve gets.

“The decimals are relevant,” he says.

“Reeve.”

“Seven minutes, forty-three seconds.”

“Reeve.”

“Approximately eight minutes,” he says.

I close my eyes and breathe.

Jax is laughing quietly. Even Cade’s mouth moves.

The hours pass the way labor hours pass: both very slowly and all at once. There are moments that stretch into long, difficult things and moments that compress into nothing, and then there’s a point somewhere in the early morning where Doc looks at me and says it’s time, and everything becomes very immediate and very real and very focused.

I hold Cade’s hand.

I look at the ceiling.

And then she’s here.

She weighs seven pounds, four ounces, and she’s furious about it.

The sound she makes fills the room immediately and completely.

Doc puts her on my chest.

I’ve been thinking about this moment for nine months. Running it through my head on the bus from Seattle, in the back room of the bar, in the compound apartment, in the hospital bed with the contraction simulation running. I thought I knew what it would feel like.

I was nowhere close.

She’s red and furious and perfect, and she’s mine, and the thing that moves through my chest when I look at her is not something I have a word for, and I’m not going to look for one.

“She’s ours,” I say.

Cade leans forward and looks at her. His face does something I’ve never seen it do. The certainty is still there, but under it is something open and unguarded, the face of a man who has been holding something closed for a very long time and has just let it open.

“Ruthless baby,” he says quietly. “Like we said.”

Jax isn’t even trying to hold it together. He stands at the side of the bed with his hand over his mouth and his eyes bright and wet, and he looks at Elena like she’s the most astonishing thing he has ever seen in his life, which, from the look on his face, she is.

“She’s beautiful,” he says. His voice comes out rough.

Reeve is beside him. He looks at Elena for a long moment without speaking. Then he looks at me. “She’s safe,” he says. “Always will be.”

Four words. Everything in them.

Maya is crying openly at the back of the room and making no effort to stop, which is the most human I’ve ever seen Maya, and I love her for it.