"Keep your filthy hands off me unless you're catching these babies," I rasped, my throat raw from hours of silent labor.
Through the water-damaged drywall, the shared wall of the Raven MC clubhouse vibrated to heavy bass and the roar of straight-piped Harleys.
Drunken cheers and clinking bottles bled through the cracks, sharp and mocking.
High heels clicked down the warped corridor.
"Did she drop those brats yet?" a blonde sweetbutt drawled from the doorway, nursing a half-empty bottle of bourbon.
"Viper said if she isn't out by sunrise, the prospects are tossing her cot behind the alley dumpsters."
"Thinks she's still the Prez's Old Lady," another girl snickered, blowing sour vape smoke into the room. "Never even earned a bottom rocker. Just charity from the Vance house."
I bit my lower lip until copper flooded my mouth. Let them laugh.
Another vicious contraction slammed into my spine like a sledgehammer.
Gasping, I stretched my trembling fingers toward the battered nightstand where my cracked phone lay.
My hand spasmed, knocking the device off the edge.
It hit the concrete floor with a hollow crack and slid beneath the cot.
The nurse gave a raspy chuckle, kicking it deeper under the frame with the steel toe of her boot. "Save your battery, girl. Viper is two bottles deep in tequila. He won't answer."
Fury surged through me, hot and feral.
I hauled myself forward, twisting halfway off the mattress, and seized the collar of her filthy lab coat in a death grip.
"Pick it up," I snarled, staring straight into her rheumy eyes with lethal clarity. "Pick it up right now, or the second I stand, I'll break your jaw."
The smirk died on her leathery face.
Swallowing hard, she hooked the phone with her boot and dragged it back within reach.
I snatched it, swiped my blood-streaked thumb across the shattered screen, and hit Viper's speed dial.
Four agonizing rings while the room spun around me.
Then the line clicked open.
The deafening roar of the biker bar poured through-glasses clinking, pool balls cracking, an engine revving indoors over deafening cheers.
"Viper..." I choked out, fighting for air. "It's time. The babies are coming. I need-"
"Oh, look who decided to call," a sweet, venomous purr cut in.
Sierra.
My chest seized.
"Put Jaxson on," I rasped, fingers digging into the cracked casing.
"He's a little busy, darling," Sierra chuckled, her tone dripping with mock pity. "Buying the house a round to celebrate my birthday. And my new spot on his rear fender. Why don't you crawl back to whatever ditch you came from?"
"Put Jaxson on the phone!" I screamed, using his real name, raw rage tearing through my vocal cords. "They are his children!"
A heavy rustle came through the receiver, followed by that deep, gravelly voice that used to whisper false promises against my collarbone.
"Tell that crazy bitch to stop calling," Viper's voice cut through the noise, cold and devoid of life. "I told her we're done. I don't give a damn about her or whatever bastards she's dropping. If she calls again, I'll send Gage's boys to wipe her out."
The line clicked dead.
The last ember of hope inside my chest snapped and turned to ice-cold ash.
The man who had stolen my youth and used my loyalty had just signed his own eviction from my soul.
The nurse tossed a basin of murky water onto the table, splashing cold drops across my cheeks. "Told you so."
I didn't wipe the dirty water away.
I turned my head slowly, looking at her with eyes so hollow and lethal that the woman staggered back, dropping a roll of gauze.
A massive, tearing pressure built at the base of my pelvis.
"Get your hands ready," I commanded, my voice dead and steady despite the fire splitting my hips. "I'm delivering them right now. If you drop either of them, you won't leave this room alive."
I locked both hands onto the rusted iron headboard, tendons straining like steel cables, and pushed with everything left in my bones.
The world narrowed to ragged breaths, the stench of blood, and the blinding burn in my core.
With a slick, heavy slide, the first baby arrived into the cold clinic air.
Three minutes later, another contraction expelled my second child.
Two thin, furious wails rose in unison, piercing straight through the heavy bass rattling from the clubhouse.
The nurse crudely clamped the cords, snipped them with the dull shears, and dumped the towel-wrapped infants against my chest.
My trembling arms snapped shut around them, locking them flush against my skin.
They were warm. They were breathing. They were mine.
Out in the hallway, the sweetbutts laughed louder. "Five bucks says she and those runts starve before they cross the county line!"
I looked down at the tiny faces pressed against my collarbone, brushing bloody lips against their damp foreheads.
"Never," I whispered into their downy hair, tasting salt and iron. "No Raven will ever lay a filthy brand on you. I swear it on my life."
Black dizziness crashed over me as the blood loss caught up to my pulse.
The cracked mirror blurred into gray mist.
Just as my eyelids grew too heavy to fight, the clinic's reinforced front door was blown off its hinges with a splintering roar.
Heavy, measured combat boots struck the concrete floor.
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