Chapter 3

Prologue continued

Right away, she knew that was exactly the wrong thing to say. Wheels lunged at her again, and he made impact so hard that the back of Nala’s skull slammed into the brick wall behind her, pain bursting hot and white across her vision as the world tilted sickeningly sideways for a moment. For several disorienting seconds, all she could hear was the high metallic ringing in her ears and the ragged sound of her own breathing.

When her vision cleared again, his face was inches from hers. Not shocked, not confused.

Enraged.

“You fucking what?” he hissed.

The words came out low and lethal, the kind of tone that made instinct kick in before logic ever could, and Nala felt terror move through her bloodstream so fast it almost made her nauseous. Every survival instinct she possessed screamed at her to take it back immediately, to laugh nervously and tell him she’d made a mistake, that she wasn’t pregnant at all, that she didn’t know why she’d said it…

But it was already too late.

“I’m pregnant,” she repeated weakly, because somehow lying now felt even more dangerous.

Wheels stared at her for a long, awful moment, his black eyes locked onto hers with an intensity that made her feel flayed open, and then his gaze dropped slowly to her stomach.

Eleven weeks. Still barely showing. Still mostly a secret tucked safely inside her body, hidden beneath her sweater and heavy coat and all the dreams she’d spent the entire drive here building in her head. 

She had imagined telling Cole through scratched prison glass with tears in her eyes and a smile that she wouldn’t have been able to suppress if she tried. She’d imagined his stunned silence, followed by laughter, followed by that soft look he only ever got around her, the one that transformed him from a hardened biker into simply her husband.

Now all she could think, over and over, was please don’t let this man hurt my baby.

“Well,” Wheels said finally, his voice terrifyingly calm now. “That certainly changes things.”

His hand moved before she realized what he was doing, and landed heavily against her stomach.

Nala recoiled instinctively, a broken gasp escaping her throat as panic detonated inside her chest so violently it almost stole her breath altogether. She pressed herself harder against the wall, desperate to put distance between his hand and her body, but there was nowhere to go.

Wheels noticed the fear instantly. Of course he did.

A slow smile spread beneath his beard, ugly and cruel and entirely devoid of humanity.

“Oh, now I get it,” he sneered. “Now I understand why you’re desperate.”

“I’m not desperate,” she whispered automatically, though her voice shook so badly the words barely sounded real.

“Shut the fuck up.”

His palm pressed harder against her abdomen, not enough to physically hurt her but enough to send cold terror clawing up her spine. Nala froze completely, one hand instinctively covering his, as though she could somehow shield the tiny fragile life inside her through sheer force of will alone.

“You listen to me carefully,” Wheels said quietly, leaning closer until she could smell cigarettes and stale alcohol embedded permanently into his clothes. “You’re gonna sign those papers right now, and then you’re gonna disappear so fucking thoroughly that even God himself couldn’t find you. You understand me?”

Nala swallowed painfully against the ache in her throat. “Cole deserves to know.”

“No,” Wheels snapped immediately. “He doesn’t.”

“He’s the father.”

“He’s a Road Devil. And my boys don’t have half-breeds as kids.”

The ugly words landed with a finality that hollowed something inside her out completely. Diversity was not the name of the motorcycle club game, and Cole had been very upfront with her about that, right from the beginning.

“Listen, honey,” he’d told her on their second date, leaning back in the booth at that tiny diner outside Denver with one tattooed arm stretched along the cracked vinyl seat behind him. “I look at you, and all I see is a fucking heart-stoppingly beautiful woman, end of conversation. But some of the boys in the club, well…” He’d paused then, his expression turning serious in a way she hadn’t yet seen from him. “They’re not going to be able to look past your skin color. Never ever.”

“So do you have to choose between me and your club?” Nala had asked him carefully. “Because if so, I know I’m going to lose. I know that once you’re patched in, that’s it, and if that’s the way this is all going to go, then I don’t see any point in taking this any farther.”

Cole had smiled then, that devastating smile that transformed his entire face and made her stomach flutter in ways she deeply distrusted. His dark eyes had sparkled with amusement as he looked at her across the table.

“How far do you think this is going to go?”

Nala had gone quiet immediately after that, because suddenly she’d wondered if she’d read the entire situation wrong. Maybe this wasn’t serious for him. Maybe she was just convenient, exciting, different enough to entertain him for a while before he eventually drifted back toward women who fit neatly into his world. If all he wanted was sex, then of course her race wouldn’t matter much; men had been fetishizing Black women since the beginning of time.

But Nala had never hidden in any relationship she’d ever had, not even the casual ones, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to start now, just because this particular man looked like every filthy fantasy she’d ever had, wrapped up in broad shoulders and wavy dark hair and dangerous eyes. She still remembered the exact moment she’d first seen him walking into the dentist’s office for an emergency extraction after a bar fight, all battered knuckles and tattoos and raw masculine charisma, smiling lazily at her while she completely forgot how to use the scheduling software for nearly thirty seconds straight.

So she’d lifted her chin, preparing to tell him there wouldn’t be a third date if this was headed nowhere meaningful… and then Cole had reached across the diner table and taken her hand.

Not hidden, not secretively. Openly. Like he didn’t give a flying fuck who saw him in his Road Devils cut, with a woman who didn’t fit into the stereotypes and expectations of an MC girlfriend.