Chapter 5

Prologue continued

Nala's hands shook so violently she could barely hold the pen he shoved at her. Tears blurred the words across the pages until the legal jargon became meaningless black smears against white paper, but none of it really mattered anyway. This wasn’t law, this wasn’t procedure. This was coercion dressed up in paperwork. This was survival.

Nala stared blindly at the signature line while grief rose inside her so fast it became almost impossible to breathe around. She didn’t want this. God, she didn’t want this.

She loved Cole with a depth that still startled her sometimes, loved him despite the club and the violence and the danger and all the things she had spent years trying not to look at too closely. She loved the rough scrape of his voice first thing in the morning, and the absentminded way he kissed her forehead while passing through the kitchen, and the softness he only ever showed when nobody else was looking.

She loved him enough that this felt like dying.

And maybe, in some ways, it was.

A fairy tale, she thought suddenly, hysterically. That’s all this ever was. A stupid fucking fairy tale about loving a dangerous man and believing that love somehow made me safe.

Her throat tightened painfully. I’m sorry.

She didn’t even know who she was apologizing to anymore. Herself, Cole, the tiny fragile heartbeat inside her body. Maybe all three.

Then, before she could think hard enough to stop herself, Nala signed the papers, and just like that, three years of marriage were erased in a few trembling signatures beside a prison parking lot. No conversation. No goodbye. No choice.

The second the pen left the page, Wheels ripped the documents from her hands. He flipped through the pages quickly, checking each signature with clinical efficiency before finally nodding once.

“Good,” he said flatly, then his eyes lifted back to hers. “If you’re a smart bitch, you’ll be across state lines before sunset.”

Nala looked at him for a long second, hatred and heartbreak tangling together so tightly inside her chest she could barely separate one emotion from the next.

“You tell him,” she whispered hoarsely. “You tell Cole what you did.”

Something flickered across Wheels’ face then, something unreadable and brief, before disappearing entirely. “Get the fuck outta here.”

Nala turned and walked away because every instinct she possessed told her not to run. Running triggered pursuit; running made predators chase.

So she forced herself to walk steadily across the prison parking lot even though her legs barely felt attached to her body anymore. The cold Colorado wind cut across her face, carrying the sharp scent of autumn and asphalt and distant exhaust fumes, while tears streamed silently down her cheeks beneath the pale morning sky.

Nobody looked at her, nobody noticed her. A woman falling apart beside a correctional facility was probably the least remarkable thing in the world.

By the time she reached her car, her hands were trembling so badly she fumbled the keys twice before finally managing to unlock the door. Nala climbed inside quickly and locked the door immediately behind her, and the second the locks clicked into place, something inside her finally shattered completely.

A sob tore out of her chest with enough force to hurt, and she folded forward against the steering wheel, shaking violently as panic and grief crashed through her in relentless waves, each one worse than the last. Her marriage was gone. Her future was gone. The life she thought she knew was gone. Whatever fragile illusion of safety she’d been clinging to had just been ripped away from her so brutally that she felt split open by it.

And beneath all of it, louder than heartbreak, louder than fear, louder even than grief itself, one instinct screamed through her entire body with primal, desperate clarity:

Protect the baby. Protect the baby. Protect the baby.

Nala dragged in a trembling breath and slowly lifted her head, looked at herself in the rearview mirror. Her mascara had smeared beneath her eyes, her throat was already beginning to bruise darkly beneath her skin, fingerprints blooming there like ink stains.

Shaking, she looked down at her stomach. Her fingers spread protectively across it, and for the first time since this nightmare at the prison had begun, her voice softened completely.

“We’re going be alright, little one,” she whispered. Another sob caught painfully in her throat as she closed her eyes, calling on every bit of strength that she could possibly summon. “Both of us.”