Reckless Protector

Chapter One

SAGE

Nobody warns you that Defiance clubhouses are loud.

There’s the obvious stuff—boots thudding across worn floorboards, pool balls cracking together, somebody laughing hard enough to choke on their beer, coffee brewing somewhere nearby, and Deek arguing because apparently oxygen alone isn’t enough to keep him alive.

I swear the man could start a fight in an empty room.

Then there’s everything underneath it—the easy insults, the casual trust, and the belonging you can’t fake. That’s the comfort that comes from surviving hell together.

Three months ago, I’d have called it intimidating.

Today, it just feels like home.

The thought makes me smile right as water sloshes over the rim of the jug and splashes across my hand.

“Shit!” I twist the tap off, shaking the water from my fingers, when something breaks through the soundtrack of Deek arguing with somebody in the main room and Koa telling him to shove his opinion up his ass.

There’s a quiet rustle, and I glance over my shoulder.

Five pale fingertips are spread against the edge of the kitchen island, pressed so hard the knuckles have gone white.

My eyes follow the hand, then the arm, to see Victoria.

She hasn’t noticed me looking, or maybe she has and doesn’t have the energy to care.

Her head is bowed, dark hair spilling across one side of her face, and every line of her body is fixed in place with a concentration that feels strangely out of step with the easy noise rolling through the clubhouse behind us.

Music threads through the room beneath the burst of laughter from the bar and the familiar clink of bottles.

Over it all, Deek keeps talking, because apparently silence took one look at Deek and walked the other way.

Victoria doesn’t move. Not until a slow breath leaves her.

It is not a sigh. It’s more like she’s trying to ease it out without letting me hear it.

For one long heartbeat, neither of us says anything, then she lifts her head.

Our eyes meet as I stare at her heavily pregnant belly that she is currently grasping like her life depends on it. “Well…”

That single word lands somewhere in the pit of my stomach. “What?” I ask, suddenly a sense of dread flowing through me.

“I appear to have made a small error in judgment.”

I frown. “What kind of error?”

She glances toward the floor, and I follow her gaze to see water spreading steadily across the kitchen tiles, curling around the legs of the island before creeping toward the cupboards.

Not from the sink.

But from her.

“Oh, hell.”

Victoria lets out the smallest breath that almost resembles a laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “I was rather hoping to keep this between me and the tiles for another minute.”

I shove the jug onto the counter and turn. The smile she’d been wearing only a second ago is gone. Now she’s frozen at the counter, gripping the edge so hard her knuckles have gone white. “Vic?”

She doesn’t answer me straightaway.

Then Victoria slowly lifts her head, and my pulse stutters. The expression on her face steals every smart remark I’ve ever had. It’s the look of someone who’s finally put the pieces together and wishes they hadn’t.

“So,” she says, and her voice is so even it makes the hair along my arms rise. “I need you not to overreact.”

I stare at her. “That is a terrible opening sentence.”

“I know.”

“Victoria!”

She glances down, almost absently, her eyes following the water spreading across the floor.

“How long have you been having contractions?”

Her mouth presses together.

That is not an answer.

That is an admission wearing lipstick.

“Victoria?”

“I was fairly certain they were Braxton Hicks.”

“How long?”

She inhales through her nose, and there is the smallest tremor in it this time. “About three hours.”

For one full second, I forget every word I have ever learned. “Three… hours?”

“In my defense, I have been very busy.”

“You have been rearranging the pantry. Again!”

“Exactly. Busy.”

“Victoria, you have been in labor for three hours while alphabetizing pasta?”

“It wasn’t only pasta.”

I open my mouth, but whatever comes out of me dies the moment her face changes.

It starts subtly, which is somehow worse.

Her eyes lose focus first, sliding past me toward some point on the far wall, and then every muscle in her body seems to pull tight from the inside.

One hand skids across the counter until she catches the edge, her rings scraping a thin, awful sound against the stone, and her shoulders round forward as the contraction rolls through her hard enough to steal the argument from both of us.

The air in the kitchen shifts.

Thickens.

The contraction steals every ounce of movement except the grip she has on the island. Her jaw locks, her breathing quickens, and she rides it out in near silence while the rest of the clubhouse carries on beyond the kitchen, blissfully unaware that the world has just shifted beneath her feet.

That’s what scares me.

Not the water.

Not the three hours of contractions.

The fact that Victoria Delaney, who can verbally dismantle grown men before coffee, is gripping the kitchen counter with both hands and trying not to let me know she is hurting.

Nope.

Absolutely not.

“Sin, Victoria’s in labor!” My voice rips out before I even think. It tears through the kitchen and punches into the main room. For one heartbeat, every conversation dies.

Then everything erupts.

A chair scrapes back so violently it hits the floor.

Someone swears. Poker chips scatter across timber with a sharp, plastic clatter.

The music cuts off halfway through a guitar riff, leaving the sudden thunder of boots and voices to fill the gap, and somewhere near the bar Deek yells, “What? What happened? Why are we yelling?”

I keep my eyes on Victoria. The contraction is still rolling through her, deeper now, her jaw clenched tight enough that I can see the muscles bunching beneath her skin. I move around the island and slide one hand behind her back even though I am not sure whether I am steadying her or myself.

“I’m fine,” she grits out.

“You are not fine!”

“I am handling it.”

“You are leaking on the damn tiles, Vicks.”

Her eyes flick to mine. “Unnecessary.”

The kitchen door slams open hard enough to shake the frame, and Sin is there, poker chip still caught between his fingers like he’d abandoned whatever he was doing halfway through. His eyes go straight to Victoria.

I don’t think he even registers me standing beside her.

The poker chip slips from his fingers, hits the tiles with a small, stupid sound, and rolls in a lazy circle before tipping flat near his boot.

His eyes move from Victoria’s face to the water on the floor and back again, and I watch the truth hit him so hard it almost knocks the president clean out of him.

“Wildcat.”

The nickname is low, barely more than a breath.

He crosses the kitchen in two strides and takes her face in both hands, as if keeping her looking at him will keep the whole world from moving too fast. “Sweetheart, talk to me.”

“I would like to formally state…” she says, still bent slightly over the counter, “… that I may have misread the situation.”

His thumb drags across her cheek. “How long?”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“How long?”

She closes her eyes. “Sage already did that part.”

Sin looks at me.

I wish he wouldn’t.

There are men you lie to because they make it easy—Sin is not one of them.

“Three hours,” I tell him.

For the first time since I have known him, I see Sin go completely, terrifyingly still.

Not calm, still.

There is a difference.

Calm has control in it. Still is what happens when a man has to lock every violent instinct down because the thing terrifying him is not something he can shoot, bury, threaten, or beat bloody with his fists.

“Three hours?” he repeats.

Victoria winces. “I said I misread it.”

“You have been contracting for three damn hours?”

“I thought they were practice contractions.”

“Practice contractions do not break water across the clubhouse kitchen, baby.”

“Well, they do now.”

Behind him, the rest of the guys start piling into the kitchen.

Koa gets there first, still holding a beer by the neck. Nitro is already digging his phone out of his pocket before he reaches us, and Bear slips in behind them, quiet as ever. Somehow, just having him in the room makes everything feel a little less chaotic.

“What’ve we got?” Koa asks.

“A baby,” I answer.

His brows lift. “As in it’s coming now?”

Victoria makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “As in apparently right now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Koa mumbles, then takes a sip of his beer.

“Don’t bring him into this,” she mutters. “He had one job with immaculate conception, and even that got complicated.”

Under any other circumstances, I would laugh.

Under these, I am too busy watching another contraction rip through her.

Sin sees it coming before the rest of us. One hand drops to Victoria’s waist, the other finding hers just as she doubles over. He’s already there to catch her, his head dipping close as he murmurs so low I can only just hear it. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “I’m right here. Breathe with me.”

“If you tell me to breathe through this pain…” she grinds out, “… I’m going to commit a felony.”

“Against who?” He smiles.

“Everyone!”

“That’s my girl.”

Nitro is already rattling off details to the emergency operator at a speed that has to be testing someone’s training.

Koa spins toward the main room and bellows for everyone to clear out.

Bear doesn’t say a word. He starts steering people out of the doorway like they’re oversized toddlers who wandered somewhere they shouldn’t.

Ro slips in around the edge of the crowd, her eyes sweeping over Victoria with the kind of calm I desperately wish I could borrow.

Marley appears beside me so quietly I nearly jump.

She’s already tied her hair back. I have absolutely no idea when she managed it, but if the world ever ended, I’d want Marley on my team.

She’d probably coordinate the evacuation, hand out snacks, and tell everyone exactly where to stand without breaking a sweat.

“Okay,” she says, her voice low and even as she touches Victoria’s shoulder. “We need to get her somewhere she can lie down.”

“We need a damn hospital,” Sin dictates.

“Yes,” Marley answers, and there is something careful in the way she says it. “But first, we need to move her before she has this baby standing in the kitchen.” The sentence lands, and for half a second, no one speaks.

Then Deek’s voice rises from the main room, wildly unhelpful. “She is not having a baby in the kitchen. We eat in there.”

“Deek,” Bear grumbles.

“What? I’m being practical. Occupational health and safety matters!”

“You are being removed,” Bear mutters, walking toward his eldest son.

Deek throws his hands in the air. “I’m a road captain, not a midwife.”

“No one thought you were, kid. Let’s go.” Bear grabs Deek by the arm, pulling him away from the scene.

“I just want that on record!” Deek’s protest ends in a strangled noise that suggests Bear has grabbed a fistful of his shirt.

Victoria’s mouth twitches despite the sweat beginning to gather along her hairline. “I hope Deek knows I can still hear him.”

“He knows,” I tell her. “That has never stopped him before.”

Sin is watching her with a focus so fierce it feels almost indecent to witness, his thumb moving over the back of her hand again and again, a small, repeated motion that looks like comfort until I realize it is the only part of him he is allowing to move.

His voice stays steady when he speaks, but his eyes do not. “I’m getting you to the fucking hospital.”

Victoria opens her mouth to answer, but the next contraction slams through her before she has the chance.

This one is different.

Lower.

Harder.

Her knees buckle enough that Sin catches almost all her weight, and the sound she makes punches through the room, stripped clean of all her polished control. It silences every voice beyond the kitchen. Every boot. Every breath.

The president of the Las Vegas Defiance MC goes pale.

Only for a second.

But I see it.

Somewhere in the middle of the noise, another presence settles into the room.