Chapter 23 Makenna
TWENTY-THREE
MAKENNA
There’s a heavy weight in my stomach as the men head out. They leave a few brothers behind—protection, I guess—which makes everything feel worse. They’re prepared for trouble. Expecting it.
The room goes still, thick with all the things we didn’t say before he walked out. It settles like smoke, clinging to my throat, and making it harder to breathe.
Part of me wants to chase after him, wrap my arms around him, and force him to stay here. Part of me whispers you may never see him again, and I shut that part of my brain off.
I stare at the door he disappeared through moments ago, and I can’t make myself move. What if he doesn’t come back? What happens then?
My breath rips out of me like my lungs are being torn apart. I curl into myself without meaning to, wrapping my arms around my belly like that can keep my fractured parts from coming apart. It doesn’t help. Fear still chews through the last thread holding my sanity together.
“This part really sucks,” Maylie mumbles from behind me.
She’s not wrong. It feels like there’s a hollow pit inside me that I can’t fill.
It takes all of my strength to pull my gaze from the door, to turn away from it, and sit at the table with her.
Her son is in her arms, oblivious to the danger his father has just walked into.
He wriggles in his sleep, little fists twitching like he’s dreaming of something warm and soft.
I’d give anything to be that unaware, just for a second.
“He’s cute,” I say, because I can’t think about how much this part does suck without wanting to go after Zane. Focus on the baby, not the man I love who may not come back.
“He didn’t feel so cute coming out,” Maylie mutters. “I’m never going to feel normal down there again.”
“Well, shit,” Dayna says from behind me. “I sure picked the wrong time to join that conversation.”
I blink up at her. Her tone is wrong for the weight hanging between us. Too light, too easy, like she’s dialled into the wrong channel.
She sinks into the chair next to me, her hand splayed over her stomach, like we’re not waiting for our men to come back from battle.
Wordlessly, I hand her the bag of leftover pastries from the table. She tears one in half, popping it in her mouth. Dayna moves and talks like she’s relaxed, but her hands shake. She’s scared beneath the bravado.
“I stand by it,” Maylie says. “It was like being cut apart with a chainsaw.”
“Chainsaw… Right,” Dayna says, deadpan. “That’s really just the image I need in my head when I’m due to give birth in six months’ time.” She glances around the room and folds her hands in her lap. Still shaking, still afraid of what’s to come. Still pretending she’s not. “Where’s Ivy and Toby?”
“Still in bed.” Maylie adjusts the baby, who lets out a sleepy growl of protest at being moved. “Seren had a rough night and Toby’s thirteen. He’d sleep for a week if I let him. What about Dash?”
“He’s riding the painkiller wave. He’ll probably wake up in an hour, wondering what his name is.” She leans over and strokes the baby’s head. “Speaking of… Are you ever going to name him?”
Maylie sighs. “It’s a big decision and it’s not like we’ve had time to think about it with everything going on.”
“You’ve had nine months,” Dayna says unhelpfully.
“I want to call him Rowan.” Maylie’s voice is quiet. “Mace vetoed it and wanted Rafe, which I hate.”
“Considering you did all the gestating and birthing,” she eats another piece of croissant, “I say you get to pick, and Mace’s opinion is banished to the realm of ‘no say’.”
I snort. “Is that your plan with Dash?”
Dayna crosses her arms over her chest, leaning back in her chair. “Absolutely not. He’ll deny me orgasms for the next ten years if I name our child without him.”
Maylie’s eyebrows climb up her forehead. “And yet you’re telling me to do that to Mace?”
The wave of her hand is flippant. “I don’t have to live with him and a child called Rafe.”
She laughs, kissing her son’s head, but it’s flat and sharp.
Her smile slips too fast, as if she can’t hold it in place.
Like it costs more than she has to give.
Maylie adjusts the baby in her arms, and I notice the way she clings to him a little tighter, like she needs to keep him close.
“I guess,” she says slowly, her eyes distant, “I keep thinking if I don’t name him yet it means Mace has to come back to me so he can give his son one. ”
The air changes between us, the weight and heaviness of what is happening behind the scenes crushing all of us. I don’t tell her it doesn’t work like that. It’s not what she needs to hear.
“They’re all coming back,” I say, firm and sharp.
I have to believe that because the alternative will break me.
“Of course they are,” Dayna agrees. “It would be boring around here without them.”
“Oh, damn.” Maylie shifts the baby. “I think he needs his nappy changing and I’ve left the changing bag in the room.”
She starts to move, but I stand. “I’ll get it. Don’t disturb his royal cuteness.”
“You’re a star.”
My smile is a little awkward, as it always is when anybody gives me a compliment, and I push up from the table, waving it off. “Seriously I think I’m the most able-bodied person here right now.”
Dayna tears into the other half of her pastry. “Please. I’m barely pregnant and my legs still work.”
“You were also throwing up your soul this morning,” Maylie snitches.
I walk away as they continue bickering. I try not to stare too much at the men left behind to protect us. They are built like mountains, and I’m glad they’re on our side.
By the time I reach the corridor to the rooms, tension buzzes under my skin like static. I hate not knowing what’s going to happen, not being able to plan. I hate feeling afraid all the time.
I stop outside the room Mace and Maylie are sharing and turn the knob. It’s slightly bigger than the room we have, but it feels smaller because of the bassinet against the side of the double bed. There is stuff everywhere and it takes me a little while to find the nappy bag.
I sling it over my shoulder, and quickly leave, closing the door behind me. And then I hear it. A whimper. For a moment I think it might be Ivy’s daughter, but when I pass her room there’s no sound on the other side of the door.
I keep walking, straining my ears to figure out where it’s coming from and eventually, I stop outside the last room in the hallway. The silence feels loaded. Wrong. I hold my breath even as my pulse flutters frantically in my neck.
The whimper sounds again, broken and wretched.
Sliding the bag off my shoulder, I drop it onto the floor and knock on the door. “You okay in there?”
I don’t hear anything, so I lean closer to the door, turning my head so I can press my ear against the wood.
My heart is racing now, pounding so hard it’s difficult to hear over my own laboured breaths.
“H…help.”
It’s quiet, ragged, but unmistakable.
Adrenaline floods my veins as I twist the door handle and push inside the room.
At first my brain doesn’t register what I’m seeing.
The red doesn’t look real. It’s too bright, like spilt paint on the sheets.
There’s a humming in my ears as my thoughts catch up and my breath turns to glass in my throat.
Oh my…
Fuck.
Everything slows to a crawl, like I’m seeing the world through someone else’s vision, but my pulse is racing.
I can smell the blood, even though I don’t think that’s possible. It feels like it’s caught in the back of my nose and throat.
I want to scream, but no sound comes out, like it’s stuck in my chest.
She’s crumpled in the middle of the bed like a rag doll, limbs slack, dark hair tangled around her face. She’s too pale, too still.
My body moves before my brain fully catches up. I drop onto the floor at the side of the bed and wrap my hand around her wrist. Her blood pools hot against my palm, then seeps between my fingers, warm even though her skin is cold.
“Chloe?” Tears sting my eyes as I reach for her other wrist and clamp my hand around it.
“Look at me, please.” She doesn’t. Her eyes are heavy beneath the swelling.
The bruises she already wore look worse against the backdrop of her grey pallor.
“Fuck, babe. Stay with me.” The words slice out of me, sharp but laced with fear I can’t hide.
She’s not here. She’s floating between life and death, and I’m the only thing keeping her tethered to existence. My stomach lurches. The blood just keeps coming. It’s already thick on my hands, and it’s saturated the sheets around her, wet and sticky. Too bright, too final.
“You’re going to be okay,” I tell her, even though I don’t believe it.
She’s barely conscious. Her skin is so pale it’s nearly translucent, and there is a blue tinge to her lips. They’re moving, like she’s trying to say something, but she’s not making a sound.
“Chloe?”
I stare at her face, at the patchwork of bruises she hasn’t even healed from and my throat burns. A sob barks out of me, and I don’t stop it. She’s so young. So… broken. Why did she do this? Why didn’t she tell someone? Did she plan this? She seemed okay yesterday…
“I’ve got you.” I glance around for something—anything—to stem the bleeding. There’s nothing.
Her head lolls, and my chest seizes. “Chloe?” Not a twitch, not a breath. The silence punches the air from my lungs. “Chloe, open your eyes for me.”
She doesn’t. I watch her chest, waiting for a rise that never comes.
Then I scream her name until my throat tears. I don’t know if anyone hears me, but even if they come, I already know it’s too late to save her.