Chapter 39 Wolves and Grief
Chapter thirty-nine
Wolves and Grief
Lena
The parking garage beneath Dr. Morrison's office building feels like a concrete throat, swallowing sound and light in equal measure.
Twenty-five weeks pregnant, and every step echoes with the weight of what I'm carrying—not just the baby I've started calling Santiago in my mind (though I haven't told anyone yet), but the ruins of everything I used to be.
The fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting shadows that shift and breathe like living things.
My appointment isn't for another twenty minutes. I'm early because sleep doesn't come anymore, just fitful dozing between Santiago's kicks and dreams of drowning in blood that isn't mine.
I smell them before I see them—motor oil and menace, leather and the particular brand of violence that comes from men who've forgotten what mercy tastes like.
Three bikes, engines off but still ticking with heat.
Not Iron Talons. Not Coyote Fangs. Something else. Something worse because it's unknown.
"Pretty thing to be alone." The voice slides across the concrete like spilled oil. "Especially knocked up and vulnerable."
My hand finds my belly instinctively, the other reaching for my phone. But they're already moving, circling like predators who've scented blood. The leader—if desperate men who hunt pregnant women can have leaders—smiles with too many teeth.
"Heard there's a truce. Heard the great Zane Quinn's gone soft for pussy and babies." He steps closer, and I smell stale beer and fresh cruelty. "Makes a man wonder what's so special about what's between your legs."
The tremor that runs through me has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with rage. But rage won't save us. Santiago kicks, sharp and sudden, like he knows we're in danger.
"I'm nobody," I say, voice steady despite the way my pulse hammers against my throat. "Just a nurse trying to get to her appointment."
"Nobody doesn't have two MCs calling truce over her cunt."
The word lands like a slap, but I've been called worse by better men. My thumb finds Zane's number without looking. One tap. That's all it would take. But calling him feels like surrender, like admitting I can't exist in this world without his protection.
"Leave. Now." I try for authority, but it comes out thin, stretched.
They laugh. The sound bounces off concrete walls, multiplying until it feels like the whole world is mocking me.
The leader reaches out, and I know with the kind of clarity that comes with medical training exactly what happens next—hand on throat, consciousness fading, Santiago suffering from oxygen deprivation, everything I've fought for ending in a parking garage that smells like piss and motor oil.
I hit call.
"Baby?" Zane's voice, immediate and alert.
"Parking garage. Morrison's building. Now."
I don't have to say more. The sound of bike engines roaring to life carries through the phone before I can end the call. The men around me exchange glances, calculation replacing amusement.
"Calling your keeper?" The leader's less certain now. "How long you think before he gets here? Ten minutes? Fifteen?"
Three minutes. It takes Zane exactly three minutes.
The sound comes first—not one engine but two, screaming through the garage levels like harbingers.
The concrete vibrates with their approach, each level amplifying the roar until it feels like the whole structure might collapse from the sound alone.
Then they're there, Zane and Tommy, bikes sideways in controlled slides that leave rubber on concrete, the smell of burning brake pads mixing with exhaust.
Zane dismounts in one fluid motion, his hand already wrapping around the leader's throat before the man can process what's happening.
No words. No threats. Just purpose transformed into motion.
He drives the man backward into a concrete pillar with enough force to knock the air from his lungs, then grabs his reaching hand—the one going for a weapon—and twists.
The wrist breaks with a sound like stepping on dry wood, followed by a scream that echoes off the walls.
Tommy handles the other two with the kind of casual competence that comes from decades of practice.
The first one rushes him—mistake. Tommy sidesteps, using the man's momentum to drive him face-first into the side of a parked car.
The crunch of nose against metal is wet and final.
The second tries to run. Tommy catches him by the back of his cut, yanks him backward, and delivers three precise strikes: kidney, ribs, jaw.
The man drops like his strings were cut.
Blood spatters the concrete in patterns that look almost artistic under the failing fluorescent lights—Jackson Pollock if he'd worked in violence instead of paint.
The leader tries to speak through his crushed windpipe, but all that comes out is a wheeze.
Zane releases him, lets him drop, then steps back like an artist examining his work.
The whole thing takes maybe forty seconds.
"This is who I am," Zane says, knuckles split and breathing steady. There's blood on his shirt—not his—and his eyes hold that particular emptiness that comes after violence. "I know," I tell him, and I mean it.
The tremor in my hands starts only after the threat is gone. Santiago's moving frantically now, responding to the adrenaline flooding my system. Zane steps toward me, then stops, reading something in my posture.
"You okay? The baby?"
"Fine. We're fine." But I'm not. I'm standing in a parking garage, watching blood pool around unconscious men, feeling safer than I have in weeks, and hating myself for it. "I used to heal people. Now I inspire this."
"You inspire protection," he corrects, but we both know it's the same thing dressed in different words.
Dr. Morrison's office feels like sanctuary after the garage. Zane waits outside—I made that clear, needing this space to be mine alone. The ultrasound gel is cold on my belly, a shock that makes Santiago kick in protest.
"Let's see how this little fighter's doing," Morrison says, but her eyes hold concern from the moment she sees my blood pressure reading. "140 over 95. That's too high, Lena."
On the screen, Santiago moves, strong and defiant. His heartbeat fills the room—fast but steady, a warrior's rhythm that makes my chest tight with love and fear in equal measure.
"He looks good," Morrison continues, measuring, checking, documenting.
"Good growth, plenty of fluid, moving well.
But Lena..." She sets down the wand, meets my eyes.
"Your blood pressure, the stress hormones in your blood work from last week—your body is struggling.
The baby's okay for now, but if this continues. .."
"I know." The medical knowledge makes it worse, understanding exactly how stress could trigger premature labor, placental abruption, a dozen other complications that end with empty arms and a broken heart.
"Is the situation at home improving?"
I almost laugh. Home. Which home? The apartment where his cut sits on my counter? The clubhouse he wants me to move to? The burned remains of my clinic?
"It's complicated."
She hands me tissues to wipe off the gel. "Uncomplicate it. For his sake if not yours." She pauses at the door. "Twenty-five weeks means viability if he comes early, but barely. Every week inside is a victory. Remember that."
I dress slowly, Santiago settling now that the examination is over. Twenty-five weeks. Viable but vulnerable. Just like everything else in my life.
Zane's exactly where I left him, leaning against the wall like a guardian or a threat, depending on the angle. "Everything okay?"
"Blood pressure's too high. Baby's fine for now." I start walking toward the elevator, needing movement. "She says to reduce stress."
The laugh that escapes him is dark. "Yeah? How's that working out?"
"About as well as you'd expect."
The drive to the burned clinic site is silent. Zane follows in his truck—giving me space but not leaving. Always the balance with him now. Present but not pressing. I park where I always used to, muscle memory guiding me to a spot that doesn't matter anymore.
The late afternoon sky threatens rain, clouds heavy and gray like bruises. We walk the half-block to where my van died, our footsteps the only sound. The yellow caution tape is gone now, but the skeleton remains.
Later, at the burned remains of my mobile clinic, we stand in silence. The metal skeleton of my van looks like the ribcage of some ancient beast, picked clean and left to rust. The smell of char still lingers, mixing with the first drops of rain that start to fall.
"That was mine," I say, not for the first time. "The only thing that was just mine."
"I know."
"I saved lives here. Real lives. People who had nowhere else to go." My voice cracks on the last word, and I taste salt—tears or rain, I'm not sure. "Now it's just another casualty of your world."
"Our world," he corrects gently.
"I never chose—"
"You did. The moment you texted back. The moment you came to my apartment. Every moment since." He's not cruel about it, just honest. "We both chose this."
The rain falls harder now, soaking through my jacket, making my hair stick to my face.
Santiago moves, strong kicks like he's protesting the cold and wet.
I think about the simple life I'll never have—the one where I marry someone safe, have babies without death threats, save lives without causing violence.
"I'm grieving," I tell him. "Not us. Not this. But the life I thought I'd have."
"I know."
"I don't know if I'm choosing this or just drowning in it."
He doesn't answer because there isn't one. We stand in the rain, in the ruins of my old life, while our son grows between us. The silence breathes with everything we can't say—apologies that wouldn't matter, promises we can't keep, futures we can't guarantee.
"Come on," he finally says. "You're soaked."
The drive to my apartment is quiet except for the rain on windshields and Santiago's movements, like he's swimming in his own private ocean.
At my apartment, Zane walks me to my door but doesn't assume he's invited in. Growth, maybe. Or just exhaustion.
"You can stay tonight," I say, surprising myself. "Just tonight. On the couch."
He nods, no argument, no pushing.
Inside, his cut from last night is still where I left it after bringing it in—folded on my kitchen counter like a question I'm not ready to answer.
He sees it, I see him see it, but neither of us mentions it.
The leather just sits there, "President" patch facing up, witnessing whatever this is we're trying not to name.
At 3 AM, I find myself standing in my living room doorway, watching him sleep. He looks younger like this, without the weight of presidency and violence. Almost innocent, if you ignore the split knuckles and the gun on my coffee table.
I don't mean to move, but suddenly I'm beside the couch, reaching out. Just to hold his hand. Just to remember what connection feels like. His fingers close around mine immediately, like he was waiting.
"I'm so tired of being afraid," I whisper into the darkness.
"I know, baby. I know."
I don't go back to my bedroom. Can't. Instead, I curl into the chair across from the couch, pull my grandmother's quilt around me, and watch him pretend to sleep while I pretend not to need this—whatever this is.
The apartment breathes around us, quiet except for the occasional car passing outside and Santiago's movements, like he's trying to find comfortable in a world that offers none.
Dawn comes gray and reluctant through my windows. I must have dozed because I wake to find Zane sitting up, checking his phone with a frown that makes my stomach drop before I even know why.
"What is it?"
He looks up, and I see him calculating whether to tell me. That pause, that moment of decision, tells me everything.
"Zane. What?"
He turns the phone toward me. Text from Carlito: Miguel's been shot. Retaliation for the truce. He's at St. Mary's.
The words rearrange themselves in my brain several times before they make sense. Miguel. Shot. Because he agreed to the truce.
The quilt falls as I stand too fast, the room spinning slightly. Zane's there, steadying me without being asked.
"How bad?"
"Carlito didn't say. Just that someone from another crew—not ours, not Talons—saw weakness in the truce."
My hands are already reaching for my keys, my jacket, my phone. "I have to—"
"I'll drive you."
"No, I—" But I'm shaking too hard to argue, and we both know I shouldn't drive like this. "Fine. But you don't come in. Not until I know..."
Not until I know if my brother is dying because of us. The thought sits in my throat like a stone.
The small progress we'd made—his hand holding mine in the dark, the quiet understanding, the possibility of maybe—crumbles like ash in my mouth. Every step forward costs blood, and it's never ours that gets spilled.
"This is what we do," I say, more to myself than him. "We destroy everything we touch."
He doesn't argue. Can't. Because Miguel's blood is spreading across some hospital sheet right now, and we both know exactly why.