EPILOGUE
JENNA
Six months pregnant. My belly stretches the soft fabric of the sundress Nikolai bought me, round and full with our daughter. She kicks constantly now—restless like her father, demanding attention like me.
“Close your eyes.”
Nikolai’s hands cover my face from behind as the plane descends. Through the window, I caught glimpses of impossibly blue water and white sand beaches before he blocked my view.
“Nik, what—”
“Trust me.”
The plane touches down with barely a bump. He guides me down the stairs, his palm warm against my lower back where our daughter’s weight pulls at my spine. Salt air hits my skin, tropical and clean, nothing like Chicago’s industrial bite.
“Open.”
Paradise spreads before me. Turquoise water so clear I can see fish swimming twenty feet down. Palm trees swaying in the ocean breeze. And stretching into the lagoon, an overwater villa with glass floors and thatched roof—our own private slice of heaven.
“Bora Bora.” His voice carries uncertainty I rarely hear. “Two weeks. Just us.”
I turn to face him, this man who stole me and somehow gave me everything. His pale eyes search my face for approval, for happiness. The same eyes that tracked me through Chicago streets now watch me with desperate hope.
“You did this for me?”
“For us. For her.” His hand finds my belly, fingers spreading possessively across the curve. “Before she comes and changes everything.”
Tears blur my vision. Almost a year ago, I lived in a studio apartment, working night shifts, existing in careful invisibility. Now I’m pregnant with the child of a man who hunted me, claimed me, broke me open and put me back together into someone stronger.
“It’s perfect.”
Relief transforms his face. He lifts me easily, carrying me toward the villa despite my protests about my weight. Our daughter kicks against his ribs through my belly, and he laughs—a beautiful joyful sound.
The villa is a dream. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the lagoon. The bedroom opens directly onto a private deck with stairs leading down to crystal-clear water. Everything is white and blue and peaceful, so far from concrete cells and interrogation rooms and the blood we’ve spilled.
“How long did you plan this?”
“Since the positive test.” He sets me on the massive bed, kneeling to remove my sandals. “Wanted to give you something beautiful before—”
“Before what?”
His fingers trace my ankle, my calf, memorizing. “Before you wake up and freak out over what I am and what I do.”
I cup his face, forcing him to meet my eyes. “You think I don’t know exactly who you are?”
“A killer. A monster who—”
“My monster.” The words come fierce, protective. “The father of my daughter. The man who gave me strength to avenge my abuser and feel nothing but relief.”
He leans into my touch like a cat seeking warmth. This predator, this weapon, this broken man who learned to hunt before he learned to love.
The lagoon is body temperature, impossibly clear. Nikolai gets into his swim trunks, all lean muscle and tribal tattoos covering his scars. I wear a maternity bikini that barely contains my swollen breasts.
He swims circles around me like a shark set on devouring anything that gets near his territory, hands constantly reaching to support my weight in the water. Our daughter settles when I float, finally still enough for me to relax.
“She likes it here.”
“Smart girl. Takes after her mother.” His palm spreads across my belly underwater, soft and gentle. “Can you feel that? She’s pushing against my hand.”
I can. Our daughter is pressing toward her father’s touch, recognizing him.
We float together as the sun burns overhead, him holding me while I hold her. For the first time in months, my back doesn’t ache. The water supports what my spine cannot.
“I love watching you carry her.” His voice drops to that rough register that makes me clench. “Love seeing you round with my baby. Knowing I put her there.”
Even six months pregnant, he can ignite me with a few words.
“Breeding kink much?”
His laugh is shameless. “Guilty. You’re perfect like this.”
He backs us toward shallow water where he can stand, positioning me against his chest. His hands roam my changed body with obvious reverence—fuller breasts, rounded hips, the tight curve of my belly.
“Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he murmurs against my neck.
I grind back against him, feeling him harden. Pregnancy hasn’t dimmed my desire—if anything, the hormones make me constantly hungry for him.
“Take me back to bed.”
“Not yet.” He turns me in his arms, studying my face. “Something else first. Come on, let’s dry off.”
We get out of the water not long before the sunset paints the sky in impossible colors—orange bleeding into pink bleeding into deep purple. Nikolai leads me by the hand across a sandbar that appeared at low tide, water barely reaching our ankles.
Candles flicker in glass hurricanes set in the sand. Rose petals drift on the gentle current. He planned this, orchestrated every detail.
“Jenna.”
He drops to one knee on the sand, and my heart stops.
The ring is platinum, simple and elegant—a solitaire diamond that catches the last rays of the sun.
“I know how we started.” His voice shakes. “I took you. Caged you. Tried to condition you to want me.”
“Nik—”
“Let me say this.” His free hand finds my belly.
“I was a weapon. Programmed to hunt, capture, and claim. They made me into a predator, and I found my prey. But from the moment I saw you, I knew you weren’t just prey.
You were the woman who escaped a killer’s cage and became a killer herself.
Who chose to stay when you could have run.
Who trusted me with her body and her heart and now her baby. ”
Tears blur the paradise around us.
“You saved me, Jenna. Not from them—from myself. Made me remember I was human. That I could love.” His voice breaks.
“I don’t deserve you. Don’t deserve our daughter.
But I’m selfish enough to ask anyway.” He holds up the ring.
“Marry me. Not because you belong to me, but because I belong to you. Be my wife. Let me be your husband. Let us be a family.”
I sink to my knees in the sand. “Yes.”
He slides the ring onto my finger with trembling hands. It fits perfectly. The diamond sparkles like the water around us.
“Yes?”
I kiss him instead of answering, pouring six months of impossible love into the connection.
When we break apart, he rests his forehead against mine, both of us breathing hard.
“I love you.” The words come easier now, after months of practice. “My hunter. My husband. My choice.”
“Always your choice,” he promises against my lips. “Every day.”
Back in the villa, he worships my pregnant body with religious devotion. I lie on crisp white sheets while he maps every change with lips and tongue and careful fingers.
“So beautiful,” he breathes against my neck. “Look at you.”
I catch our reflection in the mirror across the room—me flushed and round and glowing, him dark and predatory as he touches my skin. The contrast still shocks me sometimes.
He pays special attention to my swollen breasts, sucking gently on my nipples which have grown sensitive and dark. I arch beneath him, already so close from his mouth.
“She’s going to nurse from these,” he says against my skin. “Our daughter will be fed from your body.”
His hand finds my center, fingers sliding through wetness that flows constant now. Pregnancy makes me perpetually ready for him.
“And this sweet cunt was so beautifully stretched around my cock when I put her there.”
“Nik, please—”
He enters me slowly, mindful of my belly, holding most of his weight on his arms.
“My fiancée,” he says as he moves inside me. “Carrying my baby. Perfect fucking paradise.”
I come with a cry that echoes off the walls, clenching around him as he follows me over. He collapses beside me and I roll over, breathing hard, his palm pressed to my belly.
“I love you,” he whispers into my hair. “Both of you. More than anything in this world.”
I believe him. This monster who learned to love. This man who gave me paradise after pulling me through hell.
Outside, waves lap against our private deck. Tomorrow we’ll swim in crystal water and eat fresh fish and make love in the hammock swaying in the tropical breeze. We’ll pretend, for two weeks, that we’re normal people who met in normal ways.
But tonight, with his ring on my finger and his baby in my belly and his body sheltering mine, I know the truth.
Monsters can love.
Captives can choose.
And sometimes, what feels like the most impossible darkness leads to light.
Thank you for reading Prey. I hope you enjoyed Nikolai here is the blurb:
I came to Oath MMA to escape my past. I never expected to become their obsession—or to watch them become obsessed with each other.
I have nothing left when I walk into Oath MMA—just a duffel bag, bruises I don’t want to explain, and a desperate need to prove I’m more than the violence I left behind.
What I find are four men who see straight through my carefully constructed walls.
Eli Morgan. Cruz Bennett. Brady Williams. Dante Rossi.
My coaches. My training partners. Four fighters who were supposed to keep it professional, keep their distance, keep their hands to themselves.
But obsession doesn’t follow rules.
The heat between us builds with every sparring session, every lingering touch, every look that lasts too long.
And it’s not just me they want. The tension crackling between them—the way Cruz watches Eli, the way Brady’s control fractures around Dante, the way they all orbit each other like planets pulled by the same gravity—ignites something none of us can control.
When the lines blur beyond recognition, we stop pretending. Stop fighting it. Stop caring about what we’re supposed to be.
Five people. One impossible hunger. A love so raw and consuming it rewrites every rule we thought we knew.
In the cage, there are rules. Outside of it, there are only us.