Epilogue
. . .
Kiera
Five months later
I’m five months pregnant and round as a peach.
My belly curves outward in a smooth, firm dome that Arrow can’t keep his hands off—constantly touching, stroking, pressing his ear to it like he’s hoping to hear secrets.
He hasn’t felt the baby kick yet. I have.
Little flutters that started two weeks ago, gentle and insistent, and each time I gasp and press his hand to the spot, his expression does something complicated—wonder, terror, fierce pride—that makes my heart squeeze.
The clubhouse has adapted. There’s a rocking chair by the window in our room that Tank built himself, sanded smooth so I won’t get splinters.
The brothers have stopped cursing quite so loudly when I’m within earshot.
Reaper brought me a stuffed bear the size of a small dog, gruffly insisting it was “for the kid, not you,” though the way his eyes softened when I hugged him told a different story.
Arrow hasn’t changed. Not really. He’s still the biker king—ice for everyone else, violence when it’s called for, the man who broke a rival’s kneecaps last month for making a comment about “the president’s knocked-up old lady” within earshot of the wrong brother.
He still growls filthy vows against my skin every night, his mouth between my thighs, his cock stretching me open while he murmurs about how good I take him, how perfect my pregnant pussy feels, how he’s going to put another baby in me the second this one is born.
He still calls me his good girl. Still ends threats with cold efficiency. Still moves through the world like something carved from stone, impenetrable, unmovable.
But with me—with me, he’s different. He brings me tea in the mornings, exactly how I like it, two sugars no cream, in a mug that says PROPERTY OF ARROW that he had custom-made after I stole his original one.
He rubs my aching back for hours without complaint, those big, rough hands gentler than they have any right to be, working out the knots in my shoulders with a tenderness that makes my throat tight.
He looks at me—really looks at me, my swollen belly, my rounded hips, the stretch marks starting to silver across my skin—like I’m the only soft thing he’s ever been allowed to keep, and the wonder in his eyes hasn’t faded, not even a little.
It’s a golden evening. Late summer, the air warm and thick with the smell of cut grass and distant barbecue.
The clubhouse porch is quiet—most of the brothers are out on runs or at the bar downtown—and Arrow is straddling the Harley in the driveway, engine rumbling low between his thighs, waiting for me.
I waddle down the steps. My balance isn’t what it used to be, and Arrow watches me with that particular expression—half amusement, half readiness to catch me if I stumble—that he’s been wearing for months.
I’m wearing a dress. His idea. Flowy cotton that drapes over my bump, soft and comfortable, and when I reach the bike he helps me swing my leg over—awkward with the belly, but we manage—and I settle behind him, my chest pressed to his broad back, my arms around his waist.
His property patch is warm against my spine.
The leather of his cut, sun-warmed, familiar, and beneath it the fabric of the PROPERTY OF ARROW patch that he sewed onto the back himself, needle and thread in those big hands, cursing under his breath until it was perfect.
I wear it everywhere now. On the back of every shirt, every dress, a permanent declaration that I belong to him—that I chose to belong to him—and the weight of it against my skin is comfort, not constraint.
My hand finds my belly. Rests there, palm flat against the curve, and I feel the baby shift—a lazy roll, nothing dramatic, but present. Alive. Ours.
Arrow feels it. He always does. His body goes still beneath me, attuned to every shift and sigh, and when he glances back over his shoulder his eyes find mine—and there it is. That look. The one he shows no one else. Gentle. Tender. Full of a love so raw it makes my chest ache.
“You good, little dove?” His voice is rough velvet, meant only for me.
I nod. Press a kiss to the leather between his shoulder blades. “I’m perfect.”
He kicks the stand. The bike rolls forward, smooth and steady, and the rumble of the engine vibrates through me—through us, through the baby nestled beneath my heart—and as we pull onto the main road, the wind in our hair, the sunset painting the sky in streaks of gold and pink, Arrow glances back one more time.
His hand finds mine on his stomach. Squeezes. And his voice, carried back to me on the wind, is a rumble I feel in my bones.
“You’re never getting off this ride, Kiera. Never.”
I believe him. I’ve believed him since that first night, since the moment he scooped my shaking body onto this bike and whispered filthy promises against my ear and something in me recognized the truth before my brain caught up: that I had been waiting for him.
That the alley, the drunks, the rescue—all of it was just the universe’s rough way of delivering me to the man who would become my everything.
Dirty to the world. Sweet only for me. The monster who breaks jaws and the man who brings me tea. The biker king and the daddy who presses his ear to my belly every night, hoping for kicks.
And me—the wide-eyed barista who used to tremble at the sound of raised voices—now rides forever at his back, claimed, protected, and blissfully, irrevocably his.
His old lady. His little dove. His whole damn world.
Just like he’s mine.