30. Ailish
Ailish
The new safehouse doesn’t look like a war room from the outside. It looks like a respectable, narrow townhouse tucked into a quiet residential block—neatly painted, iron railings, a potted plant on the stoop like any other home on this street. It’s deceptive, intentional, and effective.
The neighborhood is full of older couples and young families walking dogs or pushing strollers in the evenings, none of them glancing twice at a place that now functions as the nerve center of our conflict.
Inside, however, the illusion dissolves.
Reinforced windows. Triple-layer security doors.
A discreet guard rotation that trades off every hour.
A false pantry that hides a stairway to a sub-basement outfitted with servers, encrypted communication lines, and enough surveillance feeds to monitor a hundred-mile radius.
The upstairs rooms—once bedrooms, probably—have been refitted into offices with clean desks, whiteboards, large monitors, stacks of classified documents, and maps pinned with color-coded pins.
And then there’s the main floor room, the one the men jokingly call the “den,” which is really a soft place for me to land.
Declan had insisted on it—Liam later confirmed that much—because if I was going to work through this pregnancy, I needed somewhere to sit without collapsing and somewhere to breathe without losing focus.
It’s a strangely tender detail in the midst of so much steel and surveillance.
A small couch, a warm lamp, a stocked fridge for nausea snacks, a closet of clothes the security team gathered from my place, and newly purchased maternity things I’m trying not to think too much about.
This morning, though, the den is taken over by yoga mats.
Two of them—mine and Mackenzie’s—sit side-by-side as we follow a painfully cheerful instructor on the laptop who keeps telling us to “visualize our grounding energy.” My “grounding energy” at the moment is just trying not to throw up.
“Breathe with the stretch,” the instructor says over the soft music. “Let the body soften. Let the hips relax. Remember, your body knows how to grow this child.”
Mackenzie snorts on her mat beside me. “Mine knows how to grow burrito cravings. That’s about it.”
I laugh, exhaling through my nose slowly as I try to ease into a modified pose that supposedly helps with lower back pain. The baby must sense the shift because a tiny flutter brushes the inside of my belly, light as a fingertip on silk.
“Hey,” I whisper under my breath. “Good morning to you too.”
“You feel it again?” Mackenzie asks quietly, her voice softening.
“Just a little.” I rest a hand over the curve of my stomach. “I think they like the stretching.”
“Then they’re nothing like their father,” she mutters, making me huff a laugh. It also has my brain wondering about the gender, something I’ve insisted on not knowing. I want it to be a surprise for everyone.
We finish the session with guided breathing, and when I finally sit cross-legged on the mat, the weariness spreads through my limbs like warm water.
Pregnancy feels like living in two bodies at once—one mine, one foreign—both needing something different every minute.
Mackenzie stands, brushing off her leggings. “The midwife’s coming at seven. Ronan ran a background check on her that took nine days and he’s still not happy about it.”
“If I survive the day,” I say. “I swear this war room gives me more stress than the Russians do.”
She nudges me lightly with her foot. “That’s because there’s a certain man involved.”
I’m about to respond when the front lock clicks open. Mackenzie freezes first. Then her brows shoot up knowingly. “Well,” she whispers, “speak of the devil, and he shall storm the building.”
Declan steps inside, closing the reinforced door behind him.
He’s wearing dark tactical clothes, his shoulders tense, jaw sharper than usual, eyes coiled with something unreadable.
He scans the entry, then us, then the room beyond, as if cataloguing threat levels and possible exits, before his gaze comes back to me fully.
It hits me like the first drop of a storm: the air changes, thickens, hums.
“Hey,” Mackenzie says far too casually, lifting her mat. “I’ll let you two… strategize.”
“Mackenzie,” I hiss under my breath. She ignores me entirely, gives Declan a pointed nod meant to warn him against any sudden stupidity, then disappears down the hall toward the back office.
Declan waits until she’s gone before he steps forward.
“You’re early,” I say, pushing myself to my feet slowly. “We weren’t supposed to start until eleven.”
“I know.” His voice is deeper than I remember. Maybe I just forgot. Maybe I tried to. “I wanted to get here before the others.”
“Why?” I smooth my sweater over my belly, suddenly self-conscious.
His eyes dip—just for a second—to the curve beneath the fabric. The smallest flicker crosses his face. Something like awe layered with guilt layered with confusion. Then it’s gone. “Because we need to talk.”
Of course we do. We always do. And we never do it well.
I move to the table where the maps are spread and open the binder Liam left for us—our joint planning assignment. “Then talk.”
He steps closer, but not too close, like he’s trying to respect a boundary neither of us can name. “I’m assigned to the offensive team now. Pipeline disruption. Full direction under Liam.”
“I know,” I say quietly. “He told me.”
“He also told me,” Declan continues, “that you and I have to coordinate the logistics together. All planning. All assessments. All timelines.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why do you look like I’m telling you something catastrophic?”
I shut the binder a little too forcefully. “Maybe because the last time we were alone in a room, you accused me of using our child as leverage.”
“That was different.”
“Was it?” I ask. “You stood in my flat and called me a liar while I was still holding the picture.”
His throat works. “I was angry.”
“I was terrified,” I counter.
The words fill the air between us. Heavy. Raw. He drags a hand through his hair. “I know I handled it badly.”
A bitter laugh rises in my chest. “You think?”
“Don’t,” he snaps—but not cruelly. More like he’s begging me not to open the wound wider. “Don’t turn this into a fight when I’m trying to make it right.”
My jaw tightens. “Then say what you came here to say.”
For the first time in months, he seems… uncertain. “I’m not asking for forgiveness,” he says. “I’m not asking for anything except a chance to be in the same room without ruining everything we touch.”
My heart thumps once, hard.
“I don’t know what I feel half the time,” he continues. “Not in ways that make sense. I just know I can’t stop thinking about you. And I can’t stop thinking about the child you’re carrying.”
The words hit me like a tide—pulling me under, pulling me forward, pulling me apart.
I grip the back of a chair to steady myself. “You can’t say things like that and expect me to just… what? Smile? Pretend the last few months didn’t happen?”
“I’m not asking you to pretend,” he says. “I’m telling you where I’m standing now. You don’t have to meet me here. You don’t even have to like it.”
“Then what do you expect?”
“Respect,” he says simply. “And to give it back.”
I stare at him, breath trembling. “Declan… I’m not asking you for love. I’m not even asking for trust. I’m asking for safety. For our child. For myself.”
“You have that,” he says, and for once he doesn’t sound volatile or defensive. He sounds certain. “For the first time in months, I know exactly what I can give.”
My chest tightens. “You said you don’t know how you feel.”
“I don’t,” he admits. “But I know what I can’t do. I can’t ignore you. And I can’t pretend this doesn’t matter. Any of it.”
The honesty disarms me more than anger ever could. I reach into my bag, fingers brushing over the folded piece of glossy paper. I take it out slowly and hold it between us.
“Here,” I say softly.
He looks at it like it might burn him. “Is that—?”
“Yes.”
He takes the ultrasound picture with careful hands, like it’s made of glass. His eyes sweep over the grainy shape—the small curve, the little shadow of a spine—and something inside him shifts almost visibly. His breath leaves him in one slow exhale.
“That’s ours,” he whispers. “That’s—” He stops, swallows, tries again. “That’s real.”
“I know.”
He sits down heavily in one of the chairs, still staring at the image. His thumb traces the corner, slow and reverent.
I watch him—this man who terrifies half the city, whose temper could level mountains, who has survived wars and betrayal and bloodshed—and he looks undone by a blurry black-white photograph the size of a postcard.
Something in me softens. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But something that recognizes the truth of him. Something that remembers the man beneath the scars.
“I want to try,” he says, looking up at me.
My eyes sting. “I want that too.”
We stand there for a long moment. No talking. Just breathing the same air for once without bracing for impact.
And then—
He steps closer. I don’t move away. The distance folds like paper.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs. “If you don’t want this. Tell me to walk out and I will.”
I swallow. “I don’t want you to stop.”
His hand touches my waist, tentative, warm, spreading over the curve of my growing belly as if asking for permission. I nod, just barely. He exhales shakily.
I rest my hand over his. “Just… don’t break me again.”
“I won’t,” he says, voice low, rough, and frighteningly honest. “Not this time.”
He kisses me.
It’s not a sweet kiss, not at first. It tastes like missed sleep and old anger, like the silence that’s pressed between us for months, raw at the edges.
But I don’t pull away. Instead, I let myself thaw millimeter by millimeter.
His palm slides into the small of my back, anchoring me, and for a second, I’m weightless—off-balance, unmoored.
Then he steadies me, fingers splaying against the ridges of my spine, and the uncertainty I’ve been holding collapses under its own weight.
I let myself fall into him, eyes closing.
He pulls away first, just far enough to rest his forehead against mine. I can’t quite read the look in his eyes—there’s too much there, years and years of unfinished sentences—but his breath is uneven, and his hands are shaking.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from saying something soft, something stupid, and instead just stand there until his hands begin to roam my body.
“Mackenzie left twenty minutes ago,” I say against his mouth. “She took the long way out so she wouldn’t have to look at either of us.”
“And the two on the step?”
“Paid not to hear anything. Ronan’s very clear with them about it.”
He huffs a laugh into my hair, and it’s the first easy sound he’s made in months.
My clothes soon come off, and he caresses my belly before letting me see his glorious form in turn. I find myself being flipped around, shoved toward the arm of the couch where I lean and hang on.
My hair falls over my face, tickling my cheeks. His hands slide up, splayed against my ribs, greedy and cautious at once. He fits behind me with an ease that makes something twist down low—a bitter, lovely nostalgia.
The edge of the couch arm presses into my palms. I don’t mind; I want that pressure, need it to keep me tethered.
He hesitates, just for a second, breath ghosting across my shoulder. “If you need me to stop, just say.” The words come out like he hates saying them, but means every syllable.
I don’t answer, not with words. I reach back and anchor his wrist, guiding his palm over my stomach, my breast, the places where I still want to be held. He groans, a soft sound, almost wounded. I can feel him hard and sure, pressed against me, and some primitive part of my brain unfurls, starved.
I feel him up against me moments later, and I whimper as the ache it gives me shoots through me. I’ve never wanted it so much.
Hormones. Desperation. Love. The reason doesn’t even matter.
“Please,” I hear myself saying. With a growl, he obliges, slamming into me only to pull back just a little.
I call out, and he reaches out to grab my hair, tugging at it like an anchor. Something about his possessiveness right now makes my center burn with desire.
For once, there’s no audience. No prying eyes, no hidden agendas. Just him and me and the too-bright morning leaking in from the kitchen.
He’s rough but measured—I can feel restraint trembling under every motion, like he’s fighting the urge to go feral. I wonder if he’s scared of breaking me, now that I’m carrying something so fragile, or if it’s guilt, coiling through his veins in place of old rage.
I slam backward into his hips, hungry, our shapes aligning and colliding with need. The pleasure is immediate, all-consuming, flooding my system and erasing the months of absence in a single, blinding instant.
I moan, more animal than woman, and he clamps my hair tighter, control slipping with each thrust.
I can’t help it—I’ve never been quiet, never learned how. Air rattles in my chest, and the world narrows to the points where our bodies join.
My knees shake and tremble so that only his thrusts, so deep he’s a part of me, keep me upright. I buckle under the weight of multiple waves of pleasure, making me lose my grip on reality.
I’m saying his name like a chant, and as the room stops spinning, something wracks me one more time at the force of his peak inside of me.
When it is over—when my breath finally returns and the world slowly knits itself back together—I lie beside him on the small couch, my head resting on his shoulder, the safehouse settling into its late-morning quiet around us.
We don’t speak. We don’t need to. For the first time in a long time, the silence isn’t a battlefield. It’s a beginning.