Ailish
I’m standing over a table with Mackenzie, marking a supply corridor in red pen, when Declan storms in.
I don’t hear him at first; no one ever hears him at first. He moves like he was built out of shadow and quiet threats.
But the second he’s fully inside the room, everyone feels the shift—the sort of gravitational pull that makes heads turn before they realize why.
Mackenzie elbows me softly, brows lifting. “Your man walks like he’s about to start a war.”
I whisper, “He always walks like that.”
But my pulse speeds up anyway.
Declan hasn’t looked at me this directly in days. He’s been busy with Liam, busy with the Russians, busy trying to keep a lid on the chaos that spirals wider every hour. So, I don’t take it personally, as much as I weakly crave him.
I feel his attention when it lands on me, heavy and unguarded. There’s something in his eyes I can’t name. Something fierce, but soft beneath it.
He doesn’t break eye contact as he crosses the room—not even when Liam calls his name, not even when one of the Italians tries to hand him a folder. He ignores all of it. The entire room goes still, slowly realizing he’s not coming in to give orders. He’s coming for me.
“Declan,” I say quietly, straightening, the pen still in my fingers. “What’s—”
He stops in front of me, breathing hard, as if he ran here straight from a battlefield. Maybe he did. His hair is a little messy, his shirt half buttoned, his jaw tense like he’s been grinding through an impossible choice.
“Ailish,” he says.
My heart clenches. “Are you alright?”
He nods once, then shakes his head, then huffs a breath that sounds like a man giving in after fighting himself for too long. “No. I’m not alright. And I’m not waiting anymore.”
Before I can ask what he means, he drops to one knee.
The pen slips from my fingers and hits the map with a dull clatter.
A collective gasp ripples through the room. Someone swears. Someone else whispers, “Finally.” Mackenzie chokes on her own spit. Nadia actually claps a hand over her mouth like she’s watching a soap opera live.
But all of it fades the second I look down at Declan.
He’s kneeling in the war room. On a concrete floor stained with oil and boot prints.
Maps and guns and radios buzzing behind him.
His broad shoulders squared, his gaze locked with mine.
And in his hand—God, in his hand—is a small ring box.
It looks almost comically soft in a place built on blood and steel.
“Ailish.” His voice is rough, low, shaking not with nerves but with the force of everything he’s trying to say at once. “I’m not a good man. I’ve never pretended to be. I’ve made mistakes that I’d bleed for twice over if it meant undoing them.”
My throat tightens. He keeps going.
“But I love you.” The words hit the air like gunfire—loud, final, irreversible. “I love you more than I can carry, more than I can fight, more than I know how to hold without destroying it. But I’m trying. I swear to God I am.”
The room doesn’t breathe.
He swallows hard, eyes flicking briefly—not to my belly, but to where the baby is resting inside me, safe for now.
“I want to protect you both. Not because it’s duty.
Not because I’m scared. But because you’re my family.
And I choose you. Every day. Even when I’m an idiot who makes everything worse. ”
A laugh bubbles out of me, broken and wet.
He opens the ring box.
The ring is simple, beautiful, a smooth band with a single stone. It looks like us—unpolished, imperfect, painfully sincere.
Declan takes a breath that sounds like it’s costing him something. “Marry me, Ailish. Not because of the baby. Not because of the war. But because I’m in love with you, and I want to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve you.”
My vision blurs.
The room leans in.
I lift a hand to my mouth and shake my head once—not in refusal, but in disbelief, in overwhelmed joy, in sheer stunned chaos that this man, this impossible, infuriating, beautiful man, is kneeling for me in the middle of the damn war room.
“You’re a bastard,” I whisper, voice trembling.
A slow smile pulls at his mouth. “I know.”
“But you’re my bastard.”
His eyes soften in a way that could crack the entire earth.
“Yes?” he asks quietly.
I nod, tears spilling over. “Yes. Yes, Declan. God, yes.”
The room erupts.
Nadia cheers first, loud enough to shake dust from the rafters. Mackenzie screams, grabs Finn’s arm so hard he curses. Someone whoops. Someone cries. Someone slaps someone else on the back.
Declan stands, pulls me into him, and kisses me like he’s been drowning for months and finally hit air. His hands cradle the back of my head, careful of my body, careful of everything. My fingers curl into his shirt. The ring is already on my hand. I don’t even remember him sliding it on.
When he pulls back, he presses his forehead to mine. “We’re doing this.”
“We are.”
“I’m not running.”
“Good,” I murmur. “Neither am I.”
Liam clears his throat behind us. “All right, you two lovebirds, save some of that for after the Russians stop trying to kill us.”
Declan flips him off without turning around. The entire room laughs.
Ten minutes later, the war room looks less like a command center and more like a chaotic family party.
Papers are strewn across tables. Someone opened a bottle of whiskey.
Rory insists on taking pictures on his cracked phone.
Conor hugs me so tightly I wheeze. Liam kisses the top of my head and mutters, “About damn time.”
Nadia holds my hands, examining the ring with misty eyes. “You deserve this,” she says. “You deserve every bit of happiness coming your way.”
Mackenzie slings an arm around my shoulders. “Family dinner. That’s happening. Tonight. No arguments.”
“You’re planning it?” I ask, laughing through tears.
“Absolutely. I’m making a spreadsheet.”
I groan. Nadia cheers.
But Mackenzie isn’t done. “And Gianna lands tonight. The family needs to stick close. Especially now.”
I’m standing in the middle of a war room surrounded by the people who will fight to the death for each other. For me. For the baby. For the life we’re trying to build in the cracks of a battlefield.
Declan catches my eye from across the room. He taps his chest twice with two fingers. I mirror it.
We stay like that for a moment, the noise swirling around us, the world still dangerous and bloody and uncertain, but our promise anchored right in the center of it.
We’re getting married.