I shivered as the chilled wind hit my bare arms, my stomach, for once, not jerking in surprise at anything that had caught me off guard, however slight, as it had been doing for the last two weeks. I clutched the small bag of vitamins and even smaller envelope to my chest, tucking my arms close as I made my way across the lot and toward my little red Beetle, regretting that I hadn’t brought a jacket the entire time.

When I spotted my car, I breathed a sigh of relief and tugged my purse in front of me as I dug through it for my keys.

“Anna.” The voice next to me made me startle, causing me to drop my keys, bag, and envelope across the tarmac as Jax threw his hands up in front of him in surrender.

“Jax?” I gasped, my hand over my heart as I tried to breathe through the sudden wave of nausea Jax had incurred.

I placed my hand against the car, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. “You bastard,” I hissed as the feeling subsided. “You almost made me throw up all over you.”

Jax let out a soft chuckle as he dropped down to his haunches, picking up my stuff before handing it to me. “You heading home?”

“No,” I said softly, “just putting some stuff in my car.”

He nodded, stepping aside as I navigated around him to my door, throwing the envelope and bag on the side before pulling out the jacket I had in the back and shutting the door behind me. We didn’t say anything as I locked my car and began to walk to the other department of the hospital, away from the gynecologist department toward the main hospital, Jax falling into step next to me.

He waited until we were inside, away from the bitter cold, when we were heading down the heated hallways towards Petersburg ward before he broached the subject he was here for. “Wolf wants to see you.”

I didn’t reply.

“Anna, it’s been three weeks,” Jax pleaded, his voice becoming desperate. “You need to let him explain.”

“Explain what?” I replied, my voice apathetic as I forced my eyes to the door at the very end of the long corridor, picking out sounds of trollies wheeling by, nurses gossiping, and pagers going off all around me.

“About what happened with Ash,” Jax said softly, stepping ahead of me as he tried to meet my eyes.

We passed the canteen, and I turned away from his face to see someone filling up his coffee, the dull tone of the machine I was familiar with pouring lukewarm, watery coffee into a crappy Styrofoam cup. I wanted to warn him that the cup would burn his hands if he didn’t wrap a napkin around it first, but I just kept walking, not caring when I heard the man’s startled gasp, followed by the cup hitting the floor, coffee splashing everywhere as we left the waiting room behind us.

“What’s there to explain?” I asked, counting down the numbers as one by one they dwindled down until room 81-B was before us. “He made his choice.”

Jax hesitated as I reached for the door handle and swung open the door.

He held off following me in, pausing as I slid off my jacket and laid it out on the soft, cotton chair that had been placed by the side of the bed. I reached up and checked all the numbers on the machine, not understanding any of what they meant but still being able to tell that none of them had changed. Which meant nothing had happened in the hour or so I’d been gone on the other side of the hospital.

When I finally heard the boots enter the room behind me, I turned and saw Jax, his big, tanned and tattooed body dressed in only a tight white shirt, jeans, and boots, hovering in the doorway. “You can come in,” I said, lowering myself into the chair next to the bed. “It’s not like she’s going to bite you.”

Jax frowned at me, his eyes full of sympathy as he forced his eyes up from the white floors until they hit the bed. I watched as they moved slowly up over the blue blanket over the end of the bed, up higher until he could see her hands by her side, machines attached to her fingers and an IV in her arm, and then higher and higher until he could see her peaceful, sleeping face, brown hair fanned out over her pillow, eyes closed and skin pale.

He could barely hold them there for thirty seconds before his eyes fell back down to the floor in shame.

“It’s not your fault, Jax,” I said softly, gesturing to one of the standard hospital chairs next to me.

Jax looked up, his eyes flicking to Ash before they jumped back to me. “I should have stopped him before he went through with any of it. We should have. We’re all at fault.”

“You’re right,” I said, reaching out my hand to touch his. “But my deal was between me and Wolf only.”

“Ha,” Jax scoffed, turning over my tiny hand compared to his large, calloused one, and started to play with my small fingers, his eyes heavy on my hands. “You make me feel like my parents are getting a divorce.”

“I wouldn’t give birth to such a big baby.” I chuckled, squeezing his hand. It didn’t do anything to improve his mood, but when he squeezed my hand back, I felt a little reassured myself.

We were quiet for a few moments, the sound of beeping and distant noise beyond the door filling the room; the clatter of dropped clipboards, opened and closed doors, and crying family and friends of patients.

“Was the envelope...?” Jax left the question hanging, and I had to think what he was referring to until I remembered what it was he had seen me putting into the car. He’d had his suspicions that morning a few weeks ago, and after everything went down, I had no choice but to confide in Jax.

“Yeah,” I said softly, thinking about the heavy weight of the photographs in my hands when the nurse had passed them to me. Putting them in my car had put them out of mind until now.

Jax nodded again, creating yet another wall of silence. I watched him as he sat there, his eyes boring into the floor. He frowned, his mouth opened and then closed as he tried to broach the subject. I waited, letting him take his time to word it before he picked up the courage to ask me.

“Are you going to tell him?” Jax’s soft, southern voice finally asked me.

I was glad it filled the room. The emptiness was almost overbearing when I was on my own, but with the concern across his face, I couldn’t take much pleasure in it.

“You make it sound like I wouldn’t tell him at all.” I sounded lighthearted, triggering the frown on Jax’s beautifully sharp face to deepen. “I’ll tell him,” I answered, looking away from the brown eyes that saw too much as his attention clung to my every word. I had been kidding earlier, but Jax really did look like the lost child caught up in a parents’ fight. Jax and the rest of the brothers were dear to me, and I knew they cared about me, too. Half of them had respected my distance, while the other half that had the courage to come see me, all looked at me with the slight unease that their stubborn faces tried, and failed, to hide.

I knew what caused their unease, nearly all of them a witness to the last time I saw Wolf, ending with my “Property of” cut, and our relationship, torn to shreds on the floor. I knew I had to meet him, to talk about everything, but when Hunter had rushed in to see Mallory and only moments later told me about what had happened, I just felt as if the ice under my feet had broken, and under the water I fell.

Everything felt surreal. Even looking at Ash now, the wires and tubes. I never thought I’d be able to be in a room with her and not be annoyed at her little remarks or quotes. Not yell at her or want to smack her for winding me up for fun. I had come so close to not being able to be near her at all, not after her heart had stopped from the shock of being shot. I had barely managed to thank Lamb after the doctor’s told me he was responsible for restarting her heart.

I let out a heavy sigh.

After everything with Ash, mine and Wolf’s issues were just too raw for me to deal with right now. I had too many things weighing on my shoulders, and facing Wolf was just not in my cards.

“I feel bad hiding it,” Jax confessed softly, his eyes gazing down at our hands. He looked like he was confused that he was still holding it, but his hand didn’t move away. “You should come back and tell him.”

And that was the epitome of their unease. They all looked at me, not wondering when, but wondering if I would come back to the club. I had come back to the club only for the small service we held for Sweets; she didn’t have family beyond the club, and even if she was one of the club whores, she was still a person, so when Baby asked me to attend, I couldn’t say no. I liked Sweets, even if I didn’t go out of my way to know her, and losing her had been hard on the club, knowing we couldn’t protect her. But aside from paying my dues to Sweets, I hadn’t stepped back onto compound grounds since. If you asked me if heartbreak would keep me from coming to the club a few years ago, I would have told you that I wasn’t that weak.

But I guess I was more fragile than I thought.

“Not yet,” I said softly, feeling Jax’s hand flinch around mine. Every time I met with one of the brothers, and every time I didn’t address the silent question of my return, they all held the same, guarded, and secretly hurt expression.

It was one of those times in your life when you realized how much you’re treasured. And it was sweet, it really was. But despite how much I loved the club, I just... I couldn’t. Not yet.

Jax nodded, and that was the end of our conversation. We sat for a few more minutes in the comfort of each other’s company before a nurse came to tell me what I knew already. Her condition hadn’t changed. That she was recovering nicely. That they didn’t know when she would wake up.

That being in a coma was normal.

And every time I looked at them, listening to their words, it only reminded me that all nurses and doctors lied to make people feel better.

It didn’t make me feel better.

* * *

It was only a few more days before I saw Jax again, but this time he didn’t come alone.

“Anna!” Jax yelled as the door bounced off the wall, his dark hair in a tangled mess in front of his face, eyes wide and chest heaving as he struggled for breath. “I didn’t tell him on purpose, I swear! I—”

That was all Jax got out before a huge hand tore him out of the doorway with enough force to send him staggering backward, ass slamming onto the floor and head cracking against the opposite wall.

“Jax” I yelled but barely made it a step forward before a huge, thick wall filled the doorway.

My head snapped upward, eyes meeting Wolf’s eyes, and as much as I wanted to scream at him for what he just did, I couldn’t. Not when I saw his face.

It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t confused. It was... devastated.

“Wo—”

“Is it true?” Wolf choked, his voice a deep baritone of grief, upset and everything else, the noise strangled as it came out of his tight throat that was bobbing over and over again as he tried to swallow down the emotion I knew was rising in my own voice.

“I—” I took a deep, shaky breath. “Yes.”

Wolf’s arm shot out to the doorframe, supporting his body as he practically keeled over. On instinct, I reached out to touch him as he sank lower, but the second my skin touched his, he leaped back from me as if I had stung him.

His face whirled on mine, the color drained from it, eyes ringed in white, head shaking. For the first time, I noticed the dark circle under his eyes and the slight hollow of his cheeks. His beard, the one that had been steadily growing on his face the last few months, had become a wiry mess, his hair the same as it hung low down at his jaw, strands falling over his hollowed cheeks. He looked... older. So much older in only a few weeks since I’d last seen him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” his cracked voice growled, the hoarseness of it beyond that of his declined health. His eyes were pointed at mine, but I could see his gaze going way beyond me. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant!” he roared, the anger seeping through.

I looked at him, completely stunned, as his chest heaved with heavy breathing, eyes wild with rage as they glared down at me.

“How dare you?” I snapped, a deep, thick burn growing in the depths of my chest and slowly rising. “Why didn’t I tell you?” I retorted, my eyebrows rising to my hairline. “How could I?”

“It’s not fucking hard, Anna!” Wolf snapped, stepping into the room, forcing me back a step. “It’s two fucking words. If you even had the fucking decency to come look at my face these past few weeks—”

“And whose fault is that?” I screeched, my hands moving to shove him, his huge chest not even budging an inch. I raised my fist again, furious at the bastard for even suggesting this was anywhere near my fault, but I barely had an inch to move before his hand lunged out, circling my wrist as his body charged forward, shoving me hard enough into the wall that a startled breath was forced out of my lungs.

“Wolf!” Jax yelled from behind him, but Wolf wasn’t listening.

“I had a fucking choice to make, Anna!” Wolf yelled into my face, the whiskey heavy on his breath. “Why can’t you understand that I never wanted any of this to happen!”

“Because my best friend is in a fucking coma she might never wake up from!”” I screeched. The words were torn from my throat, the sting and burn making it hard to breathe as I tried and struggled to break free. “You sacrificed her! You nearly killed her!”

“I tried to go back and save her! I fucking tried, but it wasn’t enough!” Wolf swung his arm back, and I couldn’t help but flinch as he swung. Jax’s voice and screams echoed behind it as I heard the rippling crunch as bone shattered against the wall.

Wolf didn’t even utter a grunt of pain as he hung his head low, dropping it onto my shoulder, hot breath rolling over my ice-cold skin. “I tried for you, Anna. I made a mistake, and Ash got hurt because of it. And I was stupid and thought I’d be okay with it. But I wasn’t.” He took a soft, shaky breath. “I wasn’t because I knew I couldn’t bear losing you. And now you’re—” His breath shook over the word, unable to say it. “Please, Anna. Don’t push me away.”

My eyes burned with unshed tears, my whole body still with the weight of his words, of his emotion crashing down on top of me. My stomach churned, wanting to throw up everywhere, but my throat was so dry I wasn’t sure if it could even function enough to do it. I saw Jax’s eyes over Wolf’s wide shoulder, like tiny little dots. His hands were out, body crouched slightly, ready to pounce, though I could see in his pained, confused eyes, we both knew he couldn’t stop Wolf on his own.

But then I was no longer looking at Jax. I was looking past him, looking to the bed where a girl lay in a sleep she might never wake up from as Wolf’s words repeated in my head.

“Tell me you won’t ever choose the club over our child,” I breathed.

Wolf’s head snapped back, his eyes jumping to mine, wild with shock and surprise. When he opened his mouth, I could see in his face that he was ready to answer in a heartbeat. But then I heard the hitch of his breath, the pause.

He hesitated.

“I won’t—”

“Stop,” I gasped, the strength in my legs collapsing beneath me as my world fell down on top of me.

Wolf’s eyes went wide as he reached to catch me.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” I screamed, startling not just him but everybody in the room as they all flinched to a stop.

Wolf’s eyes went wide, and I saw the slack of his jaw and the shiver of his chest as he looked at me with realization, and only second later, panic took over. His pupils dilated, breath hitching as his voice tightened in desperation, arms flinching as he went to reach for me but forced himself to stop. “Anna,” he pleaded, but he could see it in my face.

He knew.

“Get out,” I breathed, trying to remember how to breathe as I tried to recover from the blow of the realization Wolf had just delivered me. “Get out!!” I screeched, seeing him still standing over me.

“No, Anna.” Wolf shook his head. “I can’t lose you! Don’t do this.”

I shook my head, then turned to look at him. I didn’t know what I had wanted to do with Wolf, what I wanted to tell him or talk to him about. But just then I realized what I wanted. I had wanted Wolf. I had wanted to have a family with him and go back to the club with him so we could raise our child together. I had wanted him to tell me our child would be above everything. I wanted to go back to him.

But I couldn’t.

“You just lost me, Wolf,” I said. I stared at the ragged, hurting man in front of me, and somehow, I fought the need to rush to him and tell him I was okay with his priorities. Circumstances were different now. My hand reached out, and like a protective cover, it circled my stomach. “I will not make the same mistake as Kay, Wolf,” I said, shaking my head at him but forcing my voice to be firm. “I will not let my baby come second, Wolf. Not to the club. Not to you. Not to anything. It deserves more.”

I saw the moment Kay’s words hit. His body staggered back, breath stopping, expression appearing as if I had struck him with a sledgehammer. He turned and reached for something, and as his huge hand gripped the plastic handles of the bed, the file hooked on the bed fell to the floor. It’s clattering against the tile floor jolted Wolf to the side as he spun to face the noise and stalled.

He looked down onto Ash’s bed as if he had just realized she was there. And I knew that was the final blow, because he couldn’t stand in the room a second longer. His body spun, and not even looking at me as he turned, he shoved past Jax as he fled out of the room, the huge seven-foot Russian man running as hard and fast as he could.

Finally knowing what his mistake had cost him.

I didn’t even remember what happened after that. I was vaguely aware of my body falling into a pile on the floor, Jax dropping down to my side as he wrapped his arms around me, apologizing over and over again, but I wasn’t listening.

All I could feel was the soft throbbing in my stomach, and despite knowing that it was the need to throw up and not the baby’s heartbeat, just the feel of it anchored me to the floor, the weight of this responsibility on my shoulders as I just threw away everything I’d ever wanted.

For a child, sacrificing everything for its sake seemed like it would be the easiest decision in the world. The simplest.

And when I learned the truth, it was easy. It was simple. To know that my baby had to come first was the easiest decision in the whole world.

But having to give up what was necessary to protect it was also the most painful.

* * *

I heard a familiar gasp as I passed the waiting lounge of the Petersburg ward, almost ignoring it since it was a sound I heard nearly every time I passed, until it was followed by a string of even more familiarly colorful words. My feet stopped on the tile, my process of counting down the room numbers jolted as I spun on my sandals, head snapping to the watery coffee machine as I saw the familiar, tall, broad shoulders, and curled dark hair.

“Hunter?”

He spun around, spilling coffee all over his hand and gasping in shock as his unique green eyes snapped to me. It only lasted a second before his hand dropped his coffee, the cup falling to the floor, and Hunter’s swearing started again as his attention was torn in two.

He looked to the coffee and then back up to me, but I was already moving.

“Lamb!” I heard Hunter bellow as I raced down the corridor, ignoring all the numbers until all I could see was the window at the end and the open door next to it.

Lamb stepped out the doorway just as I approached, light breaking around his tight, slender figure as he opened his arms to catch me. What he hadn’t expected, however, was the bottom of my heeled sandal in his thigh, knocking him sideways, and more importantly, out of my way as I rushed around his falling figure.

I heard his hand catch the doorway, stopping his fall, but by that point, it was too late to stop me.

My sandals slapping against the floor of the dark room had heads turning toward me, but their attention only lasted a second, when Ash ignored my entrance and turned back to the hulking man at the end of her bed.

“Thank you,” Ash said softly, and when I turned to look at her, brown hair tied up in a bun on the top of her head, eyes shallow, and skin pale from lack of sunlight from her hospital room—the windows shuttered close since her sunglasses had broken, not to mention the three weeks spent in a coma—I saw her looking down into her hands, a gentle smile on her face.

“It’s fine.” Wolf’s deep grumble came from the other end of the bed. My head almost snapped off my shoulders as I spun to look at him. Wolf didn’t look much healthier from when I had last seen him; his eyes and cheeks were still hollowed and dark, but the wiry, wild hair growing on his chin had been cut and tamed into a smooth, dark brown beard around his face, and his long hair had been tied at the back of his head in a low ponytail. His clothes also looked new and clean, and his shoulders were straighter. He looked... fresh somehow?

Wolf then turned to look at me, and through my momentary stupor at his looks, I recalled the last time I’d seen him, the last time in this room.

He opened his mouth, his dark eyes looking down at me as a tendril of hair slipped loose across his eyes, and I felt as if I was dangling over a cliff, waiting for his next word, whether it would push me into a rage or silence, I didn’t know.

His mouth snapped shut. He shook his head at himself, took a deep breath, tightening the black shirt over his chest, before he moved his eyes back to Ash. He lifted his chin in her direction before turning on his heels and walking out, Lamb falling in step behind him as they left the room.

I stood watching the empty doorway before I turned back to Ash, left feeling unsatisfied at the anticlimactic interaction.

“What were you expecting?” Ash chuckled from my side, drawing my attention. She lifted her hand to tighten her bun and then stretched her arms above her head before wincing and dropping them. “I think last time was a once in a millennia event. Such drama.”

“Don’t be cocky,” I snapped, annoyed after finding out that people in comas were aware of what was happening around them periodically. Apparently, Ash had been a front-seat comatose witness to mine and Wolf’s outburst last time. “What did he say to you?”

Ash looked out the window, her face solemn as she stared at the empty tree where pigeons had been sitting almost every day since Ash’s admission. “That I’m dead.” Her voice was so soft, I almost missed it. “It’s a bit bizarre and cinematic for my tastes,” Ash scoffed as she looked back to me, her mouth a wiry smile. “But apparently there’s a body in the morgue with my name on it, and all my hospital bills were paid under a false name, so in essence, I’m dead.”

“Wolf did that?” I said softly, my eyebrows furrowing as I tried to think of how on earth Wolf would have gotten his hands on pseudo-Ash’s body, only one name coming to mind.

“Yeah, I’m free now.” A long hand reached up and grasped the earring bejeweling her ear. “No longer a caged bird. I—why are you being so quiet?”

My eyes bore into the tiled floor, and all I could do was feel a swelling emotion inside of me. My mind was working faster than I could comprehend, my body receiving the message before my conscious thoughts as my feet turned toward the door. “I’ve got to go.”

“What?”

And then I ran.

“Anna!” Ash’s voice echoed from the room miles behind me as my feet slapped against the hospital floor, shoving the blurry figures of doctors, nurses, hell, even patients aside as I rushed faster and faster across the floor, running past reception, barely stopping for the automatic doors as I slipped through the slight gap as they closed behind an entering patient, and burst out into the cold, chilling air.

My eyes jerked to the left and then to the right as I spun, looking around the parking lot and—

“Anna?”

I spun to see Wolf’s wide, dark eyes looking down at me as I heaved for breath, the limits of my fitness now hitting me as I leaned over and breathed through the roll in my stomach, unsure if it was because of my unfit body or the baby. I heard Wolf’s feet move forward, boots coming into my vision but stopping just out of reach.

“Why did you do it?” I breathed, standing up and straightening my spine as the need to throw up settled.

Wolf didn’t seem to be paying much attention to my words as his eyes raked over my body, looking for something to focus on or panic over, only rising to my face when he saw that my only danger was sweat circles under the sleeves of my tight gray T-shirt.

“Why did I do what?” Wolf replied, his face visibly relieved as his eyes softened on me, his voice unusually gentle.

“You’ve made a deal with Charon for Ash’s freedom, haven’t you?” I knew it the second Ash told me she was free. Our club didn’t have that kind of reach, and there was only one other man I knew that did. And I knew he wouldn’t do it for free. “Why?”

I saw the back of Lamb and Hunter’s heads as they walked across the carpark to the black SUV I recognized as Hunter’s new one parked at the closest edge of the short-term stay car lot. Wolf didn’t pay them any attention as his eyes focused back on me and slightly narrowed before a deep sigh rumbled out of his chest, his eyes releasing me and drifting to look across the tall hospital building.

“‘Mistakes are forgivable if one has the courage to admit them,’” Wolf said, and my loud groan followed it.

“Ash,” I whispered, seeing as though she was the only self-proclaimed ambiguous advice guru any of us knew. Hopefully.

“I think she meant it as advice for fixing my relationship with you,” Wolf admitted, his hand reaching up to scratch the back of his neck as his eyes cruised over the top of my head.

“You did it for me?” It wasn’t hard to hear the warning irritation in my tone as my eyebrows rose so high they nearly touched my hairline, while my voice dropped low enough to rumble deep in my chest.

“No.” Suddenly, his eyes dropped to meet mine and held them as he continued. “I did it for Ash. I know she meant it as advice for you, but I also made a mistake with her. As for everything I did to her... this is the least I could do.”

“But making a deal with Charon?” I shook my head. “The club—”

“It doesn’t matter about the club,” Wolf interrupted me, his eyes dropping from mine at last. “I know it’s a bit late to be saying this now, but you were right. What’s the point in ‘club before all’ if the club isn’t happy? It took me fucking up big time before I realized it, but now that I have, I won’t ignore what I’ve done. I’ll make up for it.”

I looked into his face, and although he wasn’t looking at me, I could see as his hard gaze bore into the floor that he was serious about this. About everything.

“What you’ve done with Ash, that doesn’t—”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with us, Anna,” Wolf finished for me, his head shaking as he looked at me. “I know what I’ve done to Ash won’t make it up to you, because I haven’t even begun to make it up to you yet.” He took a step forward, and for once, the sharp smell of his aftershave and mint mixed into his own scent caught me by surprise by how new it smelled and how long it had been since I’d last felt him this close. “But trust me on this.” Wolf’s voice dipped low, the timber forcing my silence, and somehow, drawing me closer. “I will make it up to you, Anna. I won’t let you get away that easily.”

The chill hit my bones deeper than the cold wind as Wolf stepped away, my body shivering, longing more for his heat to return than for a coat as I watched him walk away, his stride wide and confident, shoulders back, chin raised.

Determined.