What Grows Dies Here

Short of chaining her to the bed—which I’d considered—there was no way to slow Wren down. Which was one of the many, many fucking things I loved about her.

It was a good thing our baby was draining the energy out of her so she spent a lot of her time sleeping. Sleeping more than she ever had before. Through the night. She’d mentioned offhand once that she’d never slept well. I knew that the first night I went to her house and she was wide awake at three in the morning.

It made sense to me that Wren didn’t sleep often. She was determined to live her life to the wildest extent, to suck it dry. Sleeping took her away from that.

I also noticed that the more comfortable she got with me, with us, the less she tried to fight her feelings, the more she slept. That filled me the fuck up. That she felt so safe with me she was willing to shut the world out, to let her body rest.

That body was growing more and more beautiful every day. Fuller. With our child. So even though I worried about her, even though there was shit with the Russians, serious fucking shit, even though I had to get more blood on my hands than I had in years, I was good.

Better than good.

Which was how I was fucking blindsided.

Jay was standing when I walked into the office. He was waiting for me. Just leaning against the front of his desk.

Alarm bells started ringing.

“What?” I demanded.

The look on his face told me everything. Every fucking thing I needed to know. This fucker never cracked. Not once. Not when he was witnessing the worst shit I could do to a human. Not when he was doing it himself. Nothing got in.

But now, he was cracked.

He wore it on his face.

Something happened with Stella… To Wren. My heart stopped beating. Everything stilled. The creature inside of me that had been sleeping started waking up, clawing at its cage.

“You need to lock it down,” Jay said. He spoke with an even cadence, sounding resolute. But his eyes weren’t. They were full of fucking fear.

Stella and Wren were shopping together today.

“Are they dead?” I managed to ask.

“No,” Jay said.

That didn’t give me any comfort. Not dead was the baseline. But there were a multitude of things worse than death. We both knew that.

“According to the reports I’m getting, they are both en route to Cedars.” He paused. I saw him take a breath. Visibly take a breath. “Wren was hit. Don’t know how many times.”

Fury, cold and overreaching, clawed its way over me so my vision was sharp, defined. There was a low ringing in my ears.

My piece was out of its holster and pointed at Jay’s head before I could blink.

He didn’t pull his own, though I knew he was wearing one.

“Why in the fuck did you call me here, thirty minutes out of the way, when my pregnant woman is shot and on her way to the fuckin’ hospital?” I gritted out. “If she doesn’t make it, if you steal those last moments from me because of some fuckin’ power play, you’re dead.”

I meant every word. Every single one. Jay, the man who I’d followed blindly for years, who I respected, admired, I’d kill him in a fucking instant if he took that from me.

Jay gave me a curt nod, understanding. “She’s gonna make it,” he said quietly.

I was still holding my piece at his head. “You do not know that shit.”

We were both well versed at how easily life could end. How death did not discriminate whether or not you were praying. Hoping. Hope didn’t make a shred of fucking difference. Nor did fate. All that mattered was where the bullets hit my woman and how many.

Where the bullets hit my pregnant fucking woman.

I scrambled to bring her up in my memories. The way her face had screwed up in anger only this morning. How my dick had twitched, watching her get all worked up and ready to go to battle with me.