"How's the morning sickness?" Summer asked, moving in beside me, a hand on her belly. It was her third and, she claimed, her last. She was six months along and finally over her whole day need to be near a toilet to puke her guts up.
I was only three months and not quite there yet. "Augh," I said, curling up my face.
"I feel you," she said as she laughed at Bri sticking her tongue out at Ferryn. "She needs someone to put her in her place," she said, shaking her head at her daughter who was small-eying the four year old.
"Fallon and Jackson are getting bigger. They won't tolerate her bossiness much longer."
"Fingers crossed. It's all Reign's fault," she said, looking over at her husband who seemed to sense the inspection and turned his head to give her a smile. "He's help build up that ego of hers."
"There are worse things in the world for a girl to be than confident," Janie said as she joined us. "I like her spirit."
"Well of course you do," Summer laughed.
"Hey, if she's gonna hold her own around all these sure-to-be biker boys as they grow up, she needs to be able to stand her ground.
We all watched as Lo moved across the field toward Ferryn, taking her hand and leading her off toward the pack-and-play where Willa, Paine and Elsie's baby, was situated under a tree. Without the dictatorship, Seth, Bri, and Alexis jumped up from their circle and started running around and laughing.
"Hey, honey," Repo said, coming up with some enormous wrapped box that made me shake my head. I had no idea where the hell we were going to fit all the new toys in a house that was already bursting with them.
"Who is that from?" I groaned as he set it on the table with the rest of them.
"Rus. So I guess we can expect something loud and obnoxious," he said, moving behind me and wrapping his arm under my chest and resting one hand against my belly. "Come up with anything yet?" he asked, meaning name-wise. With Seth it had been easy. The name was obvious once we knew it was a boy.
"Something with a K," Repo suggested, nuzzling into my neck.
K.
He'd been there to walk me down the aisle.
He'd been there to become a godfather to our son.
He'd just... always been there.
But the crazy thing was, I still didn't know his whole first name.
He was K. Case closed.
So I couldn't exactly name a kid after him in the traditional sense.
"Something with a K," I agreed, leaning back into him, cringing as I watched Seth take a head-over-feet tumble then immediately take his feet, laughing the whole thing off, pieces of grass sticking to his clothes randomly and what looked like a smear of blood on his knee.
"What the fuck..." Duke's voice called suddenly, making all the adults tense and turn to where he was looking at something at the gates.
And while the kids weren't aware of it thanks to some very fast and effective distracting from the girls club as a whole, that was when Seth's birthday party became the day when the peace The Henchmen had known for almost a decade came to a screeching halt.
Because what was at the gate was a woman.
And she was barely clinging to life.
And she had a Henchmen "H" carved into her back and the words "you're all next" written in her blood on a note tucked into her pocket.
Duke stooped and cradled the woman to his chest, bringing her inside the compound as Lo made a call to Hailstorm to have one of her medical team come and check the girl over and Repo, Cash, and Wolf called all the rest of the patched members to come to the compound for an emergency church meeting.
All the girls club shared a look, knowing what it meant.
It meant war.
"Here we go," Reign said, shaking his head.