"Stop crying like a stuck pig," the nurse muttered, her thick fingers digging brutally into my swollen belly to force the contractions. Her breath reeked of cheap rolling tobacco and stale gin. "Viper has better things to do than watch an unpatched stray ruin good linens."
The mention of his road name made my stomach convulse. I forced my trembling hand up and shoved her heavy forearm away with every ounce of strength left in my exhausted frame.
"Keep your hands off me unless you're catching these babies," I rasped, my throat raw from hours of silent labor.
I sucked in a ragged breath, blinking through the haze of sweat and tears to fix my gaze on the cracked mirror hanging crookedly on the clinic's water-damaged drywall. I refused to close my eyes. If I closed them, the darkness would pull me under, and I had to keep these children alive.
From the asphalt outside, the thunderous rumble of heavy Harley-Davidson V-twin engines vibrated through the clinic's single-pane windows, making the glass rattle against its wooden frame. Bass-heavy thrash metal bled through the shared wall of the Raven MC clubhouse next door, followed by a chorus of drunken cheers.
Footsteps echoed along the bare clinic hallway. High heels clicked loudly on the warped floorboards, accompanied by shrill, mocking laughter.
"Did she drop those brats yet?" a blonde sweetbutt drawled from the doorway, leaning against the frame with a half-empty bottle of bourbon in her manicured hand. "Viper said if she isn't out of this room by sunrise, the prospects are dumping her cot in the alley behind the dumpsters."
"She thinks she's still the Prez's Old Lady," another girl snickered, blowing a cloud of sour vape smoke into the sterile air. "She never even earned a bottom rocker. Just a charity case from the Vance house."
I bit my lower lip until the metallic tang of blood filled my mouth, anchoring my slipping consciousness. My fingernails dug into the rusted iron rails of the cot until the skin around my cuticles split. Let them laugh.
A fresh contraction slammed into my spine like a sledgehammer. Gasping, I reached toward the battered nightstand where my cracked smartphone lay. My fingers shook violently as I stretched for the lifeline I still foolishly believed in.
Pain spiked again, turning my arm to lead. My hand slipped, knocking the phone off the edge. It hit the dusty concrete floor with a hollow plastic crack, sliding beneath the bed.
The old nurse gave a dry, raspy chuckle and kicked the device deeper under the frame with the steel toe of her boot. "Save your battery, girl. Viper is two bottles deep in top-shelf tequila. He won't answer you."
Adrenaline surged through my veins, hot and feral. I shoved myself forward, leaning halfway off the mattress, and seized the filthy collar of her lab coat in a death grip.
"Pick it up," I snarled, staring straight into her rheumy eyes with a cold, murderous focus that made the old woman freeze. "Pick it up right now, or the first thing I do when I stand up is break your jaw."
The nurse swallowed hard, the cruel smirk fading from her leathery mouth. Without a word, she bent down, hooked the phone with the tip of her boot, and dragged it back within my reach.
I snatched the phone, swiped my sweat-streaked thumb across the spiderwebbed screen, and hit Viper's speed dial.
The line rang. Once. Twice. Four agonizing times while the room spun around me.
Finally, the line clicked open. The deafening roar of the biker bar poured through the speaker-glasses clinking, pool balls cracking, and men roaring with laughter over an engine revving indoors.
"Viper..." I choked out, fighting for air. "It's time. The babies are coming. I need-"
"Oh, look who decided to call," a sweet, venomous voice purred through the receiver. It wasn't Viper. It was Sierra.
My heart seized in my chest.
"Sierra," I whispered, my grip tightening on the plastic casing until the glass creaked. "Put him on."
"He's a little busy, darling," Sierra chuckled, her tone dripping with mock pity. "He's buying the whole clubhouse a round to celebrate my birthday. And my new spot on his rear fender. Why don't you pack your little duffel bag and crawl back to whatever ditch you came from?"
"Put Jaxson on the phone!" I screamed, using his real name, raw rage tearing through my vocal cords. "They are his children!"
A heavy rustle came through the line, followed by a deep, familiar gravelly voice that used to whisper promises against my collarbone.
"Tell that crazy bitch to stop calling," Viper's voice cut through the noise, cold and utterly devoid of warmth. "I told her we're done. I don't care about her or whatever bastards she's dropping. If she calls this phone again, I'll send Axel's boys to wipe her out."
The line went dead with a harsh, rhythmic tone.
I stared at the black screen, the final ember of hope inside my chest snapping and turning to cold, dead ash. The man who had taken my youth, used my family loyalty, and treated me like a disposable ghost had just signed his own eviction from my soul.
The nurse tossed a basin of lukewarm, murky water onto the bedside table, splashing cold droplets across my cheeks. "Told you so," she sneered, regaining her nerve.
I didn't wipe the dirty water from my face. I turned my head slowly, looking at her with eyes so hollow and lethal that the woman stepped back, dropping her gauze roll onto the floor.
A massive, tearing pressure built at the base of my pelvis. The bodies inside me were demanding their freedom.
"Get your hands ready," I commanded, my voice dead and steady despite the agony splitting my hips apart. "Because I'm delivering them right now, and if you drop either of them, you won't leave this room alive."
I gripped the cold iron headboard with both hands, muscles straining until the tendons in my neck felt like steel cables, and pushed with everything I had left.
The world narrowed to the sound of my own ragged breathing, the scent of fresh blood, and the metallic burn in my core.
With a slick, heavy slide and a sharp cry from the nurse, the first baby arrived into the cold air of the clinic.
Three minutes later, a second, smaller contraction expelled my second child. Two thin, furious wails rose in unison, piercing straight through the heavy bass rattling the walls from the Raven clubhouse.
The nurse crudely tied off the cords, snipped them with the dull shears, and bundled the blood-streaked infants into coarse, scratchy gray towels before dumping them unceremoniously against my chest.
My trembling arms snapped around the two tiny, fragile bundles, pulling them flush against my skin. They were warm. They were breathing. They were mine.
Out in the hallway, the sweetbutts laughed louder. "Five bucks says she and those runts don't make it past the state line before they starve," the blonde shouted.
I looked down at the tiny faces pressed against my collarbone, brushing my bloody lips against their damp foreheads.
"Never," I whispered into their downy hair, tasting salt and iron. "No Raven will ever put their filthy brand on you. I swear it on my life."
Dizziness crashed over me in a black, suffocating wave as the blood loss caught up to my pulse. The cracked mirror blurred into gray mist.
Just as my eyelids grew too heavy to fight, the clinic's reinforced front door slammed open with the splintering roar of deadbolts tearing through wood, followed by the heavy, measured strike of combat boots hitting the concrete.
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