The week following Marcus's arrest passed in a strange, suspended quiet. It wasn't the anxious, watchful quiet of an ongoing threat, but something closer to genuine relief slowly and cautiously settling into the clubhouse's daily rhythms.
Wren found herself sleeping more soundly than she had in years, the absence of Marcus's shadow lifting a weight from her chest she hadn't fully realized she'd been carrying every single day since she'd first fled him. Her morning sickness had begun easing slightly, replaced by a steady, growing appetite that Denise took considerable delight in indulging with an ever rotating selection of foods she insisted were "good for the baby," regardless of how questionable some of her nutritional theories actually were.
"You look better," Sabrina observed one morn
