CLAIMED BY THE TRIPLET BIKER ALPHAS: A STEAMY MC ROMANCE

LAYLA’S POV “You’re going to be a father, Garrett,” I whisper the words again as I walk into the Black Viper clubhouse with a smile on my face that falters a bit when I notice the stares coming my way. People are looking at me wrong. The woman at the bar is giving me a fake smile, and people are whispering in hushed tones as I walk past. I file it under "maybe I'm overdressed" and keep walking, because I didn't drive here to read a room. I drove here because I couldn't wait to tell my husband the secret I’ve been holding for four days. I practiced saying "you're going to be a father" in the bathroom mirror three times until my voice stopped shaking. And I know I said I’d wait for him to come home, but the excitement won – he said he'd be here late, something with his brother Fang – and I thought, why wait? So I grabbed the test, put it in my bag, and drove to Black Viper to surprise him at his office. Two years of marriage and I still get butterflies when I think about telling this man he's going to be a dad. Two more years and I'd still do it all again. Everyone told me I was wrong. My father sat me down in his office at Iron Howl MC and said Layla, this seat is yours. You were born for it. Don't give it away for a man who hasn't earned what you're sacrificing. But I told him love wasn't about earning, and he said I hope you're right, sweetheart. Even my brother's best friends – the Ashford triplets who grew up in our house and made my life a living hell – acted weird when I told them I was leaving. For people who hated me, they acted differently from what I expected – but I didn't care then, and I don't care now. Hating them was easier than whatever else my body wanted to do when they were around. So I buried all of it the day I said yes to Garrett. I reach the hallway that leads to his office and adjust the bag on my shoulder with a smile. You're going to be a father, Garrett. My heart is beating faster and I’m reaching for the door handle when I suddenly hear a low, rhythmic sound coming through the door. I freeze. There's no TV in his office. I push the door open. Garrett is behind his desk – not sitting behind it, and a woman is bent over it with her skirt hiked up around her waist and her fingers gripping the edge so hard her knuckles are white. His hands are on her hips and he's pounding into her from behind, hard enough that the desk is scraping against the floor with every thrust. "f**k – yes, Garrett – harder–" "Like that?" He grips her hair and pulls her head back and she moans so loud it fills the office. "You want it deeper?" "Please – God, yes – don't stop–" He slams into her and she cries out and I see her face first – turned to the side, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open, auburn hair fanned across the papers on his desk. The same dark auburn I've seen across a hundred family dinner tables. My cousin. My blood. Getting f****d on my husband's desk in his office while I was at home wrapping a pregnancy test in a ribbon. Megan's eyes open and she sees me in the doorway, but her expression doesn't shift to shame. It shifts to annoyance. Like I'm the interruption. Like I just walked into HER moment. "Why did you stop?" she pants, and then she just sighs. Garrett’s hands are still on her hips. He's still inside her. And he looks at me over my cousin's body with flat indifference. Not guilt. Not panic. The face of a man who got caught doing something he never planned to hide much longer anyway. He pulls out of her slowly, like even that is a performance meant to show me exactly how little I matter, and in that moment I shatter. My hand opens, my bag drops, and the pregnancy test slides out with the green ribbon trailing across the office floor. Nobody picks it up. I back out silently and walk back down the hallway toward the main room and now the looks I catalogued on my way in rearrange themselves like a code breaking. The woman at the bar who smiled wrong – she knew. The prospect who went quiet – he was talking about me. The girls at the pool table – they were looking at the wife who doesn't know she's a joke. I've been reading this room wrong for two years. I catch fragments as I walk toward the exit. Someone near the hallway murmurs: "–didn't even know." A woman by the bar says to her friend, low but not low enough: "–side piece finally found out." Someone laughs. Not cruelly – uncomfortably. The sound of people who've been watching a car crash in slow motion. I walk faster, but I don't run, because if I run in this building and fall in front of these people, I will never get back up. I make it to the parking lot and let the tears spill as I find my way home with blurry eyes. My home. The house I decorated, the kitchen where the lamb is cooling on the counter, the table with the candles I bought. I pull into the driveway, put the car in park, and break. Full, ugly, wrecking sobs that I can't control and don't try to. My hand is shaking when I call my brother, Brandon. He doesn't ask what happened. "Where are you?" "Home." "Don't move. I'm sending someone right now and I'm right behind them." He hangs up. And in less than ten minutes, I hear the engines before I see the headlights. Three bikes pull into my driveway in formation – Rafe in front, Colt to his left, Eli to his right – and even through the blur of my tears, the sight of them hits me in a way I'm not prepared for. Rafe cuts the engine first. Black leather jacket, grey eyes catching the streetlight like steel – cold and sharp and focused entirely on me. Colt is off his bike before it fully stops. Broad, tattooed, jaw clenched in a way that says he already knows something bad happened and he's deciding who to hit. He shakes his hair out of his face and those green eyes find mine. Eli is last. Dark curls across his forehead, brown eyes finding mine across the driveway before his boots hit the ground. Leaner than his brothers. Softer in the face. Hands that hold pencils like something precious and throw punches like something personal. My pulse picks up, my skin prickles, and my traitorous body sends a jolt through me that I buried two years ago but apparently didn't bury deep enough. It's adrenaline. It's the situation. Not them. Not now. Not THEM. Rafe reaches me first. "Where is he?" I shake my head, but Colt is already pacing with his hands flexing, and Eli is standing behind them – calm but charged. "I need to get my things from inside," I manage between sobs. "Then I'm leaving and never coming back." Colt helps me out of the car. I feel the warmth of him through his jacket and hate myself for noticing. Stop it. I'm reaching for the front door when a motorcycle roars up the street. Not the triplets' bikes – a different engine. Louder. Garrett pulls into the driveway. He didn't rush – the timing says he finished what he was doing, maybe had a drink, then rode home at his own pace. He swings off the bike, sees the triplets, and his expression shifts from entitled annoyance to something territorial and ugly. He walks toward me. I'm between Colt and the front door when Garrett's hand closes around my arm – not my hand, my ARM – fingers digging in, yanking me backward hard enough that my shoulder wrenches. Behind me, I hear Rafe's boots stop and Colt's pacing cut dead and Eli go so still he stops breathing. Garrett sneers and digs his fingers deeper. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"