CLAIMED BY THE TRIPLET BIKER ALPHAS: A STEAMY MC ROMANCE

CHAPTER 20 – JUST TALKING TO MY WIFE

LAYLA'S POV

“Sixty days” has been on repeat in my head since the phone call, but the number stops mattering the second Garrett walks into Iron Howl with his brother.

Fang is different from Garrett. He doesn't perform. He doesn't smile. He walks into the clubhouse behind Garrett and his eyes move through the room the way someone assesses a building they're planning to buy. He files the triplets under something before he's been here ten minutes, and when his gaze passes over me, my lie-sensing produces something I haven't felt before. Not a chill. Not the metallic taste. A stillness. Like the air before a storm decides which direction to move.

Garrett spends the day performing "civil co-parent." He talks to council members with his reasonable voice, asks about my father's health with concern that almost sounds genuine, eats dinner with Iron Howl members like he's always belonged here.

My tongue tastes like pennies for three hours straight.

He's mid-performance in the common area after dinner – enough people nearby to constitute an audience – talking about how much he wants to co-parent, how important it is for the baby to have a father present, how reasonable he's being given the circumstances.

Members are nodding. Sawyer is nodding. The sympathy is landing exactly where Garrett designed it to land.

I set my coffee down.

"Isn't one child enough for you, Garrett?"

The room shifts. People look at me. Garrett's smile freezes.

"You told me Megan is pregnant." I keep my voice calm. Almost conversational. "You're about to have a child with her. So why do you need mine?" I take a sip of coffee. "You already have your family. Sign the papers and go raise the one you actually want."

Silence. The kind where everyone is holding their breath and pretending they're not listening while listening to every syllable.

Garrett is trapped. If he acknowledges Megan's pregnancy, he destroys the heartbroken-husband narrative – he can't be the devoted husband AND the man who got his wife's cousin pregnant. If he denies it, I know he's lying.

He laughs. "We can discuss this privately, Layla."

"We can." I smile. "But you seemed to prefer the public setting. I just followed your lead."

Colt chokes on his drink from across the room. I don't look at him but I can feel his grin from here.

Garrett's mask holds, barely. He redirects the conversation, moves to a different group, laughs louder than necessary. But the damage is done. I can hear the whispers starting – Megan is pregnant with Garrett's kid and he's still fighting for custody of Layla's baby. The crack in his narrative is public now.

I used his own cruelty against him. The words he threw at me on that driveway to break me just became the weapon I used to undermine him.

After dinner, I'm walking to my room when his hand closes around my wrist. The same wrist. The same grip. Deliberately referencing the night at our house.

"You think you're clever?" His voice is low. Private. The hallway is empty and the mask is completely gone. "Come home, Layla. Be a good wife. Raise the baby together. Stop this embarrassing performance."

"I told you I want a divorce Garrett."

"I'll never sign."

"Then I'll go to court."

He leans in close enough for me to smell the cologne that used to mean safety and now means danger and says, "You don't have a wolf. You don't have a pack. You don't have money for a lawyer." His fingers tighten on my wrist. "What exactly are you going to fight me with?"

I don't answer because I have nothing to show him yet. But I have sixty days and a list that's getting longer and three men who would burn this building down for me and a baby metabolising wolfsbane from the inside.

He doesn't know any of that. I let him think he's right.

"Let go of my arm, Garrett."

He holds on for two more seconds – just to prove he can – then releases me and walks toward the exit. Fang falls into step beside him.

They make it halfway down the main corridor before three Ashfords materialise.

Colt steps into the hallway first. Just stands there with his arms crossed and his green eyes flat and unblinking. Garrett has to look up slightly because Colt is bigger, and the fact that he has to look up is doing something to Garrett's face that gives me a vicious satisfaction.

"You had the whole world in that woman," Colt says. Not heated. Not threatening. Almost conversational. "And you threw it away for her cousin. That's not just disloyal, brother. That's stupid."

Garrett laughs. It doesn't reach his eyes.

Rafe appears behind Garrett silently with his grey eyes locked on the back of Garrett's head with an expression that says he's already calculated every possible outcome of the next thirty seconds and is comfortable with all of them.

Eli steps in from the right. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't need to. He just exists in that space with his hands at his sides and the specific stillness of a man who has already decided what he'll do if anyone touches her again.

Three brothers. Positioned in a triangle. Garrett in the centre.

Nobody touches anyone. Nobody issues a threat. But the message is louder than anything they could say with their fists.

Garrett's public smile slides back into place. "Just talking to my wife, boys."

He walks through the gap between Colt and the wall – Colt lets him, barely, turning his body just enough to create a space that Garrett has to squeeze through – and out the door.

Rafe watches him go. Then he looks at me. His eyes drop to my wrist – the one Garrett grabbed – and his jaw does the thing. He doesn't say anything. But I can see the mark pulsing under his sleeve, and I know what it's costing him to stand here and let Garrett walk away instead of following him into the parking lot.

Colt catches my eye and gives me a look that says approximately fourteen things, most of which are inappropriate and all of which make me feel like the most protected woman in the world.

Eli's hand brushes mine as he walks past. Just his fingertips against my knuckles, but the warmth of it stays on my skin long after he's gone.

I'm standing in the hallway still processing everything when I realise the door hasn't closed yet.

Fang is still in the doorway watching the space where the triplets stood with a calculating expression that makes something in my gut go cold.

He looks at me, holds my gaze for exactly two seconds, then turns and walks out without a word.

The door finally closes and I stare at the empty doorway with the hairs on the back of my neck refusing to settle – because although Garrett is the kind threat that announces itself, Fang is the kind that doesn't need to.