CHAPTER 19 – SERVED
1122 Words
LAYLA'S POV
I can still feel the ghost of Rafe's marked wrist pulsing against my palm when my phone rings at breakfast and my lawyer tells me Garrett's custody petition has been formally accepted into the cross-pack legal system.
"It goes to a mediator within sixty days," she says. "You need a stable pack affiliation, a registered address, and proof of capacity to provide."
"And right now?"
"Right now, on paper, you have none of those things."
I hang up. Sixty days. That's how long I have before a mediator decides whether my baby goes home with me or with the man who poisoned my coffee for two years.
Harper reads it on my face before I say a word.
"How bad?"
"Sixty days. I need pack affiliation, a registered address, and proof of capacity."
"You're the heir to Iron Howl MC."
"On paper, I'm a wolfless, unemployed, separated woman living in a guest room. That's what the mediator will see."
Her jaw sets in the way that means she's already building a plan. "Then we change what's on paper."
I nod. But right now I have a training session with Rafe in twenty minutes and I need to hit something before I think about this any harder.
The session starts normal. Rafe wraps my hands. Corrects my stance. Runs me through combinations I've been drilling for weeks.
But something is different today. His hands linger longer than they have since the pull-back. When he adjusts my elbow, his fingers drag down my arm slowly. When he demonstrates a hold, his chest presses against my back and his mouth is close to my ear and he doesn't step away after the count.
The oath mark didn't scare him off. It did the opposite.
"Again," he says, and his voice is lower than it needs to be.
I throw the combination. He catches my wrist mid-swing and redirects me and suddenly I'm pressed against him with my arm pinned behind my back and his other hand flat on my stomach.
Neither of us moves.
"Your guard dropped," he says against my hair.
"My guard is fine."
"Your guard dropped because you're distracted." His thumb traces a slow circle on my stomach. Just once. "What happened this morning?"
"Garrett's petition got accepted. Sixty days."
His hand tightens on my hip. Brief. Controlled. Then he releases me and steps back and says "again" like he didn't just make my entire body light up.
I throw the combination again. This time I'm faster. Angrier. He blocks everything and when I overextend he catches me around the waist and pulls me into him and for one second we're chest to chest and breathing hard and his grey eyes are doing the thing that makes my brain stop working.
"Better," he says. Doesn't let go. "You fight better when you're angry."
"I'm always angry lately."
"I know." His thumb brushes my jaw. "Use it."
He lets go. Rolls down his sleeve. Session over.
Colt's session is after lunch and it starts with him tossing me a mouth guard and saying "you look like you want to hurt someone, Rowan. Lucky day – I volunteer."
We spar. He's looser than Rafe – more instinct, less structure – and he makes me laugh twice in the first ten minutes by narrating his own moves like a sports commentator.
"Colt Ashford goes for the takedown! She dodges – beautiful footwork – oh wait, she's going for the–"
I sweep his legs and he hits the mat and I'm on top of him before he can recover. My hands on his chest. My thighs on either side of his hips. His green eyes go dark immediately.
"Nice move," he says. His voice has changed. "You've been practicing."
"Rafe taught me that one."
"Of course he did." His hands find my hips. Not to push me off. To hold me in place. "You going to get up, or...?"
"I'm thinking about it."
"Take your time." His thumb traces circles on my hip bone through my leggings. "I'm comfortable."
My face is hot. My body is doing things that have nothing to do with sparring. I can feel him getting hard underneath me and the knowledge of it sends a pulse through my core that makes me shift my weight and his grip tightens.
"Layla." His voice is strained. "If you move like that again, this stops being a training session."
I move like that again. Just slightly. Just enough.
His eyes flash. "You're playing a dangerous game, Rowan."
"Maybe I'm tired of playing safe."
The gym door opens. Gears walks in looking for a wrench – again – and I'm off Colt so fast I nearly pull a hamstring.
"Good session," I say to the ceiling.
"Incredible," Colt says from the mat. He hasn't moved. "Absolutely world-class."
Eli's session is last. Weapons. He keeps professional distance today with the specific effort of a man who learned something from the last time we were alone in a room together. His hands guide mine on the firearm without pressing his chest against my back. His instructions come from beside me, not behind me. He's careful.
I notice the effort. I catalog every inch of space he's maintaining, and the fact that maintaining it is costing him something is written in the tension of his jaw and the way his fingers flex at his sides when I lean close to check the barrel.
"You're keeping your distance," I say.
"I'm being professional."
"Since when?"
He looks at me. Those dark eyes. The ones that saw me through a doorway holding a box and said don't do that to yourself. The ones that were dark and desperate when he had me against the wall.
"Since I realized that if I stand behind you again, I'm not going to stop at teaching you how to hold a gun."
The warmth that rushes through me is definitely not the lie-sensing.
That evening, Harper finds me on the back steps.
"You know they're watching you, right?" She sits beside me. "Not just Megan's people. The neutrals. They're deciding what you are."
I look at the tree line. "I know."
"Then stop letting them see you absorb it." She looks at me. "Start letting them see you aim."
Something in my posture changes. She's right. Sixty days. I've been mapping and cataloging and filing and holding. It's time to start building.
Sixty days to prove I deserve my baby. Sixty days to prove I deserve my seat. Sixty days to tear down everything Megan built on my father's name.
I look at the tree line and the thing with edges in my chest pushes forward.
Sixty days is plenty.
- Writer
