“How’s it going?” I figured if anyone would know it would be her.

“Fine. Rule’s actually handling all of it better than Rome did. Rome had the nurses and my OB-GYN scared to come near me. Rule’s taking it all in stride. As long as Shaw is cool, he seems cool, but the real contractions haven’t started yet. We might have to send in the reinforcements if he flips out like his brother did.”

I laughed. I had no doubt Rome was extra scary when he was stressed and freaking out. He looked like he could win a war all by himself with no weapons, just standing off to the side chatting with Asa.

“Well, that’s good. It’s nice you’re all here to support them. Ayden called Asa. She’s on her way already.”

Cora tilted her head back on the chair, put a hand over her tummy, and squeezed her eyes shut. She looked a little green all of a sudden and I sat up straighter. I was going to ask her if she was okay when she breathed deep and then turned her head to look at me as whatever was wrong with her apparently passed.

“She’s going to be devastated if that baby comes before she gets here. Moving to Austin with Jet was the best choice, but it’s hard on them with all of us still here.”

“She told Asa he had to be here just in case she couldn’t make it.”

Cora nodded and smiled at me. “He needs to be here regardless, and so do you.”

It was uncanny how she always seemed to see everything. “I’m here.” I said it begrudgingly.

“Yeah. But you had to think about it first. You belong here, Royal. Don’t doubt it.”

But I did—doubt it, that is. I just didn’t know how I fit. “Things just felt off and a little strained after I had to take Asa in. I wasn’t really sure how to handle that, and making friends has never been all that easy for me.”

Most girls didn’t like me or didn’t trust me and boys only wanted to pretend to be my friend in the hopes it would lead to more. Aside from my tight bond with my mom, my relationship with Dom and his sisters, and now Saint, I had lived a pretty solitary life.

“Shit happens. What happened with Asa wasn’t your fault and we all know that.” She gave me a very pointed look, her brown eye hard and her blue eye sharp. “Do you?”

I wanted to tell her everything felt like it was my fault. It felt like all I could do anymore was make mistake after mistake. I never got the chance, though, because panic crossed her pretty face and in a heartbeat she was up out of the chair and darting across the waiting room to where the bathrooms were located. Rome’s deep voice rumbled with a litany of swearwords as his mom scolded him, which he blatantly ignored as he followed his tiny fiancée into the ladies’ room. He ignored the nurse that called out to him as well, which had all the guys gathered around laughing.

I was pondering Cora’s words about fault when her now-vacant seat was filled with a much bigger, masculine body. Whenever I was within touching distance of him, all my senses seemed to go into overload. He draped one of his long arms across the back of my chair and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

“You okay?” His voice was softer than usual and way too close to my ear. I gulped a little and nodded.

It was the fact he asked, the fact that I think he really cared whether I was okay or not, that overshadowed all the red flags he liked to wave in my face warning me away from him.

“Yeah. I’m glad I came up with you. It’s nice to see this.”

“See what?”

I waved a hand vaguely around the room indicating where Salem and Rowdy were cuddled together, where Nash had wrapped Saint up in his arms and was holding her, where Rome had disappeared after Cora, and even where the older Archers were sitting huddled together.

“Happiness. Togetherness. Unity. It was just me and my mom when I was growing up and she jumped from man to man always looking for something she couldn’t seem to find. It’s pretty cool to see couples that actually want to be together. Stability is kind of a foreign concept to me.”

He kicked his long legs up like mine were and adopted a similar pose. I shivered a little when his side pressed along my own. He grinned at me when he noticed my reaction.

“You can have all the stability you want when you stop looking for trouble.”

He was probably right, although trouble sounded like so much more fun right now, and what I wanted and what I needed were absolutely not the same thing.

I didn’t reply; instead I tried really hard not to move as I felt the tips of his fingers start to play with the end of my long ponytail where it hung over the back of the chair. I don’t think he was even aware that he was doing it. That is, until I glanced at him and noticed the golden glow shining out of his eyes. This was not a guy that ever did anything without being very aware of the effect it was having on the people around him. He wasn’t just trouble, he was potent and more dangerous than most of the stuff I saw on the streets every day.

At some point the monotony of waiting for endless hours long into the night, the quiet murmur of voices, the squeak of rubber shoes on the linoleum floor, all worked together to lull me to sleep. One minute I was thinking about how odd my night had turned out. About how when I felt my absolute worst there was this remarkable foundation of wonderful people to catch me. I wasn’t used to having any kind of safety net aside from Dom, and I had to admit it was really nice to have a soft landing instead of a brutal crash for once in my life.

But of course, like everything in my world lately, drifting off into a little catnap couldn’t just be easy and rejuvenating. As soon as the darkness descended, it was there. The day everything changed forever.

I heard the gunshots. Heard the cops that had been on the scene before us shouting. Heard the people in the neighborhood chattering next to the dilapidated building that had been converted into a monster meth lab. I heard the sirens. I heard my radio squawk that there were several officers down. It was a bad situation all around, but Dom and I were trained. It was our job to go into bad situations and make them better.

I heard Dom telling me we should go into the alley and I blindly agreed. I heard his boots rattle on the metal as he found a fire escape and started to climb up. I told him I was right behind him, we always had each other’s back. Dom barked at me to stay put, to cover him from the group. We had no idea how many shooters there were, had no idea if the building was clear or not, but again, we were trained and this was our job.

I had my gun out. I was watching, staring hard at the space above Dom’s head, making sure no one could get the drop on him. There were more shots fired, I had no idea if they were our guys or the bad guys, and I didn’t care as long as my partner was okay. I heard Dom make a noise as he reached the top of the fire escape. I could swear I heard every single snowflake that was falling that night as it hit the dirty ground around my booted feet.