Page 96 of The Endless Want

My throat locks.

He adds, “Whether you think you deserve it or not, that child exists. And every decision you make from this point on affects more than you.”

I look away, staring at the wall of photographs behind him—old snapshots of the brothers, grainy shots of us all at some bar years ago, Liam’s hand on Finn’s shoulder, Conor mid-laugh, me looking like I carried a world on my back even then.

“When does planning start?” I ask quietly.

Liam exhales as if relieved. “Tomorrow morning. Eight.”

“And until then?”

“Go home,” he says. “Sleep. And come back with your head clear.”

I turn to leave, but he stops me with one more sentence. One that shakes something loose in my spine. “Declan,” he says quietly, “Ailish isn’t an obstacle. She’s the reason we survive this.”

I don’t respond. I can’t. Not when something fierce and unfamiliar is blooming in my chest like a bruise and a vow at the same time.

Tomorrow at eight, my new orders will begin. And for the first time in a long damn while⁠—

I’m ready.

CHAPTER 30

Ailish

The new safehouse doesn’t look like a war room from the outside. It looks like a respectable, narrow townhouse tucked into a quiet residential block—neatly painted, iron railings, a potted plant on the stoop like any other home on this street. It’s deceptive, intentional, and effective.

The neighborhood is full of older couples and young families walking dogs or pushing strollers in the evenings, none of them glancing twice at a place that now functions as the nerve center of our conflict.

Inside, however, the illusion dissolves. Reinforced windows. Triple-layer security doors. A discreet guard rotation that trades off every hour. A false pantry that hides a stairway to a sub-basement outfitted with servers, encrypted communication lines, and enough surveillance feeds to monitor a hundred-mile radius.

The upstairs rooms—once bedrooms, probably—have been refitted into offices with clean desks, whiteboards, large monitors, stacks of classified documents, and maps pinned with color-coded pins.

And then there’s the main floor room, the one the men jokingly call the “den,” which is really a soft place for me to land. Declan had insisted on it—Liam later confirmed that much—because if I was going to work through this pregnancy, I needed somewhere to sit without collapsing and somewhere to breathe without losing focus. It’s a strangely tender detail in the midst of so much steel and surveillance.

A small couch, a warm lamp, a stocked fridge for nausea snacks, a closet of clothes the security team gathered from my place, and newly purchased maternity things I’m trying not to think too much about.

This morning, though, the den is taken over by yoga mats.

Two of them—mine and Mackenzie’s—sit side-by-side as we follow a painfully cheerful instructor on the laptop who keeps telling us to “visualize our grounding energy.” My “grounding energy” at the moment is just trying not to throw up.

“Breathe with the stretch,” the instructor says over the soft music. “Let the body soften. Let the hips relax. Remember, your body knows how to grow this child.”

Mackenzie snorts on her mat beside me. “Mine knows how to grow burrito cravings. That’s about it.”

I laugh, exhaling through my nose slowly as I try to ease into a modified pose that supposedly helps with lower back pain. The baby must sense the shift because a tiny flutter brushes the inside of my belly, light as a fingertip on silk.

“Hey,” I whisper under my breath. “Good morning to you too.”

“You feel it again?” Mackenzie asks quietly, her voice softening.

“Just a little.” I rest a hand over the curve of my stomach. “I think they like the stretching.”

“Then they’re nothing like their father,” she mutters, making me huff a laugh. It also has my brain wondering about the gender, something I’ve insisted on not knowing. I want it to be a surprise for everyone.

We finish the session with guided breathing, and when I finally sit cross-legged on the mat, the weariness spreads through my limbs like warm water.

Pregnancy feels like living in two bodies at once—one mine, one foreign—both needing something different every minute.