Page 45 of Priest

Sadie’s spine stiffens.

“This ain’t the best timing,” Priest continues, his voice carrying through the waiting room, “but it’s the best damn news I’ve had all day.”

The room quiets.

“We’re expecting the prince or princess of the club,” he says. “I found Blue. And she’s having my baby.”

Sound erupts around her. Chairs scrape, men cheer, someone whoops loud enough for a nurse to storm in and threaten to throw them all out. Sadie barely hears any of it. Her ears ring too loudly. Her hand goes to her stomach, fingers pressing into the fabric as the truth of it settles like a stone.

Blue is pregnant.

Priest knows.

And everything Sadie has been building tilts under her feet.

“I also want it clear,” Priest adds, clearing his throat. “Blue is the one that saved Deacon. We owe her.”

That is the part that hits hardest. The baby is bad enough. The claim is worse. But the debt wraps the club around Blue with one sentence. It gives her protection. Respect. A place in their mouths and minds that Sadie had been fighting for since the day she arrived.

Panic pushes her forward before caution catches up. She steps closer, hand lifting toward Priest’s arm because she needs to slow this down, redirect it, make him question something before the whole club swallows Blue whole.

“Um, Priest,” she says, pitching her voice low but missing the mark. “How do you know for sure it’s your baby? She left you. Ghosted you. That could be someone else’s.”

The mistake lands before she finishes making it.

His hand comes to her throat, firm enough to stop the words and freeze the air in her lungs. He is not crushing. He is not squeezing. He is reminding her that she has stepped where she has no cover.

“You ever say shit like that again,” he growls, voice meant for her but heard by everyone, “and you’re out.”

Sadie nods quickly, heat burning behind her eyes. She has made another stupid mistake. The stress, the blood, Blue appearing from nowhere with Priest’s baby under her heart, all of it has her reaching too fast and choosing wrong. She can feel the room watching her misstep.

“You hear me?” he continues, thumb pressing just enough to keep her still. “I don’t care if that’s my brother’s baby in your belly or not. You talk badly about my Old Lady again and you’re done.”

My Old Lady.

The words echo in her head long after he lets go.

He said he would never do that. Never claim one. Never choose a woman in front of the club and hand her that kind of power. Yet he has just done exactly that, with Blue gone from the room and everyone watching him do it.

Sadie lowers her hand to her stomach and forces herself to breathe. Blue has come back with a baby, a debt, and a title Priest has never given anyone.

And none of it belongs to Sadie.

15

Blue

By the time Evan and I hit the employee exit, my body finally remembers how tired it is. It’s not the dramatic kind of exhaustion that lets you collapse against a wall and make someone worry. It’s the kind that settles into bone after too many hours of fluorescent lights, blood, pressure, caffeine, and refusing to let a man die because the people who love him are waiting on the other side of a door.

My feet ache. My shoulders burn. My brain keeps circling the day in jagged pieces: Deacon rolling in half-dead, Lila calling him Jackson like the name had been living under her tongue for years, Priest appearing in blood-spattered leather after three months of being exactly where I wanted him, far away from me.

Lila stayed behind to check on Deacon, or Jackson, or whatever name I am supposed to call the man who rewrites half of what I know about my best friend. I just know she is bracing herself for whatever she might feel when she walks into that room.

Evan walks beside me, badge clipped to his waistband, hair mussed, eyes bright in that way they get when adrenaline has not quite let go yet. The cool night air hits us, and he stretches his arms over his head with a groan that sounds both exhausted and offended.

“Well,” he says. “That was a day.”

“That was a lifetime.”