Page 28 of Brutal Reign

It doesn’t take long before her cunt clenches around me, and she comes with a quiet shudder. I follow soon after, pleasure sweeping through me.

For a while, there’s nothing but the two of us tangled together, hearts pounding, sleep pulling us under. I press my lips to her shoulder and hold her close, committing this last stolen moment to memory.

Morning light slips through the gaps in the curtain like an intruder. Hope is tucked against my chest, her breath warm against my collarbone. She’s impossibly small, all soft curves where I’m hard angles and scar tissue.

The room carries the scent of us: skin and sweat and everything we shared in the dark. Pale light creeps across her shoulder as I watch the rise and fall of her chest. She trusts me, the kind of trust I don’t fucking deserve.

Because now it’s time to do what I said I would.

Moving slowly, I slide my hand under the bed and retrieve the black case I stashed there earlier. The syringe is pre-loaded with a polymer-coated tracker suspended in a saline solution, with enough sedative to buy me time to disappear.

I ease back the blanket and find the injection site below her shoulder blade. My thumb traces the spot where the needle should go.

I take a breath, preparing myself.

The tracker is a permanent leash. If I do this, the Syndicate will always be able to find her, always have access. I trust Maxim and Roman with my life, but doing this condemns Hope to a future where she’ll never truly be free.

Last night, she talked about wanting children someday, about building a better future. Dreams that are impossible if she can never disappear.

I stare at the ceiling, jaw clenched, careful not to move and wake her while I wrestle with indecision.

The thought of betraying my brothers eats at me. If Hope somehow becomes the threat we all fear she could, their blood will be on my hands.

But I don’t believe she has that in her. She wants peace and simplicity. An ordinary life that has nothing to do with power or violence.

She’s nearly twenty years younger than me with her whole life ahead of her. She deserves a fresh start, one without a deadly bratva hunting her.

I put the syringe back in the case, sliding it under the bed, and drink her in one final time.

Now comes the hard part: walking away and never looking back.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

HOPE

“I have your test results,”the doctor begins, a polite smile fixed on her face. “You don’t have the flu. You’re pregnant, Ms. Ashford.”

I blink at her from where I sit on the paper-lined exam table, my coat still clutched in my lap. I shake my head, sure I misheard her.

I came to this walk-in medical clinic because of exhaustion no amount of sleep can cure, nausea that strikes at random, and headaches that feel like my skull is splitting. Not because of…

Pregnant?

“I-I think there’s a mistake,” I sputter. “That can’t be right.”

“It was confirmed by both the urine and the blood test,” she explains patiently. “I understand this might be unexpected news.”

My hands go clammy as they twist together in my lap. “But we were careful. Are you sure you didn’t mix up the samples?”

She gives me a sympathetic look as she explains why that’s not likely. Her voice fades as I rewind my memory to that perfectnight six weeks ago. Lukas and I used condoms. Many of them. The proof was in my wastebasket the next day.

Except—

My breath stutters.

In the middle of the night, I woke up pressed against him. The memory is blurry because I was half asleep. He reached for me, or I reached for him—I’m not sure. But we came together, and our bodies moved in sync.