Page 69 of Claimed By the Damned

Oh,fuck.

My heart stops. My hand flies to my chest, an unconscious move to still the sudden, violent hammering against my ribs. The world tilts, and if the porch rail wasn’t there, I think I’d be on the ground. My lungs refuse to work. Behind me, a harsh sound rips from Bastian, an aborted word, a gasp, something utterly unlike his controlled self. For a split second, the air around him feels chaotic, his formidable composure visibly shattering before he wrestles it back into a terrifyingly rigid stillness. Ryker, for once,doesn’t have a joke—just a stunned silence that says more than words ever could.

She squeezes her eyes shut, and when she finally speaks, it’s barely a whisper.

“I’m pregnant.”

My brain blanks. Completely. The world tilts sideways, and I’m struggling to catch up.

For a second, the words don’t compute. It’s like hearing a foreign language, one I should understand but just… don’t.

I actually stagger back a step, my knees truly buckling this time, saved only by the rail I grip with white-knuckled intensity. The weight of what she just said slams into me like a sledgehammer. My brain scrambles to make sense of it, but there’s only one undeniable truth—this changes everything.

How? When? Why didn’t she tell us sooner?

Who—

No. No, that doesn’t matter. Not even a little. Because none of that changes the fact that Lila—ourLila—is pregnant.

Withourbaby. Wait, is it our baby?

The silence lasts maybe a heartbeat before Ryker shatters it. But it’s not his usual bravado. For a split second, his face goes utterly blank, his trademark smirk wiped clean, eyes wide with a raw, naked shock that strips him bare. Then, as if his system reboots with a violent jolt, a fractured attempt at his usual persona sputters back to life. He lets out a sharp, discordant sound—less a laugh, more a bark of pure, unfiltered disbelief. He scrubs a hand violently over his face, fingers digging into his jaw, trying to hold himself together.

“Shit. Well,fuck. That’s… one way to keep us on our toes, huh?”

His deflection is paper-thin. I know that look—it’s not frantic energy, it’s panic, raw and bubbling right under the surface; the wildness in his eyes isn't amusement, it's overload. He's seconds from either punching something or running—maybe both.

Lila flinches hard at his outburst, shrinking further into herself. I shoot Ryker a warning glare that could melt glaciers before turning my full attention back to her fragile form.

While Ryker's all noise and frantic energy, Bastian goes dead still beside me. Like granite. His whole body locks down, rigid, though I saw that crack, that infinitesimal moment his control fractured and he was just as vulnerable as the rest of us. Now, I can practicallyfeelthe calculations racing behind those eyes. His piercing gaze fixes on Lila—intensity that could bore through steel. Assessing risks, implications... you can see his mind mapping out every damn scenario. He looks like he's trying to dissect the reality of her words just by staring.

She sways slightly, barely holding herself upright. Then, Bastian finds his voice, his tone measured but firm, cutting through the lingering shockwaves of Ryker's reaction. "How far along?" The question hangs in the air, heavy, unspoken fears threading through it.

For a beat, she doesn’t answer, then she exhales, shaky but certain. "Two months."

Lila watches us, her breath coming in short, panicked bursts, as if waiting for us to break. She doesn’t trust this moment. Doesn’t trust us not to disappoint her. And that thought nearly kills me.

Relief hits like a tidal wave. She's been with us for four months. There’s no doubt. This baby isours. Her eyes flicker between us, waiting, bracing. And fuck, I hate that. I hate that she’s scared of how we’ll react. Like there’s even a possibility we’d turn away from her. Saying the words out loud has made itrealin a way nothing else could.

It’s like a dam inside me cracks, and everything rushes in at once. The fear, the disbelief, the bone-deep understanding that nothing will ever be the same again. But beneath it all, one thing is clear— The shock, the disbelief, theweightof it—it doesn’t vanish, but it settles.

She’s ours.

The baby is ours.

And we’re not letting her do this alone.

Lila’s bracing for rejection, maybe, or an argument over who the father is. She sinks to the floor, knees pulled up slightly, the weight of the moment physically knocking her down. Tears are rolling freely down her cheeks now, silent tracks of misery and fear.

I can't take it. Seeing her cry like this, small and broken on the cold porch floor when this news… it should be something joyous, something to be celebrated, even amidst the chaos of our lives… it shatters something inside me. Seeing her pain, knowingwhyshe's crying—thinking we’d abandon her, reject herorour baby—is a physical ache in my chest.

Before I fully process the decision, I'm moving. I drop down, squatting in front of her, my hands reaching out. "Come here, Angel," I murmur, my voice thick. Gently, ignoring her startled gasp, I scoop her up, pulling her shivering body onto my lap, settling back against the wall so I can hold her properly. Her slight weight is nothing, fragile and trembling against my chest.

I hold her tight, one hand splayed protectively across her back, the other tangled in her hair, just needing her close, trying to soak up some of her fear. I press my lips to the top of her head, breathing her in.

I shake my head, the words finally leaving my mouth, low and fierce against her hair. “You’re ours, Lila. The baby’s ours. We’re in this together.”

She flinches in my arms, her eyes snapping up to meet mine, wide and swimming with tears, raw with exposed panic. I can’t tell if it's guilt or terror dominating her expression. She swallows hard, her hands curling into fists against my chest as if bracing for impact. She seems to be searching my face for doubt. There’s none. Just the truth. Just the way it’s always been.

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