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I manage to follow her instructions, breathing through gritted teeth as I feel my vagina being stretched to an impossible size. Fuck, I thought Jax and Ash together down there was a lot, but it has nothing on this. This burns like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

“Good girl, that’s exactly it,” Mai praises, and it’s all I can do to focus on just breathing.

Shit, I wanted to be all zen earth mother, and here I am screaming like a fucking banshee. Some things never change, a brief flash of meeting Loki for the first time flits through my mind before the overwhelming urge to push fills me.

“I–I need to push,” I gasp out, sweat dripping down the side of my face.

“Then push, my lovely,” Mai encourages, and I take a huge inhale, pushing as I breathe it out through another loud scream.

A rush of liquid and something else expels from between my legs, and my muscles feel suddenly weak as all tension leaves them. Seconds later the most wonderful, unexpected sound of a baby's cry sounds behind me, and I straighten my back as Mai passes a wriggling slick bundle between my legs.

Oh shit.

Instinctively, I grab my baby and bring it in close, marvelling at the miracle that I’m holding.

“Congratulations, Lilly,” Mai says, her voice thick, and I sit back on my heels twisting to look at her.

“Is it a boy or girl?” one of the twins asks, and I look down at the bundle in my arms, the cord still attached and pulsing slightly.

“A girl,” I whisper. “She’s a girl.”

I look up at them with tear-filled eyes, my forehead creasing as another slight pain hits me followed by more slickness between my thighs.

“That’s the afterbirth,” Mai informs me, and I do an awkward shuffle to see a large blob of red on the sheets we put down, the cord flowing from the placenta to my baby. My baby girl.

My eyes trace her tiny body, taking in every detail, and a choked laugh falls from my lips when I get to her head.

“She’s ginger!” I exclaim, delight filling me as I look at her mop of red hair, just like her dad. “And has so much hair.”

“She’s beautiful,” Mai tells me, coming beside me and wrapping her arm around my shoulders. “The cord has stopped pulsing, so let’s cut it and you can have a lie down with her.”

Mai orders the twins to get me something to drink and eat then helps me onto the sofa that’s been pulled out to create a sofa bed. She helps me clean up after she’s checked me over to make sure there were no tears, all the while I hold my baby girl to my chest and just fucking marvel at her existence.

“Does she have a name?” Roman asks, and I look up to find him and Rowan waiting with snacks and a drink.

I look back down at my baby, who’s happily taking her first feed, and I can feel my lips lift up in a soft smile, warmth suffusing my entire body.

“Violet,” I reply, not taking my eyes off her, my hand gently stroking her soft head. “Her name is Violet.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO

KAI

Iwatch as the life drains from my uncle’s eyes, leaving them dull and lifeless, and what was left of his blood drips down the slit in his neck. Lowering my arm, I still clutch the knife in my hand and look down briefly to see blood dripping on the already crimson-splattered floor.

I’d expected to feel something, relief maybe, but I’m still lost to my darkness and all I feel is numbness. I feel nothing for this man that was meant to take care of me but instead abused me for years. There’s nothing but an emptiness inside of me as I look over his dead body.

“Come, brother,” Jax says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Time to get cleaned up.”

Slowly blinking, I turn to face him, and the darkness recedes enough that my hands begin to tremble and a slight lightness infuses my limbs. Without saying anything, I hand the knife to Ash.

Walking over to the door that leads to a bathroom, I step inside and then strip my gloves and remaining clothes off, bagging them up to be taken away and burned by Enzo before the Feds arrive.

Footsteps sound on the basement stairs, and my heart ricochets in my chest until I hear the Italian trainer’s voice. I turn the shower up high, stepping under the almost blistering spray and watching the pink water running down the drain, my head bowed.

A blast of cool air hits my back, then a warm body steps into the shower with me a moment later, muscled arms wrap around me from behind in a comforting embrace.

“Let me show you that you’re alive, and not the monster he tried to make you into,” Loki’s husky voice whispers into my ear, his hard dick pressed into my ass.

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