Alex was on her knees in front of the toilet, emptying her stomach contents in it. It just kept coming, the nausea simply refused to leave. Her throat felt sore because of the acid and she felt exhausted. When the waves finally stopped, she snatched a piece of toilet paper away from the roll and wiped her mouth. Flushing the toilet, she got up. As she opened the door and saw her sponsor leaning against the washbasins, she froze. 

"Ye sick again?"

"It's nothing," Alex grumbled. Turning on the faucet, she washed her hands and rinsed her mouth before she took a piece of gum. "It's just some shitty stomach bug," she stressed when Chibs kept studying her face. 

"Ye been to the doc?"

"Yeah," she lied. 

"What bug is it?"

"How the fuck would I know." She wiped her wet hands to her pants. Chibs' questions were really getting on her nerves. 

"I doubt tha's all." He stepped forward, laying his hand against her forehead. 'Ye don' feel warm."

Alex gritted her teeth, cursing the fact that the Scot was keeping a sharp eye on her. It hadn't gone by unnoticed that she had stopped drinking. She had told the men she had joined a bet with her brother, but how hard was it to put two and two together? She felt sick every morning, refused cigarettes and alcohol and oh, she had made a straight guy gay. Alex had the feeling the word PREGNANT was written on her forehead. 

"I'm fine," she grumbled. "Don't get all riled up about a stomach bug man."

Chibs was impossible to bluff. Instead of giving in, he kept staring at her, thoughtfully frowning. 

"We gotta talk," he said eventually, his glance giving no room for objection. 

"Fucking hell," she muttered under her breath. That really was the last thing she wanted. 

Chibs however didn't leave her a choice, so a few minutes later she was sitting across from her sponsor in a small office. Her nervousness increased her nausea — she had known that little monster would ruin everything. Chibs was probably about to tell her that she shared alarming similarities with a pregnant man. 

"How do ye sleep?" Chibs asked, folding his hands and leaning with his elbows on the table top. 

"How I sleep?" The question was so unexpected she didn't know what to answer. Eventually, she shrugged her shoulders. "I sleep fine."

Chibs kept looking into her eyes, as if he was trying to catch her in a lie. "Any loss of appetite?"

She frowned. "Ya playin' doctor now?"

"I'm ye sponsor tryin' to see if it's still wise to burden ye with tasks."

"What?!" she responded agitated. "Why wouldn't it be wise?"

Chibs sighed. "Because I'm worried 'bout ye, Shane. I see a lot o' stress indicators."

Stress. Alex was about to laugh. "I'm. Not. Stressed," she said through gritted teeth. 

"Which is also worrisome. Two of yer fellow prospects were killed two days ago."

"My stomach was a mess way before they were killed," she objected. "Of course I hate the fact that they're dead but I can handle it."

"Sometimes we don't see how much stress is affecting us."

Cursing, Alex laid her head in her neck and stared at the ceiling. She sighed deeply. Great. This was just fucking great. In the end, she aimed her glance back to her sponsor. "I'm fine. I might have a weak stomach, but that doesn't mean I'm weak here too," she tapped her head. "I will be fine. The past year has been a rollercoaster, this is nothing new."

In silence, Chibs kept staring at her, then he nodded slowly. "Aye, fine. But the moment ye got any other symptoms, physically or mentally, ye tell me."

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes and nodded. "Promised."

. . .

Chibs wasn't the only one acting like a busybody, Alex noticed when she came home and saw the black BMW on the side of the road. Her fingers clenched into a fist. No way that his visit was a coincidence. Curses already gathered on her tongue as she threw open the door to her apartment and stomped inside. 

"That fucking asshole," she growled when she found Kozik and Jaeden at the dinner table. 

"Hello to you too," Jaeden answered dryly. He got up. "Come on Lex, you look like you could use a bear hug."

"I could rather use someone to punch," she huffed. "What are you? My fucking babysitter?"

"I'm just a friend checking up on you."

Snorting, she headed to the kitchen and took an alcohol-free beer from the fridge. "Juice called you."

She hadn't forgotten about their last fight. It wasn't like they hadn't seen each other since; knowing they couldn't convince the other of their opinion, they had decided to put the subject to rest and act normal, although even a dead man could feel the tension between them. 

"Your overprotective boyfriend." He gave her a wink, bridged the distance between them and kissed her cheek. "I heard you're gonna be a mom." His eyes were sparkling. "Congratulations."

"We'll see if I live long enough to give birth," she huffed. 

Her snark made him chuckle. 

Alex walked past him to the balcony, leaned with her arms against the railing and stared into the distance. As expected, Jaeden showed up next to her.

"What are you doin' here?"

"To see if you really are as reckless as everyone else's telling me."

"And what if I am?" she huffed. "It's none of your fucking business."

His chuckle annoyed her, and she felt even more irritated when he lit a cigarette while she couldn't. 

"I won't try to make you quit."

Surprised, she cocked her head aside. These days, everyone tried to make her quit. 

"You've been under my command. I know what you're capable of and I know how it feels to risk your life for the things you believe in. I want to see how you function within the club before I judge. I'm a soldier. You are a soldier too. Mila isn't — and I doubt Juice is. They have a different mindset."

Alex couldn't hold back a relieved sigh. She leaned to the side, resting her head against his shoulder. She'd missed him. 

"How do you plan to find out how I function within the club?" she asked after a while. "It's not like you will ever see me in the field."

He took a drag from his cigarette and looked her in the eye. "Juice told me you lost two prospects. I refuse to do any shitty tasks, but if they believe they can benefit from my experience... why  the hell not." He kept her glance. "I could use a challenge. They won't send me on a mission within the next six months anyway. There after, we'll see how it goes. You'll prospect period will be over anyway. And who knows... Maybe I'll stay." He winked at her before he turned to face the town. "I kinda like the quiet."