Chapter 83

Chapter 83
The hotel they checked into wasn’t anything fancy—just another nameless place in a city that didn’t know them, wouldn’t remember them. It was temporary. A place to breathe, to plan. To figure out what the hell came next.
Mika sat on the edge of the bed, flipping her ID between her fingers. She barely glanced at the name printed on it. It didn’t matter. A name was just another weapon, another tool, something to use and discard when the time came.
Across the room, Seamus pulled his shirt over his head, revealing bruises that hadn’t yet faded, deep cuts still healing. The sight of them made something tighten in her chest—not concern, not exactly. Just awareness. A reminder of everything they’d gone through to get here.
He caught her staring. “What?”
Mika smirked, tossing the ID onto the nightstand. “You look like hell.”
Seamus snorted, running a hand through his hair. “You’re one to talk.”
She stretched, rolling her shoulders. “Yeah, well. Can’t kill what won’t die.”
He chuckled low, shaking his head. “That why you kept moving like a damn machine for ten miles?”
Mika grinned. “Wasn’t gonna let you be the only one still standing.”
He didn’t argue, just watched her for a beat, his eyes unreadable. Then he exhaled, dropping onto the mattress beside her, the weight of his body sinking into the cheap bedding.
“We did it,” he murmured, rubbing a hand over his face. “We’re out.”
Mika leaned back against the headboard, crossing one leg over the other. “So what now?”
Seamus was silent for a moment before he turned his head, meeting her gaze. “We figure it out.”
She huffed a laugh. “That’s your big plan? Just… figure it out?”
He smirked, reaching for her wrist, pulling her closer with that same lazy confidence that had always pissed her off—and turned her on. “Worked so far.”
Mika let herself be pulled in, but only enough to steal his whiskey from the nightstand. She took a slow sip, savoring the burn before tossing him a look. “I say we take what we know and make some real money.”
Seamus arched a brow. “You planning on robbing a bank?”
She shrugged. “Not yet.”
His smirk widened. “We could disappear. Go somewhere warm. Somewhere quiet.”
Mika tilted her head, considering. Then she shook her head. “Nah. We’re not built for quiet.”
Seamus chuckled, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand, his voice low, certain. “No. We’re not.”
She glanced out the window, watching the city move below them. They weren’t ghosts anymore. They weren’t dead. They were free.
And whatever came next, they’d take it on like they always had—together.
The door clicked shut behind him, and for the first time in days, Mika was alone.
Seamus had gone to get supplies—nothing major, just the basics to keep them running. He told her he’d be back in thirty, but she knew him well enough to expect him to case the area, check for signs of trouble. Old habits weren’t easy to shake, even in a city where they were supposed to be ghosts.
She sank onto the edge of the bed, exhaling slowly. The silence pressed in, not uncomfortable, just unfamiliar. No explosions, no gunfire, no adrenaline laced through her bloodstream. Just… stillness.
Her fingers drifted into her pocket, even though she already knew what she would find there. She had felt it against her leg since the bunker, a phantom weight she couldn’t shake.
A pregnancy test.
Positive.
She had taken it back in the bunker, before everything had gone up in flames. Her period had been late, but that was nothing new—stress, exhaustion, the constant fight to stay alive had always thrown her body out of rhythm. It wasn’t until the nausea hit her, sharp and unexpected, that she had considered the possibility. And then, just to prove herself wrong, she had taken the test.
She hadn’t been wrong.
Mika pulled it out now, turning it over in her fingers, staring at the result she already knew by heart. The little pink lines hadn’t faded, hadn’t disappeared just because she had pushed the thought aside.
She hadn’t let herself think about it before. There had been no time. No space in her mind for something so… impossible. She had assumed she wouldn’t make it out alive anyway. What was the point in thinking about a future when she was too busy trying to survive the present?
But now she was here. Alive. With Seamus.
And the future wasn’t just a distant concept anymore.
She exhaled, dragging a hand through her hair. She should be panicking. She should be drowning in fear, in doubt, in all the ways this could go wrong. But she wasn’t. She just felt… aware.
A child.
His child.