Pregnant With Four Alphas' Babies: A Reverse Harem Romance Chapter 150: Finding the Culprit

*Adam*

The bed is empty, and from the looks of things, there’s been a struggle here. My mouth hangs open as I stare from the unmade bed to Shelby and back again.

“What the fuck?” she asks, looking around the room. Without waiting for me to say anything, my wife runs to the adjoining bathroom. “Rose?” she calls, and I see her in there looking everywhere, including the shower and bathtub. I think she even lifts the lid to the toilet.

She comes up empty handed, and I’m not surprised because I see the secret passageway door open, and I know that Rose had to have gone through it.

Whether or not she went of her own accord, I’m not sure about at first, but then, the bed is a mess. It looks like someone ripped all of the blankets off of it, and I think the top sheet is missing. It doesn’t make sense that Rose would do that herself and then casually walk through the open door, unless she was having a bad dream–a night terror of some sort.

“She’s not in here!” Shelby proclaims as she flies back into the room.

“I know,” I say, shaking my head grimly. This doesn’t look good. Rose seems to have been taken, and I was the one who was supposed to be watching her.

The Alphas were going to murder me–and I wouldn’t blame them. I would totally deserve it.

“What do you mean you know?” Shelby asks as she moves across the room to look in the closet.

“The door is open, Shelby,” I say, my tone as calm as I can keep it.

“Well, we probably left it open.” I hear her moving hangers around in the closet, the screech of plastic on one grating on my last nerves. “She definitely didn’t come through the door. I would have seen her. I was sitting right there, and I didn’t fall asleep or anything.”

I sigh, trying to keep my patience with my wife. She’s usually not so good in an emergency. “Not that door, baby,” I say. “The door in the wall, the one to the secret passage.”

I hear the hangers stop and a moment later, she is standing in the doorway of the closet, her wide eyes focused on me at first and then moving to the door of the secret passage. It’s not completely standing open, but it’s definitely a bit wider than it was the last time I was in here.

“Why would she go through there?” Shelby asks, every word measured.

I shrug. “I doubt she wanted to,” I reply, hinting at foul play.

“Why would she get up from a sound sleep and go through a secret passage door if she didn’t want to?” Shelby is standing next to me now, both of us staring at the crack in the wall.

My wife is highly intelligent, but when she doesn’t want to believe something, it takes her longer to get to the correct conclusions than it should.

“I think she was taken against her will, baby,” I reply, reaching out and touching her arm.

“What?” Shelby laughs, shaking her head. “No, that’s not possible,” she says, dismissing all of the logic in front of her. “There’s no way someone came in here and took Rose with me stationed right outside of the door. I would’ve heard it.”

“I understand that it would’ve been a difficult job, dear,” I say, finally deciding we should probably look more closely at the evidence in front of us. “But I don’t think there’s any other explanation, short of Rose going into the tunnel herself, and as you’ve already said, that doesn’t make sense.”

I take a few steps toward the bed to pull the duvet up off of the floor, wondering if there’s any blood or anything that might tell us what happened. I think that if Rose had been hit over the head or something, we would see a lot of blood on her pillow, but I see nothing at all there, except a few stray blonde hairs that obviously belong to Rose.

“What are you doing?” Shelby shouts. “Don’t touch anything! We need to keep the crime scene clear for the authorities!”

Dropping the duvet onto the bed, I say, “Shelby, I am the authorities. Unless you think someone higher up than me is going to come in here to investigate, I’m as authoritative as it gets, and not only do I doubt that King Gene will be coming to investigate, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want him to.”

She runs a hand through her hair and turns around, clearly distraught. “Who would do this?” she asks. “Emily is gone. Gene isn’t capable. Kane and Stephen haven’t breached the castle, right?”

“I heard that there was a scrimmage of some sort over on the east side of the wall a bit ago, but I came to check on you after I first heard about it, so I’m not sure what happened. A few of Kane’s wolves were spotted. I doubt they got in, or I would know. Besides, the timing is wrong.” I do wonder, though. Could those wolves have had something to do with this? It was such a small force. Our men thought they’d scared them off. But maybe they’d gotten over the wall.

“That has to be it,” Shelby says. “I mean, the only other threat is Barbara, and she’s in the dungeon.”

I am scrutinizing the duvet, making sure there’s no blood on it. I don’t see any. The mention of Barbara reminds me of why Gene is busy now. “Oh, no. Barbara’s not in the dungeon now,” I say off-handedly. Is there any blood on this thing? I don’t see any.

“What?” Shelby asks, each sound of the word coming out of her mouth slowly. “What do you mean Barbara’s not in the prison anymore?”

“I mean she’s not there anymore,” I say with a shrug. She’s just one small woman. She couldn’t get Rose out of here. “She killed a guard and ran away.”

“Adam!” Shelby screeches. “What do you mean she killed a guard and got away?”

With a sigh, I turn to face my wife. She seems to be having some difficulty understanding my words. “I said, ‘She killed a guard and ran away!’”

“Adam!” Shelby grabs me by the arm and shakes me. “Barbara must’ve done this!”

“No, she couldn’t do something like this. She probably just killed him and ran off. That’s why they can’t find her.” I figure that might be what those wolves were doing, trying to help her.

“Or they couldn’t find her because she was hiding in the secret passages, you idiot!” Shelby shakes me even harder.

What she is saying is starting to make sense. Still, I can’t imagine Barbara going to so much trouble when she should’ve just wanted to get the hell out of here. “She couldn’t just drag Rose out of here by herself!” I say.

“Why not? Rose was asleep. Maybe she tied her up and gagged her. Barbara is strong. She almost killed Emily, remember? She could’ve definitely done this! We just have to make sure that Rose doesn’t get out of the castle! I think I heard her moving around in here about a half an hour ago. Can we lock the castle down? Are they looking for Barbara?”

“Yes, they’re looking for her,” I say, running a hand through my hair. I think there has to be a better explanation for this. “She would’ve had to knock Rose out, and to hit someone that hard, she would’ve definitely been bleeding, and look around. Do you see any blood?” It’s my turn to spin around with my hands open, and I don’t see any blood anywhere.

But I do see something else. My eyes land on it at about the same time that Shelby inhales sharply. She sees it, too.

“Goddess damn it!” Shelby mumbles as she drops to her knees.

“Be careful,” I tell her as I see she’s about to pick it up. It all makes sense to me now, unfortunately. Barbara killed a guard in the deep dungeon, took his uniform, and in his pocket, she found one of the tools we arm the guards in the deep dungeon with.

A syringe.

Shelby and I lock eyes, and at the same time, we say, “Holy fuck.”