Pregnant With Four Alphas' Babies: A Reverse Harem Romance Chapter 159: I'm Awake

*Tristan*

Reece, Mark, and I are all running top speed toward the battle front with Kane’s army when the voice of Trevor rings out in my mind.

‘Alphas?’ he asks. Apparently, he’s trying to reach any or all of us.

We all answer back, and I can tell we’re all praying for the same thing—that he’s found Rose, and she’s safe.

‘It’s gone,’ Trevor says instead.

‘What’s gone?’ I ask without breaking my stride.

‘Kane’s tent,’ he answers, and my heart sinks. ‘It was here an hour ago, and now it’s gone. I think they distracted us with fighting so they could move out.’

None of us answer, impossibly picking up speed as we reach closer to the battlefield. Trevor doesn’t try to reach us again; no doubt he knows the state of mind we are all in. I can feel the other Alphas fall into despair inside over Rose, although they are holding it together on the outside. I’m struggling hard to get past the pain myself.

Finally, we reach the battle area and see that, in fact, there does seem to be a turn in the tide. It isn’t that our armies are winning, although there are quite a few enemy casualties everywhere; but there just seems to be… fewer wolves fighting.

‘I’m guessing that Kane is slowly backing off,’ says Reece. ‘He has the ultimate leverage now.’

At that, my blood boils over, and I leap toward the nearest enemy wolf, who has one of our guys pinned to the ground. The soldier looks up just as I fly into him, ripping into his carotid artery and tossing him with my mouth over into a heap of dead wolves. The other Alphas join in the fray, and together we take out every enemy wolf in the area.

We stop and assess the situation; we’re on a large mound of trampled grass slightly elevated from the rest of the field, and it gives us a clear view of the rolling hills that make up the battlefield. Fighting is still heavy closer to us, but the farther away I look, I can see that the rear of Kane’s army is retreating. These soldiers closest to us are just all the poor saps who are being sacrificed so Kane and his strongest warriors can get away.

With Rose.

Slowly, the hills saturate with blood and the thunder of battle calms as all the experienced shifters that Kane has put out on the battlefield exhaust themselves and give in to death. Reece and Mark run up to me, and we all shift; the assistants run forward disbursing a pair of pants to each of us, making the sign of respect before turning and running off to the next shifters that are returning to human form.

“She’s gone,” Reece says in a somber voice.

Mark and I nod. “Most likely, he’s taken her to his castle,” I say. “And that’s an impenetrable fortress, but we’ll find a way in.”

“What if she’s—” Reece begins to say.

“He’ll need her alive,” Mark says quickly before Reece can finish that awful sentence. “She and the pups are… valuable.”

We each take a deep breath.

“We’ll need to strategize,” I say. “As much as I want to run straight forward and not stop till I’ve ripped the fucking head off Kane and anyone who’s laid one finger on Rose, she wouldn’t want that from us. She’d want us to all make it through this alive.”

“So let’s regroup,” says Reece.

“I have an idea,” I say. “We need to head back to Gene’s castle.”

“Back to—” Mark begins, but Trevor runs up from behind.

“I have a team assessing our wounded,” Trevor says quickly. “I can gather some of our best warriors and we’ll be proud to follow you, Alphas.”

I shake my head. “We’re not leaving yet,” I say, and Trevor looks surprised. “It’s just suicide to go storming in there. We’ll never make it past the outer walls of the city, much less the castle gates. We need to find another way in, so we’re regrouping back at Gene’s castle.”

He nods. “I’ll handle everything here,” he says. “Where’s Cora?”

“She got away,” says Reece. “We were preoccupied with some rogues, and she ran for it.”

“Fuck,” says Trevor. “I can’t believe I trusted her. I’ve worked by her side for months now.”

“’It’s not your fault,” I say. “And we’ve got more important things to worry about.”

“Right,” he says, making the sign of respect. “I’ll report in on the troops when I get more information.”

He leaves, and we shift, running fast back to the castle where we can better lay out our plans. I have an idea about some papers I saw in the library that might help us get into Kane’s castle, and I let the other Alphas in on my idea as we run.

I don’t even feel exhausted even though I’ve been running almost nonstop since I’d heard about Rose. The ache in my chest from worry about her and our pups radiates deep into my gut, but I have no choice but to ignore it, or we’ll never get her back. I know that the other Alphas are on the same page with me once again. She is our top priority.

I just pray that we’re not too late.

* * *

*Rose*

Purples, blues… I see strange colors all around in my head. I can’t even describe how sick to my stomach I feel. I’m so groggy that I haven’t been able to open my eyes in… well, I have no idea how long I’ve been dragged around from here to there to somewhere else, all while my head is pounding and my stomach feels like I’ve eaten a seven-course meal… one that has rotten eggs in every course.

I also don’t seem to have much of a body. That doesn’t make sense, but I don’t have anything that I can gather the will to move, other than a finger or two. Slowly, I feel something like pins and needles in both of my hands.

The first thing I do is reach for my belly. I’m relieved to feel it still swollen with the bodies of my precious babies… although they aren’t moving right now, either. Whatever is happening to us, I say a silent prayer to the Moon Goddess that she’s protected them from harm.

I hear a lot of voices, but none of them are making any sense right now. My brain is awake enough at the moment to recognize that I’ve been drugged and have a panicked concern for my babies, but nothing else is really processing yet. It’s like the world is a big ball of fuzz, and I’m caught in the center of it.

And I don’t like this feeling.

I slowly awaken in a strange way, working from my inner world out. I know myself, I know my babies, then the next thoughts that come into my mind are about the fathers of my babies. Oh, how they must be worried about me! Wherever I am, I hope they don’t charge in without thinking and get themselves killed. I don’t know how I could ever live without even one of them.

As my world comes more into focus, I keep my eyes closed because the voices are very close, and I’ve got enough wits about me to know that I’d rather let them think I’m still knocked out so they don’t give me any more drugs. Who knows what they’ve given me, or whether the dose has harmed the babies?

“Bitch is still out,” says a man, then he laughs.

“She’s awfully fat,” says another.

“You’re a fucking moron,” says a gruff-voiced woman, and she sounds a little closer to me. “She’s pregnant with pups. Four of them, at that.”

“Now how the fuck was I supposed to know that?” asks the second man.

“It must hurt being such a fucking moron,” says the woman.

The voices keep arguing, and I try to tune them out because they’re really awful people saying awful things about me. I still can’t move, so I decide the best thing to do right now is relax—for the babies’ sake—and go inside my mind.

I think about my Alphas… Tristan, Reece, Mark, and Eli… Eli! He was missing; I remember it now. I wonder if the same people have kidnapped him. Could he be nearby, I wonder? I decide to use the mind-link and try to reach him, but I can’t feel his presence or that of any of the other Alphas. Something isn’t right.

I seem to remember Eli coming to me recently, while I was with… a unicorn? It all seems so strange. My mind must still be clouded with the drug, which must be why I can’t use the mind-link.

I’m sure all my Alphas are fine. They just have to be!

My body is starting to recover some more, and I can feel all my body parts now. I panic for what must have been several minutes when I feel nothing inside my belly… but soon enough, that familiar feeling of my little ones returns to me. Thank the Goddess, I think, although I can’t really tell how many babies are in there moving. If there’s one of them, then they all must be okay. That’s what I have to keep believing.

My head is still pounding, but my stomach is starting to feel a bit less queasy, and I’m thankful for that, too. Feeling a bit more like myself now, I try the mind-link again, but I still can’t reach anyone. Is it possible for a mind-link to be broken?

A loud noise echoes through the room; it’s the sound of a metal chair scraping against a hard floor.

“The bitch is awake,” the first man says.