Pregnant With Four Alphas' Babies: A Reverse Harem Romance Chapter 182: Light at the End of the Tunnel

*Rose*

I follow along with Diana as she leads me down a dark hall, and it makes me nervous. It reminds me of the tunnels the others found in the walls of King Gene’s castle. It reminds me that I was dragged through a secret passage to get me out of the castle. I have vague memories of being wrapped in a sheet and dragged through the darkness. My feet are still bruised from it. I believe it was Barbara who did that to me, but I’m not sure.

As I rush behind the maid, my abdomen begins to hurt, and I have to slow down. “Diana!” I shout to her. “Where are we going? And can we slow down?”

“This passage comes out in the woods on the far east side of the castle,” she explains to me. “I’m trying to get you away from Kane. I know that he will do whatever he can to keep your Alphas from attacking him. If that means using you as some sort of a human shield, he’ll do it. We need to make sure he can’t find you when he comes looking for you.”

Everything she is saying makes perfect sense. It’s just, the further I walk, the more my stomach hurts. I can ignore the chaffing from my thighs rubbing together, the pain in my lower back from carrying all of these babies, and the agony in my head from the drugs they gave me to knock me out, but I can’t handle these cramps I’m having in my abdomen.

Ahead of us, I can see a crack of light that looks like it’s the frame of a door, so I keep going. All I want, more than anything in this world, is to be safe in a soft bed with all four of my men around me.

Now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, that doesn’t seem as impossible as it did a few minutes ago.

* * *

*Reece*

We are in the castle now, and our warriors are doing a great job of finding and destroying Alpha Kane’s men, but we are not after just any warrior.

No. Alpha Tristan, Alpha Mark, and I are on the prowl for the big man himself. We need to find the Alpha who lives here and destroy him.

And then, we need to find Rose.

I know that the woman she’s with, Diana, is trustworthy. I could hear it in her voice. It seems obvious to me that Alpha Mark doesn’t think she has Rose’s best interest at heart, but he tends to be negative and overreact to everything.

I can’t think about that now as I settle my nose on Alpha Kane’s scent. At first, I could only pick up traces of him, probably because this is his home, and his smell is everywhere. But as we head down a particular hallway, I smell him more than I had before.

We pick up speed, and since the hallways are so narrow, I almost run into Tristan. I can imagine the two of us getting wedged in here and Mark having to push through the wedge we’d create and dislodge us.

The scent leads us to a room, but when I stop outside of the closed door, I realize it’s not just Alpha Kane’s scent I’m smelling so strongly here.

It’s also Rose’s.

Just a hint of her familiar scent has my stomach tightening and my breath becoming shallow. I miss her so badly. I would love to wrap my arms around her, to kiss her, to hold her close. I need to see her with my own eyes and make sure she’s safe.

Tristan kicks the door in, and when he does, we see Alpha Kane standing in the middle of a bedroom in his human form with a sharp blade in his hand, but he’s not alone.

He has a woman wrapped in a sheet in his arms, her head covered by the white cloth. She is crying, and he has the look in his eyes that tells me he has lost his last marble.

“Don’t come any closer!” he shouts. “If you do, I’ll kill her. I’ll kill your precious breeder!”

I exchange a quick glance with Mark and Tristan as we all pause in our places. Is Alpha Kane trying to trick us into believing the woman he’s holding beneath the sheet is Rose?

I can smell her here. She’s definitely been in this room for a while and recently. Looking at the sheet he has wrapped around the woman, I notice that the bottom is dirty, and I think there’s a good chance that it’s the sheet from Rose’s bed at Alpha King Gene’s castle. It smells a lot like her, and I even smell traces of us on it, which is possible if her sheets hadn’t been changed since the last time we were in her room. I smell Kelly, Shelby, and Adam as well.

But this woman? She sounds nothing like Rose. Nor is she big enough to be Rose right now, not unless she’s already had our pups, and I do not smell anything in this room to indicate that the babies have been born. And Diana didn’t mention it. No, this crying woman isn’t Rose.

I do feel sorry for her, though, and I hope she doesn’t get hurt, but right now, my biggest focus is on taking out Kane and then finding Rose.

Using the mind-link, I say, ‘That’s not her. Let that woman go.’

“What?” Kane questions aloud. “What do you mean this isn’t her? Of course it is. You don’t recognize the scent of your own woman? Maybe that’s because she’s got the seed of so many men on her body. Maybe even including mine.” He grins at us mischievously, and I want to kill him. Who the fuck does he think he is?

‘I’m not wasting another second on this bullshit,’ Tristan says to Mark and me. ‘Let’s take him out.’

‘We can’t hurt that woman, though,’ Mark says. ‘She’s innocent.’

‘We don’t know that!’ Tristan barks back. ‘She’s obviously one of his people.’

I don’t want to argue. I just want to take out Kane. For all we know, there’s a trap door or a secret passage here, and he could disappear on us again.

We can’t let that happen. I hope the innocent lady doesn’t get hurt either, but if she does… she does.

‘You go left, Tristan,’ I say. ‘I’ll go right. Mark, you try to get that woman away from him before he hurts her. If we move quickly enough, he shouldn’t have time to hurt her.’

‘But…’ Mark begins.

Tristan cuts him off, though. ‘One, two… three!’

I break to the right as Tristan goes left. Mark misses a beat because he’s too busy stewing, but then he lunges right at Kane, attempting to hit him before he can cut the woman.

Kane was bluffing because he doesn’t try to cut the woman. Instead, he pushes her toward Tristan, screams like a little girl, and takes several steps backward, not even trying to shift.

He can’t get away from us, and as my teeth sink into his soft, warm flesh, he screams louder, and I bite harder.

His blood is warm and salty, and I swallow it down, so glad to finally end him and this conflict.