Pregnant With Four Alphas' Babies: A Reverse Harem Romance Chapter 183: Rose Needs Us Now

*Kelly*

“Are you there?” asks Heather.

I’ve just started talking to Eli in the mind-link, so I must have sort of drifted off in the middle of my conversation with Heather. But Eli has good news, so I need to focus.

‘This piece of shit just started,’ he’s saying. ‘Hurry up and get to the garage, and let’s get the hell out of here before it changes its mind.’

“I need to find the garage,” I tell Heather.

She nods. All I have to do is gesture toward the door, and Trevor gets the picture. We’re more than ready to get out of here.

“We need to hurry,” I tell both of them.

We leave Pete behind, just sitting in the room. He’s stopped staring out the window finally, but now he’s just staring at the ceiling. No wonder things don’t get done around here.

Heather takes my haste seriously and practically runs toward what I’m hoping is the garage. I don’t know if there’s more than one, so I hope wherever she’s leading us is where Eli is. It seems to take forever, but finally we reach a group of buildings dotted around an area that’s completely paved.

And I hear a car.

A van, to be precise, and soon after that, I see the vehicle pulling out of one of the garages with Eli behind the wheel, smiling smugly but also looking incredibly impatient. And I see clearly why he’d called it a piece of shit. It was apparently once a shuttle of some kind with lots of seats like a bus, and it has the name of the resort, which was apparently Wooded Acres Resort and Spa, plastered all over the side of it in faded letters. There’s more rust than paint, and it honestly looks like it’s held together with glue and duct tape. Even if I ignore its looks, the sputtering of the engine can’t be good.

But I hop inside anyway, followed by Trevor. Heather jumps in and climbs next to me in the middle seat as if we’re going for a Sunday drive in the country. I suppose we are.

“Won’t your parents get worried about you?” I ask. “We’ll be gone a very long time.”

She shrugs. “Ain’t never been worried before,” she says, and now I worry about what kind of parents this young lady has.

“Maybe you should’ve brought some of your stuff,” I say, knowing it’s too late for that anyway because Eli is already driving down the road.

Heather shrugs again and says, “Ain’t nothin’ I need.”

I nod because none of us have anything with us; I’m not even going to ask what they did with the stuff on our utility vehicles. I turn around and smile at Brent and Sean, who are sitting in the back seat along with that Eustace person who had taken them to fix this thing earlier. He smiles back with brown teeth, and I turn back around to face the front and look at Eli.

“Do we even have gas?” I ask. I can’t imagine there being anyplace to get gas for this thing way out here.

“There was a gas station,” he says. “Surprisingly with lots of gas in the tank.”

“Is it still any good?” I ask. “It’s probably been decades since it’s been refilled.” Heather looks at me a little funny, and I realize I’m probably insulting her, so I switch to the mind-link. ‘And are you sure this piece of shit isn’t going to get us stranded?’

‘It doesn’t sound great, or look great, but it’s actually pretty solid,’ he says, also in the mind-link.

‘Are we going the right way?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Eustace says this old road hits Highway 30, and that heads straight to Kane’s territory.’

I look forward at the road we’re on, or at least what’s left of it. Decades of neglect and Mother Nature’s attempts to reclaim it are showing with the wide cracks and overgrowth. In some places, I can barely see the road since it looks like a pile of weeds. ‘This is an old road alright,’ I say.

‘At least we’re finally headed in the right direction,’ he says. I can only see the side of his head, but I can make out the determined look on my brother’s face. I know that all he’s thinking about is getting to Rose.

I’m not in a hurry to drive up into the middle of a war, but I can hold my own in battle, and I think it’ll be better for Rose to have me there with her in case the babies start coming. Not that I’m any kind of an expert, but I can imagine how all these Alphas might start panicking when the babies are being delivered, and I think Rose needs a strong woman’s hand to hold onto.

I can’t even imagine having four pups at the same time. Well, I can sort of imagine, but I’ve never even had a single pup before, so I don’t have any motherhood experience to draw from. While guarding Rose back at the castle, I’d read plenty of her books about childbirth while she was asleep, and that is scary stuff.

Even after the babies are born, there’s so much to worry about—whether they’re eating right, whether they’re growing right, whether you’re doing something wrong that’s going to mess them up for life. I’m glad she has all four Alphas as a support system. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Speaking of which, I jerk suddenly as the bus lurches, and I nearly fall out of my seat. Eli is cursing endlessly, and I want to wrap my hands around Heather’s ears, but she just sits there and smiles. I guess she’s used to it with Pete and the like.

“What is it?” I ask as Eli slows the van to a stop.

“Looks like we blew a tire,” he says, thankfully stopping the cursing because he’s just caught sight of Heather in the rear view mirror.

We all exit the van and walk around to the driver’s side, which has a flat tire in the rear. “I hope we have a spare,” I say.

“Yup,” says Eustace, still smiling at me and holding his gaze on my chest for a tad too long.

I take Heather’s hand and lead her around to the other side of the van. There’s a nice shady tree on the side of the road, so we head over there to sit down out of the sun while Eli and the others deal with the tire. Sure enough, I see them digging out a spare and a pretty sturdy looking jack, so I exhale. Being stranded out here would be the worst, but I’m confident they’ll get it fixed. I start to wonder about the trip back and how far we’ll have to drive before we can use the mind-link again to talk to the other Alphas, and hopefully Rose, too.

“Are you Eustace’s mate?” Heather suddenly asks.

I’m jolted out of my thoughts. “What?” I say. I’m not sure I heard her right.

“Eustace,” she says. “Are ya mates?”

I shake my head and wish there were some way I could do so more ferociously. “No!” I say. “What makes you ask that?”

“I seen the way he's been lookin’ at ya is all,” she says. “Thought maybe you felt a mate pull.”

“Oh, Goddess, no,” I say, then I wonder if maybe I’m offending her again. I’m sure Eustace will make a great mate… for someone who’s not me. “I mean, I’m sure he’s a nice man, but no, there’s nothing there.”

“Oh,” she says, looking at the ground and plucking some weeds from among the grass.

I look at her, fascinated, while she wraps the stem of the weed around its top, which has a stiff looking seed pod there, and with a flick of her finger, she shoots the pod into the air.

“How did you do that?” I ask her.

She smiles and picks another weed stem, handing it to me, then gets her own and demonstrates. I manage to get mine to flick several feet. Pretty soon, we’re both giggling and flicking weeds like schoolgirls.

“I wish you were his mate,” she says when the giggles subsided a bit. “Then you could join my pack.”

I’m not sure what to say to her. I want to tell her that she’s not in a pack, and never has been, but I can tell by the earnest look on her face that she’s not ready to hear that yet. I’m going to tell her, but not now. Maybe Rose can help me break it to her when we get back.

“I guess the Moon Goddess doesn’t have that in her plans,” I say, finally thinking of something. “But she brought me to meet you, so I think she meant us to be friends.”

“Really?” she says.

“Yes,” I say, nodding. “I think we could be good friends.”

“I’d like that,” she says.

I stand up as I see the men boarding the bus again and waving us over. Heather has a new spring in her step, and I’m smiling a bit, relieved that the tire is fixed. And I guess I’ve made another friend. All I have to do now is get back to my other friend before her babies are born.

I can sense that Rose really needs us there, and fast.