Pregnant With Four Alphas' Babies: A Reverse Harem Romance Chapter 199: Over My Cold, Dead Body

*Mark*

“We have a problem,” I say.

We’re standing in the hallway outside the nursery and Rose’s room. The other three Alphas are looking at me like I’m crazy, because of course we have a problem with Kelly missing… along with a loyal member of my pack. But from what Adam just told me, we have a lot more to worry about.

“What now?” Tristan asks after staring at me for a moment with an exasperated look.

“We can’t leave,” I say.

“What?” asks Eli. “But my sister—”

I hold up my hand. “I know,” I say. “We need to figure out what’s happened with Kelly. But there’s a greater danger for Rose and the pups right now.”

Tristan bolts right off without another word and runs into the room where the babies are sleeping, pretty much waking them up. I wave him back as the nurses give him irritated glances. Satisfied that all the pups are fine, he comes to his senses and exits, closing the door quietly and walking back over to us. Now he’s the one looking irritated.

“I didn’t mean right this second,” I say. “But I understand how you’re feeling. We’re all a bit jumpy with even more at stake now. But listen. Adam says that Gene fired him and replaced him with another Beta who’s—”

“What?!” This time it is Reece getting upset.

I nod and continue. “Who is this very moment marching here to kill us all—Rose, the pups, us.”

“Over my cold, dead body!” hollers Tristan.

I feel the same way, but I look over at the nurse who’s just put her hand on the doorknob to the pups’ room. Something looks off about her. I know everyone in my pack, and she doesn’t look familiar, and she’s averting her eyes. “Excuse me….”

She turns and looks at me with wide eyes and starts backing away.

“Stop,” I say in my Alpha voice. She does just that, and I can feel the eyes of the rest of the Alphas, who immediately sense that something is wrong.

“We’re moving the pups,” says Reece without waiting to see what’s wrong or what will happen next. “Pups and Rose in the same room, and one or more of us will be there at all times.”

Everyone is murmuring in agreement as I hold the nurse by the arm and open the nursery door, indicating to the other nurses inside that they should come out into the hallway.

“Does anyone know this woman?” I ask when they’re standing around me.

They all shake their heads, and their eyes go wide as they realize that the strange woman is wearing a nurse’s uniform.

“Never seen her before, Alpha,” says one of the older nurses. “I assumed she was from another pack.”

It angers me a bit that she’d make such an assumption about a stranger who has access to the pups, but there’s never been a danger inside my castle walls, so I don’t blame her for being trusting. “From now on, we’ll be restricting access to the pups to only our best head nurses,” I say. “Create an identification procedure, and no one else is allowed near the pups or Rose. And get them all in the same room as Alpha Reece has ordered.”

“Yes, Alpha,” says the nurse, and she turns to get started right away.

The guards I’d called in the mind-link arrive. “Detain this woman,” I say.

Tristan moves in very closely so that he’s right in her face, which must be more than intimidating considering his body size and Alpha status. “Who do you work for?”

She looked up at him, terrified.

“Answer the Alpha’s question,” I say firmly.

“He… he said we’d all starve!” she says.

“That’s not an answer,” says Tristan, and I have to say that even I would answer him right now with the way his eyes are flaming.

“Al,” she says. “Al says that if the three other Alphas along with the pups take over, that they… that you’d hoard all the food, and we’d all starve!”

“Why the hell would we do something like that?” asks Reece, and that’s exactly what I’m about to ask.

“I’d better go check in on Rose and explain why the pups are moving in,” says Eli, and he heads over to Rose’s room. I hadn’t even noticed the bustle of nurses rolling by bassinets and equipment and carrying pups toward Rose’s room, so I’m glad Eli is paying attention. Rose is probably confused… or terrified.

“I… we all remember Alpha Trevor,” says the nurse that we’re questioning.

And now it makes sense.

“Alpha Trevor has been dead for two centuries!” I say. “All we’ve ever heard of him is childhood stories.”

“Who the fuck is Alpha Trevor?” asks Tristan.

I realize that the other Alphas have no knowledge of my pack’s history. In fact, we really know very little about each other or each other’s packs, which is odd considering that we all just had pups born of the same beautiful woman. “It’s a long story,” I say. “But it’s an old one that has nothing to do with anything that’s happening right now. Alpha Trevor had triplet sons. He was also a hell of a mean bastard. When his sons were still infants, he divided the pack into three and made each section pay ‘tribute’ to a different son. That meant most of the money, products, produce, and meat went directly to him. That left most of the pack in starvation mode for decades. And when his sons grew up and tried to take over from him, he had them killed and still kept everything for himself.”

“What the hell?” says Tristan.

I shrugged. “I guess the multiple birth has a few of my people nervous. But what they’ve forgotten,” I say while turning back to the frightened fake nurse, “is that it was my family who stood up to the bastard and set things right. Why the hell would I be like Alpha Trevor? Have you ever known me to rule like Alpha Trevor?”

She shook her head. “It’s just that… well, Al sounded convincing. He said it didn’t matter what your ancestors did because you’d take the birth of all these pups and forget about the good your family had done because you’d want everything for you and the pups now.”

“And you honestly believed that?” I ask. I don’t usually use the word ‘flabbergasted,’ but that’s exactly how I feel right now. “These aren’t even all my pups. We have three other Alpha fathers here.” In my mind-link, I contact another set of guards and have them arrest Al and anyone around him. He has to be the one who’s been leaking information to Gene.

I’d never felt unsafe in my own castle before… until now. “Get her out of here,” I say to the guards, and they haul her away to the dungeon, which I don’t even think has anyone in it right now. Well, it will now. It’ll be full of anyone connected to Al and his stupid ideas about me. I block all of them from making any mind-link communications with each other or anyone else.

By now, it looks like all the pups have been moved into Rose’s room, so Tristan, Reece, and I head inside. Eli is sitting next to her bed holding his son, and Rose looks worried.

“What’s going on?” she says. “Eli says we have to keep the pups and me in the same room due to a threat. What’s the threat?”

I really don’t want to scare Rose since she has enough to worry about with healing up and caring for the pups, but she’s a strong woman, and she has a right to be a part of our decisions. “Apparently, I have a few people in my pack who remember an awful leader of the past, and they think that just because you’ve had a multiple birth that I’m going to do the same terrible things that asshole did.”

“His Luna had four babies?” she asks.

“Three,” I say. “But I guess old fears die hard, and bad people can use them to get other people to follow them, apparently.”

Tristan nods. “So now we have three issues to deal with,” he says.

“Three issues?” asks Rose.

I nod. “Yes,” I say. “One, I’ve got an internal problem that could be causing a leak of information. I’ll deal with that myself. Two, we need to find Kelly—”

“What’s wrong with Kelly?!” Rose sits up straight in her bed and looks between all of us with a furrowed brow.

“Apparently, she didn’t make it back like Eli did,” I say. “She was in a different vehicle.”

Her mouth goes wide, and she turns back to Eli. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she says.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” he says. “You need to heal and care for the pups. I’ll find my sister.”

“Well, go!” she says, spreading out her arms to take her son.

“I agree,” says Tristan. “If you take a contingent to go find Kelly, and Mark deals with the issue with his pack, that leaves me and Reece to guard Rose. I’ve already got half my army outside, and the other half is dealing with logistics and will be here soon.”

“My army is here as well,” says Reece. “Guarding the outskirts.”

“Wait,” says Rose. “Why all this guarding? What’s going on that you haven’t told me? There’s a third issue….”

We all look at each other, but I speak up first.

“Gene has sent warriors to kill us all.”