Pregnant With Four Alphas' Babies: A Reverse Harem Romance Chapter 259: The Slums of Rogue City

Rylee

“I was just thinking that—” I begin.

Calvin cuts me off. “You’re not here to think. It’s half your sister’s fault that the kings sent Ethan and an entire army to kill us all off. Let the men talk.”

I’m seething inside, but I let that go. I’m not afraid of Calvin. I could rip his head off in wolf-to-wolf combat if I felt like it, but I know that everyone else fears him. They’re willing to do whatever he says just because his father was a fierce warrior. That man is gone now, but everyone is still afraid because Calvin uses trickery to make them think he’s as strong as his father.

What a joke.

Since he wants me to let the men talk, I leave them to do just that. It’s not them I care about here anyway. I can feel Calvin’s eyes staring at me as I walk away. It makes me want to puke, but once again, I try to ignore him.

Outside the circle of warriors, as Calvin calls it, which is really a group of men he has wrapped around his finger, I traipse through the roughshod camp in the damp forest. None of these people belong here. But the problem is that they don’t belong anywhere. A good percentage of them don’t deserve to be rogues. It wasn’t their fault that some family member somewhere along the line messed up and left their pack. Now, their descendants have paid for it dearly.

Most of the ‘warriors’ have tents, albeit leaky, torn ones. Most are still boys, really, barely eighteen and not even accustomed to their wolves yet. The kings’ warriors will rip them to shreds, but Calvin doesn’t care.

Past the fighters, things get worse. Families struggle to survive in make-shift lean-tos, or with no shelter at all, just branches or scraps of cloth put together on rickety sticks. Babies cry and their mothers do their best to hush them, knowing Calvin will have the whole family punished if they give away the camp’s position.

The situation is bad, but it got this way because of the royals. Alpha King Gene and all those before him expelled people for no reason, or on loose technicalities, and never thought about the consequences to their descendants. The people at the resort keep trying to say that the four new Alpha Kings are so much better because they helped clean up the place, but there are so many others left behind. They must not care either.

Now that the Alpha Kings’ son Ethan is here with a massive army, it chills me to think what will happen to all these people.

I ignore the voice inside that sparks to life at the mere thought of Ethan’s name. He’s just one of the royals, after all.

I reach a lean-to made of woven leaves and vines, and a child runs out. His pants are dirty and in tatters, and he has no shirt.

“Rylee!” His eyes brightening despite his poor condition.

I reach for him and give him a gentle hug. “Hello, Christopher. How are you today?”

He shrugs. “I’m okay. Mom’s sick.”

My heart sinks, and I quickly look inside the lean-to to see my best friend, Amla, lying on the damp forest floor. I kneel beside her and feel her forehead.

“You’re burning up,” I say.

“Rylee?” Her voice is weak. “I’ll be okay.”

“You will not, not here, so you’re coming with me to my room at the resort.” I’ve lowered my voice to a whisper. The rogue council here won’t let anyone go to the resort or anyplace led by the Alpha Kings, who they are sure are as bad as Gene. The penalty for going there is death. The council tolerates my travels because with my sister in a high position as Isaac’s Beta, I can get the information they need.

She shakes her head vigorously. “No, I can’t. Father will—”

“Your father will have a healthy daughter who is alive, and he’ll thank me for it,” I say, interrupting her. “Where’s Maya?”

“She went to gather water,” Christopher says behind me.

“We’ll wait for her,” I say firmly. I untie my pouch from my waist and pull out the breadsticks I’ve brought with me. It’s so little, but Christopher’s eyes light up when I hand one to him. Amla shakes her head.

“Save that one for Maya,” she insists.

“I have enough for all of you. Take it.” I know she won’t have the strength to walk out of here unless she eats a little something. She hardly looks fit for a walk as it is, but I have to help her.

Maya returns shortly with the water, only a small amount in a rusted old soda can. “Rylee!”

She greets me with a hug. Her thin body looks younger than her ten years. Her brother, just eight, is as small as an average five-year-old. I marvel at how much time has passed. Amla was so young when Maya was born, barely eighteen herself. She’s several years older than me, but we’ve always connected as good friends.

I waste no time getting some food in Maya’s belly, though I’m anxious to leave soon. Amla’s father is on the council. They usually chat it up and drink their moonshine until after midnight, but there’s always the chance they will break it up early, so we have to make a break for it now. I’ll carry my friend if I have to just so I can get her and her children the hell out of here.

The least dangerous way out passes somewhat close to the council, but I’m betting on the distraction of the drink to get us by.

Of course, it’s not easy to talk Amla into going. We have to argue in the lowest whispers to keep the families nearby from hearing. It could mean bigger rations of food for them if they report ‘traitors’ to Calvin.

“I can’t leave my father,” Amla insists. “He’ll be alone here.”

“He’s left you alone here to suffer in sickness,” I counter. “If he were any kind of a parent, he would put his needs above your own. You should do the same for your children.” I nod toward her kids, who are keeping watch at the edge of the lean-to.

“Are you telling me I don’t love my children?” She almost gets too loud with that whisper.

“No, you love them dearly,” I say. “And that’s why you need to leave with them.”

“But that’s putting them at risk,” she insists.

“Only if we’re caught, and we won’t get caught.” I peek out between the branches. No one has gathered around that I can see. We’ve done a pretty good job of keeping quiet. “We need to leave soon, though, before the council meeting dies down. Right now, they’re too inebriated to care what anyone’s doing. Also, the path is downwind of the council meeting area. It’s the best possible time.”

Reluctantly, she nods. I pull the children into a hug and whisper quietly. “Anything you want to keep, take it now.”

They both nod, so terribly wise beyond their years. They’ve had nothing for so long that I know how much the few trinkets found on the ground might mean to them. Clothes aren’t a problem. I’ll buy what they need later. But I don’t want them to leave any part of their heart behind.

Christopher grabs a tattered old burlap sack filled with his collection of bottle caps he’d always so proudly shown me, and Maya picks up her dirty teddy bear, missing both his eyes and with a good deal of its stuffing falling out.

I know the item Amla wants, so I pick it up myself—her deceased mother’s pendant. I make sure she sees me stow it away safely in my sack. She nods, too exhausted to care about anything else she has lying around. I just hope she has the strength to walk.

We split up so it’s less obvious, agreeing to meet behind a tree by the path that will take us toward the resort. It was once a narrow road, but now all of the asphalt has crumbled into gravel or dirt, and the forest has overgrown it so it barely functions as a path anymore, but at least it takes us straight in the direction we need to go, and we can slip off it into the forest if we think someone is coming.

We hug again when we meet behind the tree. Amla looks tired and weak, but she also looks determined. I know it’s hard for her to leave her father, but now that she’s all-in, she’ll do anything to keep the kids safe. And so will I.

We reach the part of the path closest to the council meeting. Thankfully, they’re all plastered and pretty loud. Their homemade moonshine is strong, and they always drink so much of it that even with a wolf’s constant regenerative power, the alcohol wins.

They’re loud, and we hear everything they say.

“With this on our side, we can overthrow the Alpha Kings!” Calvin hollers, and the men erupt in cheers.

I don’t know what ‘this’ is, and I normally hate the royals, but I can’t help but think that a world with Calvin as Alpha King would be ten times worse.

* * *

*Ethan*

“The scouts have found their camp,” my cousin reports.

“Good,” I say. “We’ll have the warriors take it, then.”

Isaac shakes his head. “We can’t. These losers drag their families with them everywhere they go. There are a few fighters and a whole slum filled with women, children, and the elderly.”

I pause, surprised, but then suggest, “Well, surely, they’d want help. We could just go in and offer them shelter and food.”

“We’ve tried that before.” I turned at the sound of Katherine’s voice. “Their trick is to make sure we can’t attack because the innocent will always be in the way.”

I fold my arms. “That sounds pathetic, yet organized. Who’s running all that?”

“Intel says his name is Calvin,” Katherine continued. “We have no idea what his last name is or where he came from, but he seems to have a strong hold on these people.”

“Well, we’re not going to attack innocents, that’s for sure.” I sigh. “And now we have a new mission. If there are families out there living in slums, we need to help them.”

“I have tried,” Isaac says. “Any connection to the Alpha Kings makes them shut down. They won’t listen to a thing we say.”

“There’s got to be a way,” I insist. “We need to find someone who can speak to them on their own level, someone connected to them.” I look around at Isaac, Katherine, and the lead warriors gathered around us. “Any suggestions?”