Pregnant With Four Alphas' Babies: A Reverse Harem Romance Chapter 53: A Twisted Situation

*Shelby*

I roll over onto my back, trying to catch my breath, my eyes on the ceiling as I listen to my loving husband gasping next to me.

I give him a moment to calm down and catch his breath, pulling my nightgown back down. Now that we have been married for a while, we don’t do a lot of that kinky, cutesy stuff I’m always telling Rose about. It’s more of a wham-bam-thank-you-sir kinda thing where I either tackle him or he hints at me for days until I’m in the mood, and then we spend ten minutes writhing around before he’s done.

Sometimes, like today, I am also done, but that was because I was on top and had a little help from his finger double-clicking my mouse….

“All right,” I say, leaning up on one elbow as I look at Adam’s handsome face in the glow of the moonlight streaming through the window. “Let’s talk about Rose.”

“Rose?” he repeats. “Hunny, she’s pretty and all, but I don’t think I should be talking about another woman with you right after we had sex. Shouldn’t we have done that before?”

I punch him in the bicep, wondering if he’s really that stupid or just being silly. I am hoping for the latter. “How are we going to get her safely out of here?” I ask him.

“Oh, that.”

Maybe his brain cells don’t have blood flowing freely to them yet, and he’s not stupid, he’s just brain dead.

“Well,” Adam continues. “I’ve been thinking about it for the last few days, and I haven’t been able to come up with anything. Maybe I can just pretend to kill her?

“Pretend to kill her?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “How would you do that exactly? Don’t you think King Gene is going to want to see a body?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, maybe. We can have her pretend to be dead. You know? Lay really still.”

I roll my eyes at him. “And not breathe for however long it takes the king to examine her? What if he pokes her? What if he tickles her?”

“I’ve never seen a person walk up to a corpse and say, ‘cootchie-cootchie-coo.’ Although, when my grandmother died, my granddad twisted her nipple.” Adam says this in all seriousness.

The questions I want to ask are so plentiful, I’m not sure where to start. “What? Where? At the funeral home?”

“No, no, right when he found her. She had a heart attack sitting in her recliner, watching the home shopping channel. I guess the prices were just too good to be true. At any rate, he twisted it, just to make sure. He said that would definitely get a rise out of her if there was anything left in there of her soul.”

“And… he did this… in front of the whole family?” I’m having visions of my dead body lying on the floor somewhere as my husband and future children discover me, with Adam reaching down and giving me a titty twister just to say, “Yep… she’s dead.”

“No, he found her all alone,” Adam tells me. “He just told us later.”

“Why in the hell would your grandfather feel the need to tell you that?” I ask him.

He shrugs again. “I’m not sure, but after that, every time my mother failed to respond to my father in a timely fashion, Dad would say, ‘Don’t make me check to see if you’re alive.’”

“If you ever say that to me–” I begin.

“I know! I know!” He holds his hands up. “Why do you think I never have?”

I have no answer for that. “At any rate, the king isn’t going to do that, and he’s not going to tickle Rose to see if she’s alive, you’re right. But he probably will check to make sure she’s dead. Perhaps we can stage her death! Maybe we could have her fall down a well or have her go swimming in the river and be swept away!”

Now, it is his turn to stare at me. “How would falling down a well help?” he asks.

“Well, we could have an elaborate tunnel at the bottom of the well that leads her outside of the castle!”

“And… what well are we using for this? The wishing well in the garden that’s got twenty feet of concrete in the bottom of it? It’s the only one I know of. Do you know how hard it would be to make a tunnel through that?” He is shaking his head.

I don’t like to admit that he has a point. “What about the river?”

“What if she really does drown? And what about the body? He’ll keep looking for a body,” he states.

“Well, he can keep looking and not find it. Maybe she’s an excellent swimmer,” I hope.

“Maybe she’s not,” he replies. “Are you willing to risk it?”

“We can have her wear an oxygen tank!” This idea might work.

“The invisible kind that no witnesses will see? Besides, there’s not a river for twenty miles from here. If we could get her to the river, we could get her away from him. It won’t work, babe.”

I sigh. He’s right. At this point, I’m not even grasping at straws. These are coffee stirrers just pretending to be straws.

“We need to tell the Alphas,” I whisper. “I thought we were going to get them all together and have them help us come up with a plan. Why are you still thinking of new ideas by yourself?”

He shakes his head. “I changed my mind,” he says.

“Baby, it’s the only way. They’ll come up with something. They’ll make sure she doesn’t get hurt. They love her,” I remind him.

“I’ve already broken my oath to the king by telling you. I can’t risk it,” he says.

I take a deep breath and rest my hand on his chest, feeling his muscles beneath my palm and wishing we were still making love. But then I remember that was done in an attempt to clear our heads so we could talk about this.

“I love you more than anyone in the world, Adam. I think we can figure out a way to make this work without the king ever knowing you told me or anyone else. But… I have to ask you… are you so worried about the king finding out because you think he’ll kill you? Are you too afraid of dying yourself that you can’t consider sacrificing yourself for Rose and those babies? I don’t want you to die, obviously, but… I don’t want you to act cowardly either. Don’t make me twist your nipples to see if you’re alive!”

He seems to be hiding a laugh as he puts his hand on top of mine, and I assume I’ve offended him, but when he speaks, he doesn’t sound offended. “Do you think that’s the case, Shelby? That I’d rather see the woman and her innocent children die than me? No, it’s not that. I’m just afraid, if King Gene finds out that I did this, he won’t kill me.”

My forehead scrunches as I try to decipher what my husband is saying to me. “What do you mean?” I ask. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

He shakes his head another time. “Sweetie, if King Gene really wants to punish me for disobeying his orders, he won’t kill me.”

“Then, we can help her get out and–”

He interrupts me. “No, listen. He won’t kill me because that’s too easy. He’ll do the worst thing he can to try and cause me pain.”

“You mean torture?” I ask. That does sound worse than death.

“No,” Adam says. “He won’t kill me–he’ll kill you. And I will not risk that. Not for Rose or her babies. Or anyone.”

He lifts my hand and kisses the back of it, and I feel my insides melt from the warmth of his lips, radiating the tender sentiments he’s bestowed upon me.

I can’t blame him for saying what he’s said, and I don’t want to die either. I certainly don’t want to be tortured. I have always envisioned Adam and me growing old together, having lots of children and grandchildren… retiring from this life to a farm somewhere where I can finally have a dog. Someday, we’ll die in each other’s arms. I just have to make sure he dies first or I am wearing a steel-tipped bra….

“I don’t want to die, but I would do it for her,” I say in a sharp whisper.

Adam stares at me, one eyebrow arched as he starts to tell me no.

“Adam, sometimes the Moon Goddess presents us with opportunities that are bigger than ourselves. Sometimes, she asks us to trust her and know that she has our backs. This might be one of those times.”

He says, “Or… this might be the perfect way to get all seven of us and the babies killed. Shelby, I’ll do what I can to save Rose and her babies, but I will not allow you to put yourself in harm’s way. Period.”

I don’t say anything because I know there’s no point, but in my mind, I know….

It’s not his choice to make.