Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder by Alice Knightsky
Chapter – 103 All of This Is A Setup
I watched Ethan turn around and leap into the air, his fur and paws appearing as he shifted from his human form into his ma*s*sive wolf form before hitting the ground.
The guards also shifted as they were chasing after him, but Ethan was fast and powerful. I had a feeling they wouldn’t catch him. Not unless they got lucky.
Once he was gone, I turned around and dropped on my knees next to Soren.
“I’m so sorry you’re hurt,” I said, cradling his head in my lap.
Seraphine arrived soon after the guards. Even in this chaos, Soren didn’t forget to have someone look after me and the baby.
After briefly checking me, Seraphine went about patching Soren up.
Soren didn’t say anything at first. He only reached up and touched my face, a smile on his lips. I felt a tear slide from my eye.
This one wasn’t over Ethan, though. It was because I felt so guilty from all of the awful decisions I had made over the last few days. I had a caring friend here who had been supporting me all along, yet I was willing to turn my back on him so quickly and run back to the man who had said he would kill me.
As Soren was holding me, I realized he was slumping a bit. “Soren!” I exclaimed. “Your injuries are worse than you were letting on!”
I looked down to see that he was bleeding through his bandages.
“I’m fine,” he said, trying to rea*s*sure me, but a thin veil of sweat covered him, and it was beading up on his forehead.
He definitely wasn’t fine.
“Let’s get you to the house first.” I turned to Soren’s men, “Help please!”
The guards, who had been giving us some space to speak to one another in private, but still lingered nearby, moved upon my cry for help, and two of them slung Soren’s arms around their necks. They moved briskly, but carefully, back to the house, taking him inside as Seraphine waited at the door and shouted, “The doctor is here to help him.”
“Take him to my room,” I insisted, intending to follow him inside, but Seraphine stopped me.
“Let’s give the doctor some room, dear,” she said. “I did my best to bandage him up, and I believe he’ll be just fine, but the doctor is the one who can help him the most. If we are in the room, though, it will only serve as a distraction.”
“I understand.” I sank down onto the back porch, weariness overtaking my body. It was almost dawn, and I wished I could crawl into bed to go to sleep.
Not too long ago, I was planning my first night in my new home, going to sleep with a smile on my face. Now, I was sitting here, thinking about how Soren was injured and how I had been betrayed again.
Then, I thought of what Ethan had said-they were half-brothers.
How could they be so different? One was heartless and cruel, while the other had been nothing but pleasant and considerate?
The realization finally sank in.
I should’ve known this. Ever since the first time I saw Soren, he reminded me of Ethan because of how similar they looked. I just persuaded myself that they weren’t related.
Now, with everything that had happened, I finally figured out why I kept feeling I overlooked something- When Talon told me about Ethan’s past, he said Ethan’s stepfather was abusive to his children.
At that time, I was so shocked to find out that Ethan killed Georgia’s father that I totally let the other piece of information slip my mind. Ethan’s stepfather indeed had two children- Georgia and Soren.
I wrapped my arms around myself.
What should I do? Should I stay here?
Soren had been so kind as to take care of me. He said he would do everything to help me and the baby like he’d always been doing. But… he didn’t know that I intentionally picked this house so that I could secretly spend time with Ethan. The tunnel that allowed me to meet up with Ethan was the very same tunnel that allowed Ethan to sneak in and eventually hurt Soren.
When Soren discovered that, would he still consider me a friend?
Wouldn’t he be angry to know that I’d been meeting with his enemy in his own home, in his garden, behind his back?
All that time that Soren had been mentioning that smell—he had been sniffing Ethan’s scent!
Seraphine sat down next to me, but she may as well have been on the other side of the planet, I felt so alone. I dropped my head into my hands and Seraphine rubbed my back, yet I said nothing to her.
I felt like such an idiot—such a fool.
I pictured myself, walking around the nursery, putting the items in their place, thinking about what Ethan would think of each one. I had imagined his belongings in there, thought about our lives together, how we would raise our child here. I thought that this would be our home together.
When, all along, Ethan never really planned to stay with me. Everything sweet that he did was for one purpose—to use me—again!
Tears filled my eyes yet again as I considered my foolishness. When would I learn? I meant nothing to him.
I had believed his words when he’d told me all of those intimate revelations about his feelings, about how he felt so lonely and lost without me, how when I allegedly died, he felt pain for the first time in so very long, and how he didn’t think he was even capable of feeling pain again until I was gone from his life.
I wondered how long he had rehearsed those lies before he got here so that they would sound like he meant them.
I could see him sitting around with a team of negotiation experts, going over all of the things he should say in order to fool me so that he could get me to trust him.
So that he could get to Soren. That was, after all, what he needed me for this time.
While it might’ve been my body standing between Ethan and Soren, it was my baby that had prevented the Alpha from tearing Soren apart. He would’ve dispatched me in a heartbeat without even batting an eye if I wasn’t pregnant with his own flesh and blood.
Soren shouldn’t be thanking me—he should be thanking my baby.
My mind wandered to the stories Seraphine had told me. When I had asked her about couples that had been able to make it through something as terrible as what Ethan and I had gone through, she’d had plenty of stories about couples that could not get past it.
Some of them even got worse after their reunion.
But I hadn’t listened. I had insisted that she tell me a story about a woman and a man who had managed to make up after something awful, and even when it was quite clear she’d made that story up, I had wanted to believe it.
Ethan and I had a story that was doomed to disaster to begin with because our story wasn’t built on a foundation of love.
I was his breeder; he was my master.
I was his tool; he was my inseminator.
That was it. Because I’d grown to love him, that only meant that he was able to manipulate my feelings and use me more.
I was dispensable to him once he’d used me. He had great power. And what did I have?
Only his baby in my belly, and once that wasn’t the case anymore… I would be in a situation where he could kill me easily again.
Then, he’d take my baby from my dead, with his cold grasp, and go back to Madalynn so that the two of them could raise the baby together.
Without me.
The thought made my tears run even more.
How could he…how could he even claim that he loved me? Just to trick me into leaving with him and heading to my own death?
“I’m so sorry, dear,” Seraphine said, holding me tighter. “I know you feel betrayed. I can’t blame you. But… Mr. Soren will take care of you. He cares deeply for you.”
“I just… I feel so awful for what has happened to him.”
“You shouldn’t. You saved him.” Seraphine continued to pat my back.
A noise behind us had us looking over our shoulders. We saw Thomas, Soren’s a*s*sistant, standing at the door. “He’s asking for you, Miss Ro.”
With Seraphine’s help, I got up off of the back porch steps and went into the house, making my way to the bedroom where Soren was resting.
The doctor was standing in the doorway. “He’s going to be just fine,” the doctor said.
A wave of relief washed over me.
“Some of the wounds were rather deep, and I needed to go in and stitch them up, but there’s no internal damage.
He’s also lost quite a bit of blood, but as long as he rests over the next few days and drinks lots of fluids, I think he will recover on his own. I’ve left some medication for the pain and to help him sleep.”
“We all know how impossible it will be to get him to stay in bed,” Seraphine said, slowly shaking her head.
The doctor chuckled. “That’s why I left the medicine. You may have to sneak it into his food.” He patted me on the shoulder. “I heard about your bravery, Miss Ro. It’s commendable.”
“Thank you,” I said, but I didn’t feel like a hero.
“I’ll walk you to the door, Doctor,” Seraphine said, and the two of them left.
I walked into the room to make sure that Soren was okay.
I could tell he was feeling sleepy and wasn’t in as much pain. He reached for my hand, and I gave it to him.
“Ro,” he said, with a small smile. “Sit down. Please.”
I sat down next to him on the bed. I didn’t know what he wanted to talk to me about, but when I looked into his eyes, I was reminded of Ethan.
Ethan… all of a sudden, the rest of what Ethan said flooded back to my mind:
‘He’s the one tricking you! All of this is a setup.’
I looked into Soren’s clear eyes.
How could that be possible?
There was no way Soren would do that to me…right?