Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder by Alice Knightsky
Chapter 121 I Hadn’t Missed The Birth of Our Baby
**Ethan’s POV**
‘Keep pushing them!’ I shouted to my warriors using the mind-link, watching yet another line of our enemies break. Dozens of wolves gave way, their line crumbling as my superior forces came over a ridge and bore down on them, their snouts dripping with blood as they gnashed their teeth and howled up at the sky.
I hung back a bit to survey the situation, though I’d had my share of torn muscle and blood in my mouth and beneath my claws. We were winning, pushing them back, and it wouldn’t be long until this force was routed as well.
We would win this war. I couldn’t wait!
And then, I would run to Rosalie, and would never leave her side.
‘Press forward!’ I told them, taking a few steps forward myself to join them, when suddenly a strange sensation overcame me.
The world seemed to turn on its side, and I swayed slightly, trying to keep my balance as a pain in my abdomen radiated throughout me. It ebbed and flowed for a moment but then shifted, and that tug, that magnetic pull I’d felt so many times before when my baby was near, hit me so strongly, I nearly had to sit down.
Like a powerful wave crashing down on me, the pull lunged at my abdomen, tugging on my insides, and the sensation that everything within me was about to come out was overwhelming. But it wasn’t painful. It was a slipping, sliding motion, like going down a slide, and it was freeing in a way I couldn’t explain. The pain had only lasted a moment, and then it was gone.
Almost as quickly as it had come, the entire moment dissipated, and I found myself standing back on the battlefield, watching my warriors disappear over the ridge. The world had righted itself, the tug was only the minor pull that had never released me since I’d learned that Rosalie was alive, and the pain was the shadow of an ache that always remains after an injury.
I blinked a few times and looked around. No one was paying any attention to me. My entire world had just shifted, and no one had even noticed.
What did this mean?
My heart was thumping. Was that…my child?
I had no way of knowing for sure, but I took note of where the sun was in the sky so I’d have some idea of what time it was. I knew the date already.
Someday, I would find out exactly when my child was born, and I’d want to know if the birth corresponded to what just happened to me.
Rosalie could run to the ends of the earth, but she couldn’t sever the bonds I felt with my child, or with her.
Nothing could ever dissolve the connection I had with them, and what I had just experienced was all the proof I needed that I was meant to be with my baby—and her.
With the feeling inside of me that I was meant to be elsewhere, that my child was coming now, I surged up the ravine, attempting to join my troops in the rout of the enemy. ‘Keep the line together!’ I commanded using the mind-link, but just as I crested the top of the high ground, a sharp pain hit me low in the abdomen. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.
I felt my knees buckle, and even though I knew I hadn’t been injured, I found myself falling.
Gravity claimed me, and my body tumbled down the slope. It wasn’t far, but the ground was rocky, and as I fell, I was aware that the old wounds I had received in other battles, and even those I had gotten while fighting against Soren were opening up. The scent of blood filled my lungs as I came to a halt at the bottom of the ravine.
I lay there for a moment, trying to get my bearings, but that blinding pain I’d experienced before, one completely unrelated to any of my wounds, took over, preventing me from standing.
A few enemy wolves spotted me, and in a blink of an eye, four of them surrounded me. I fended off two of them but the third leaped on me and pinned me down, as the fourth opened his mouth to try to penetrate my side with his sharp fangs…
Sh*t!
I could feel the blood around my neck leaking out, but the other two wolves also had gotten up from the ground and were coming back for me. Suddenly, the one that was biting me loosened up and collapsed.
‘Alpha? Are you okay?’ One of my warriors finally noticed my situation and was able to rush back to help.
‘I’m fine,’ I told him, using the mind-link. ‘Thanks, man.’ I felt some cold sweat. That was really close.
But then… I wasn’t able to move, and the pain wasn’t letting up. I tried to control my breathing for a few seconds, and when I was finally able to move again, I started dashing back to our base. As soon as I reached the safe range, I could no longer hold my strength, and crumbled on the ground.
In a matter of moments, warriors in their human forms were there, lifting me off of the ground. I was in too much pain to shift, and my side was bleeding.
The last thing I wanted was to be carried from the battlefield, but at least we were winning. ‘Don’t worry, Alpha!’ Richard said, his wolf looking confident. ‘We’ve got this!’
I nodded at him, but the blinding pain radiating all throughout my lower body was so intense, even when I opened my mouth to speak, no words came out.
The warriors carried me away, and I heard them speaking about a nearby village. I didn’t know where they were taking me. I just wanted some sort of relief from this horrendous pain, especially since I didn’t know the source. We had pack healers with us, but I didn’t know if any of them were trained to treat this sort of torturous ailment.
The village was small, but many of the citizens were still there, our warriors making it so they felt safe enough not to evacuate when the enemy troops came close. As they carried me down the main street, many of them came out to stare at me, and then, I heard an older woman speaking my name.
“Alpha Ethan Gray!”
The warriors who were carrying me stopped in their tracks. I lifted my head slightly to see her standing directly in our path.
She must’ve been at least eighty, with hunched shoulders and long, gray hair that fell in tangled curls down to her waist. Her face was wrinkled, and her eyes were nearly white and unblinking, which told me that she was blind.
I wondered how she had known it was me. It wasn’t as if she should be able to recognize me by scent. She wasn’t a wolf, after all. I could tell she was a human—or at least, not a shifter—by her own scent.
Perhaps, she was something else.
“Bring him here at once,” she said, and her voice had so much authority in it that my men obeyed despite the fact that she had no reason to be able to command them.
I couldn’t argue. At that point, even the mind-link was a struggle, I was in pain, but something else more than pain was bothering me and my heart was pounding with fear…
A thought came to my mind. ..could it be Rosaile?! Was she in danger?
“Put him on the cot,” the woman said, and I was lowered down onto a bed of some sort. “Leave us.” It was as if she had some sort of control over their minds. They immediately did exactly as she said, leaving me alone with the strange, sightless woman in a dark one-room hut where I could hardly see anything and barely keep my eyes open from the pain anyway.
A cold hand clamped down on my right front leg, and immediately, I felt myself begin to shift. I had no choice, and even though the pain had prevented me from changing into my human form, the cracking of bones and snapping of tendons as my fur disappeared and my skin replaced it signaling that I had no choice but to switch back into my human shape, whether I wanted to or not.
Once I was a human again, lying naked before the woman who couldn’t see me anyway, the pain was still excruciating. With the last ounce of strength I could muster, I grabbed a blanket and tossed it over myself, noting that the wound in my side had split open, and most of the blood was originating there.
“Look at me,” the woman demanded. My eyes moved to lock onto hers. “Do you know the source of your agony, Alpha Ethan?” she asked me.
I couldn’t respond verbally, but I knew the answer to the question. Rosalie’s beautiful face flickered before my eyes.
But her face did not wear the calm, serene expression I was hoping to see. No, her face was scrunched up, her cheeks red, sweat dripping from her forehead.
I knew… the pain I was feeling had no origin within me.
It originated within her.
My beloved Rosalie. She was having the baby, but clearly, something wasn’t right. She was struggling. In fact, if the level of pain I was feeling was any indication, I had to think there was something wrong—something very, very wrong. “Reach for her, Alpha Ethan,” the woman told me. “Your strength is of no use to her, but she has the power within her. Let her know that you believe in her, and she will find a way to pull through.”
“Reach for her?” I managed to whisper.
“Reach for her!” the woman ordered me.
Her eyes drew me in, their blue haze wrapping me up as if I was floating away on a fog bed. My mind went blank for a moment, and when I opened my eyes again…
I was back on the islands, in the house where Rosalie had been living when I’d fought with Soren… when I’d left.
She was on the bed, and herface looked just as it had when I’d envisioned her before. It was clear she was exhausted. Her eyes were rolled back slightly as well, and I thought perhaps she was about to give up.
A haze separated us, and I knew I wasn’t really there, not exactly.
But I thought, if I could see her, perhaps she could see me.
“Rosalie!” I said, reaching for her arm. My fingers touched her warm, clammy skin, and she turned her head to look at me. “Rosalie, come on! You can do this. You’re strong enough! Keep fighting. Keep going!”
Her eyebrows knit together slightly and she murmured, “Ethan? Is that… you?”
But before I could answer, I heard a commotion from the other end of the bed. “Doctor, we’re going to have to do something!”
I turned to see it was that midwife, the woman who’d been helping her so much. I couldn’t recall her name. There was also a doctor there, an older man, and the expression on both of their faces told me that the situation wasn’t good.
I glanced down at the bed and I understood why.
Blood stained the white sheets. Crimson and sticky, it seemed to coat everything. It was even dripping onto the floor. I had been on battlefields most of my life, and I’d seen plenty of wounded and slaughtered wolves and humans alike.
I couldn’t remember ever seeing so much blood come from one individual.
“Do something!” I shouted at the two standing at the end of the bed.
It was clear that neither one of them could hear me, though, and as I heard a baby’s wails fill the air, my eyes were pulled in another direction.
My child had entered the world, and while the baby seemed to be okay and lying in a ba*s*sinet nearby, Rosalie was clearly not all right.
“She’s losing too much blood!” I heard the midwife say.
“Rosalie!” I commanded, sliding my hand beneath her chin and lifting it slightly so she’d have to look at me. “Listen, you can do this. I believe in you.”
“I’m so… tired,” she moaned. “I can’t…. It hurts.”
“I know it hurts, my love,” I knew my voice was trembling, but I needed to be there for her. “But you’re so strong and brave! I’m so sorry I never told you before how proud of you I am, back when I had the chance. But it’s true. You amaze me with all of the things that you can do. You’ve fought too hard to give up now.”
Her eyes opened a little more so that she was looking into mine, and our baby stopped crying but began to coo quietly from the ba*s*sinet.
“Rosalie, you were determined to be with your baby, and you would let nothing prevent you from building a life with your child. Don’t stop now. Keep going. You can do this. You can do it! I love you so much! Please! Don’t give up now!” I closed my eyes and concentrated, willing her to feel the belief I had in her.
I remembered the woman saying I couldn’t give her my strength, but she didn’t need it. She was strong enough on her own.
When I opened my eyes again, Rosalie was looking directly at me. In her eyes, I saw the fight, the determination, the spark that I loved so much about her. “I can do this,” she said.
“Yes, you can. You’re going to be all right. And someday, I will find you again, and I will prove to you that I love you and our baby more than anything in this world. We will be together as a family.”
She reached up and wrapped her fingers around my wrist, and I could feel in her touch that her life force was stronger now, and getting stronger by the moment.
“What’s happening?” the doctor was saying. “The bleeding is stopping all on its own. How is that possible?”
I smiled as the two of them continued to talk about the miracle they were witnessing. A tear formed in my eye. “I love you so much, Rosalie,” I said again.
“I love you, too, Ethan.”
Hearing her say those words, even if we weren’t really together, meant more than anything to me.
“We’ll be together again one day,” I told her, but her face started to fade away, and the fog started to get heavier.
I caressed her cheek with my thumb and then, bending forward, I pressed my lips to hers, closing my eyes and savoring the feel of her warm lips on mine.
When I opened my eyes again, the haze between us was growing stronger.
I knew then, I was being thrust back into my own reality. “Take care of our baby, Rosalie,” I shouted. “Until I find you…”
She said something, but I couldn’t hear any more.
The world went black for a moment, and I had the sensation of being sucked backward as if I was in some sort of a fast-moving vortex before I found myself staring into the eyes of the woman once more.
I was back in the hut hundreds of miles away from Rosalie and our child. Gasping for air, I took inventory of myself and realized I was no longer in any pain whatsoever.
“The pain is gone, Alpha. Her pain and yours. And you are both healed.”
My forehead furrowed as I considered what she was saying. Looking down at my side, I saw that she was right. I was no longer bleeding. In fact, there was no longer a wound there at all.
My eyes flew over the rest of my body—not a scratch, cut, bruise… nothing.
“That girl is special,” the seer said. “Only a fool lets the misfortunes of the past ruin the untarnished treasure of the future.”
With that, she stood and walked to the door.
I followed her with my eyes, letting her words soak in. I had been letting the adversities of my past prevent me from considering all that I might be missing out on in the future if I didn’t allow Rosalie fully into my life. In that way, the evil people who had caused me so much strife before were continuing to dictate my happiness.
I couldn’t allow that to happen anymore.
One of my commanders came in with some clothing. He was also carrying a first aid kit, but I wouldn’t need that. “I’m fine,” I watched as he looked at me in disbelief and said, “I’ll be out in a minute.”
I went about getting dressed, and once again, my mind went to Rosalie. Over on the island, Rosalie was holding our child and smiling. I might not be there with her, but I hadn’t missed the birth of our baby.
I vowed to return to her as soon as possible and never, ever let anything tear us apart—ever again.
“Come back.” I saw him about to leave the room, so I called him back, “Who was that blind old lady?”
“They say she’s a seer.”