Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder novel Chapter 310

Chapter 90 : Heartbeat

Troy

Chaos wasn’t the right word to describe what had happened. | watched in horror as Maeve collapsed in Rosalie’s arms, her eyes going still and sightless.

Ethan was screaming at the pilot to land the plane, and sud denly we were plummeting to the ground, holding on for dear life as the plane landed roughly in a field just outside of Mirage.

Ethan told me it would be a bumpy landing, even though this seaplane was equipped to land on the ground. Still, it needed a runway, and all we had was a field.

I carried Maeve out of the plane, Ethan close behind me with Rosalie in his arms. Steven was talking frantically into a radio, try ing to find someone to help us, to help Maeve, who was panting in my arms as I laid her down in the grass.

“Warriors are on their way; they’re going to get her to the hos pital. It’s only-only half an hour from here-” Ethan stammered as he struggled with Rosalie, who was fighting against him.

“Let me go, Ethan!” she snapped.

“You need to calm down!” he retorted, but she elbowed him sharply in the chest, and he loosened his grip just enough for her to dart forward, landing on her knees in front of Maeve, “Troy, we can shift. We can carry the women-” Ethan said.

I looked down to see Maeve’s eyelashes fluttering. “I don’t want to have these babies in the grass. That would be… be silly.” Maeve said weakly, her mouth twitching into a smile.

I could feel her energy waning. Every minute that passed felt like a lifetime as we waited for help. Maeve cried out in pain, and I felt absolutely helpless.

“Something’s wrong!” she said, over and over.

Rosalie was praying, running her fingers through Maeve’s hair. Rosalie looked at me, her eyes full of tears.

“We need to deliver them, right now,” I said, not sure how the words had even formed in my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say it; hadn’t even been thinking about it.

“How?” Rosalie pleaded.

She looked exhausted; her face twisted in pain. Goddess, it felt like Ethan and I were about to lose them both.

“Do you have the moonstones?” Ethan’s voice sounded out behind me, and I turned to look at him, nodding.

“In the plane,” I answered quickly, turning back to Maeve, who was gripping my hand.

She was gray in color, her arms trembling in the wet chill of the air. I took off my sweater and draped it over her, trying to keep her warm.

“Troy, I wanted to get married,”

“We‘re going to get married, Maeve. I promise,” I choked, try ing to maintain my composure.

“What about right now? Just so I can say… can say we did it…”

“What are you talking about?” I laughed, despite the situation.

She gave me one last soft smile, then her eyes began to

close.

“Stay awake, honey, please!” Rosalie shook her awake, and Maeve groaned, shaking her head rapidly from side to side.

“Something’s wrong. Something’s-” Maeve’s words were jumbled, then ceased completely.

“Fine, fine. Let’s get married right now. Okay? This is our wedding, underneath the stars. Under the moon. Open your eyes, Maeve! Do you see it? The moon is so clear out here. There’s no snow. The stars are out-” I was rambling, absolutely desperate.

Ethan plowed into me, almost knocking me over as he slipped in the wet grass.

“Got them,”

I grabbed him by the jacket, shaking him. “Where is it? That ring? We need it, now!” I could barely believe the tone I just took with my future father-in-law.

Ethan fumbled with his pockets, his breath coming in quick rasps as he searched. He found the ring, which was a simple gold band with a dainty clear stone in a shallow setting, and dropped it into my hand with the moonstones. He looked me in the eyes and nodded. I nodded back.

| turned back to Maeve, looking down at her, admiring her, taking in every inch of her. | slowly handed the moonstones to Rosalie.

She wrapped her fingers around the stones, and I saw the faintest hint of red within her palm. I hadn’t realized she had in jured herself during the rough landing, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

27073 She leaned over Maeve, kissing her on the forehead before

placing the stones on her chest, holding her hand over them. Ros alie said the ceremony that bound Maeve and I as husband and wife, but I found myself focusing on the ring in my hand.

Ethan had pulled me aside in Winter Forest before we left and brought me into his office. He pulled a small box from the safe beneath his desk, explaining that the ring was a gift from his brother to Rosalie, and Rosalie wanted Maeve to have it eventual

1. ly.

I had no ring to give her. I had nothing to my name besides the clothes on my back, and even those were borrowed.

This is not how I imagined this moment in our lives together.

And now I held the ring in my hand, turning it over in my palm as Rosalie’s strained words filled the air around us. Rosalie nod ded at me, and I took Maeve’s hand. Maeve was still, her eyes fix ated on the sky.

I slipped the ring on her finger and laid her hand over the moonstones.

There was a soft rumbling beneath us, an earthquake it seemed. Goddess, could we catch a f*cking break?

“What is that?” Ethan said, looking around.

I felt adrenaline prickle across my skin as I looked up from Maeve’s face.

“Is the-the airplane about to blow up? What’s that sound?” | said as my ears began to ring.

I turned to Ethan, who was looking at Rosalie, who was on her knees next to Maeve, her eyes downcast as she looked at Maeve’s hand.

The stone in the ring was glowing.

“Oh, Goddess. It’s a moon,”

I was thrown backward by a force I didn’t have the words to explain. It felt like I was moving in slow motion, a blinding light passing over me, and through me, as I flew through the air. I hit the ground, knocking my head against the ground, which sent a sharp pain shooting down my spine.

Why was I here again? I thought, my mind unable to process anything besides the pain radiating through my body. I heard voic es around me, someone shouting orders and the sound of wolves huffing and panting as they ran by.

Suddenly, Ethan was standing over me, looking down at me in concern.

“Do you realize what just happened?” he shouted, reaching down to pull pieces of grass from my hair.

“What-where’s Maeve?”

***

The hospital in Mirage was nothing like I’d ever seen. The bright fluorescent lights were blinding, and the air was sterile, smelling sharply of cleaning solution.

It was a far cry from the cozy clinic in Winter Forest with its wood-paneled walls and yellow paint, and even further from the stone-walled infirmary at the castle where Maeve and I had both prepared for the pregnancy that was now risking her life.

People dressed in scrubs and crisp white coats hovered around the room where I was standing, shell-shocked, their voic es a faint murmur in my still ringing ears.

Amniotic fluid embolism, low blood pressure, potential heart failure, cesarean section.

The words felt heavy and unfamiliar as I tried to wrap my head around what was currently happening, and what had hap pened when I slipped that unassuming ring on Maeve’s finger only an hour ago.

A nurse was actively trying to explain it all to us, but I could barely understand her. Ethan was standing next to me, clutching Rosalie’s hand so tightly her fingers were turning white.

We were helpless, watching Maeve suffer right before our eyes.

“We’ll do what we can, but she’s far gone. It’s a miracle her heart is still beating. We can likely save at least two of the triplets, but the thirds heart defect is severe-”

“Enough!” | shouted, squaring my shoulders as though about to enter into a fight. I drew in my breath, letting the cool, bleach thick air fill my lungs. “No.”

“No, what?” the nurse stammered, taken aback by my out burst.

The handful of nurses and doctors in the room turned to me, which gave me a glimpse of Maeve laying limp on the hospital bed they were surrounding.

She was pale, her hair falling loose over her shoulders. Ros alie let out a choked sob behind me as she looked past me at the person we all loved… and weren’t ready to lose.

“Just, no. No! There has to be something-any-anything you can do for her,” I stuttered, damn near ready to drop on my knees and beg.

The ring had been the missing link to the moonstones. We had inadvertently brought them together in that Goddess forsaken field, and we had no idea what was supposed to happen next. Hadn’t Una said something about immortality? Hadn’t the stones been the key to saving Rosalie and getting her healing powers back? If so, why was Maeve still in such an awful way? It didn’t make sense.

“Queen Rosalie.” | turned to her, unable to hide the pain be hind my eyes. She nodded, clutching Ethan’s arm for support. “You need to help her. We need your blood,”

“I lost my powers, Troy. I c-can’t!” She was desperate, her eyes spilling over with hot, angry tears.

Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off, not caring about the consequences or the fact that I had been walking on eggshells with him since the day I met him.

“You have to do it. You have to. We brought the f*cking moonstones together. That has to mean something. You’re going to try!” | commanded. I didn’t recognize my own voice at that mo ment.

“Alpha King, we need to deliver these infants now, before we lose them all,” said a man, a doctor, dressed in a starched white jacket.

Ethan continued to look at me, however, his eyes searching my face. To my surprise, he pushed Rosalie toward me, nodding

slowly as he accepted my demand.

The next thirty minutes were a blur. Rosalie, Ethan, and I were dressed in blue outfits that felt as though they were made of paper. Maeve was completely sedated, which made me furious and caused my heart to shatter into pieces. Ethan had to promise he’d stay out of the way, no matter what, in order for them to let

him into the room.

She had been talking non-stop about what it would be like to see her babies being born, how it would feel, how she would feel. She wasn’t scared. She was looking forward to it, wanting nothing more than to bear witness to the process. And now she would miss every second.

I had no choice but to swallow my anger as the surgery be gan. One by one, the boys were born, the doctors handing them off to nurses in rapid succession. Rosalie woke up, it seemed, her voice carrying through the operating room as she pushed past the nurses handling the tiniest infants I had ever seen in my life.

The smallest one, the one we had only known about for two days, was born last.

He wasn’t breathing.

I didn’t take my eyes off Maeve. I cradled her face between my hands and cried as I heard Rosalie raising all kinds of hell on the opposite end of the room. A clang rang out, the sound of equipment hitting the floor and small instruments scattering across the white tile. Please, I thought. Rosalie, please. Save him.

I was counting the minutes, with the numbers clicking through my mind the only thing keeping me upright at that point. There was a commotion behind the curtain, doctors scrambling as the beeping of the heart monitor next to us began to slow, and then stop.

Rosalie nearly tackled me to the ground in her efforts to get to Maeve. I watched in slow motion as she held her bloodied hand to Maeve‘s mouth, Rosalie’s lips moving in a rapid, desper

ate prayer.

I watched the heart monitor’s screen.

Please.

Come on, please!

Maeve’s hand was limp, her arm laying over the side of the operating table. The ring was still on her finger, and I noticed it begin to glow, faintly at first, then so bright it rivaled the fluores cent lights over our heads.

Rosalie took a step backward, her entire body trembling. I caught her before she fell, holding her upright as the doctors con tinued their attempts to save Maeve’s life.

A baby cried, and I let the tears fall. Please, Goddess. Don’t take their mother.

A pair of nurses were talking to me, trying to coax me into let ting Rosalie go. Rosalie had passed out and was limp in my arms, but I hadn’t even noticed. I was watching the screen, holding my breath, watching, waiting to see if Maeve’s heart was going to beat again.