Alpha Nicholas How the fuck have we found ourselves in this position? I swear the goddess must have a sick sense of humour at times. Between my pack members and the newest mates that have been found recently, we have had nothing but no-stop drama for the last goddess only knows how many months. Why can't we catch a break? Why does trouble have to keep knocking on our door? Don't get me wrong, I don't blame any of them for the trouble that has come with them, it's not their fault and most of the time it's been caused but sorry excuses for wolves but still... I need a break. I just want to go back to my pack, grab my mate and daughter and fuck off to my cabin in the middle of the woods and not step foot outside of it for at least a month, but I can't because im the Alpha, and the members of my pack are my responsibility and my family and I won't ever let any of them go through something alone, not unless they request it. Hell, who am I kidding, even if they said they wanted to deal with it alone, I still wouldn't let them. That's not how things work in my pack. And now, here we are in the middle of another shit storm except this one is one of the worst because it involves two little boys who should be at my pack right now with their mom but instead, they are goddess knows where with goddess knows who and that thought along gives me all the strength I need to keep going. We won't just let this go, we will keep searching for them and we will find them because not finding them is not an option. My head is a fucking mess to go from thinking that they were here, to seeing Adrian for the first time in 16 years to now finding out that the boys aren't here after all is too much to take in. What does he mean they aren't here? Sent away where?. "Adrain, where the hell are my boys?" The growl in Tony's voice is enough to bring my attention back to the room. He is close to losing it and I can't say I blame him. To be honest, if it were me, I probably would have lost it already. "Tony, fuck... Look there's so much more to this. There is so much more that you need to know, that you all need to know but right now, we need to get these women and children out of here. I don't know what's going on up there but it's been long enough for arrangements to be made. If they get these women and children out of here then we won't ever see any of them again..." He doesn't finish his sentence but he doesn't need to. It's clear what he meant. Once they leave here they will be gone for good and the worst part is that not all of them will even make it to their destination. The kind of people who will move them are the kind of people who would have made plans to sell some of them on themselves to make more money. Some will keep some of the women and worst of all some will be killed just because it can be done. And as much as I want to know every single detail right now, I also know that we need to move them, and now because over my dead body will anything happen to a single one of them while im around, while any of my men are around. "This conversation isn't over. I want to know every single detail. We all do." Tony grunts. Despite his need to find his boys, I do not doubt that he's also thinking the same thing as me. Right now we can't do a thing about his boys except hope and pray that they are safe and being looked after however, we can save these children and women. We can get them somewhere safe and then we can go after his boys and take down every fucker that we need to along the way. "Shane, how's it going up there?" "Insane, Nick! There are so many more of them than we could have imagined but I think we have the upper hand. What's going on down there? You've been down there a while." "It's fucked up, Shane. We have around 50 children and 20 pregnant women to get out of here ASAP!" "What the fuck?" "It's a conversation for later. We need a way of getting them out of here and now!" "Give me five minutes." It's clear that he wants to ask questions and I get it but he also knows when it is time to do his job first and ask questions later. "Shane is working on a way out of here so, in the meantime how about we get everyone up off the floor and ready for a quick exit." Tony and Adrian instantly move into action and soon we have everyone ready to go. "Alpha..." A soft voice calls out to me from the back of the room and I swear I have to rub my eyes when I see her because it is hard to believe that she's a fully grown woman, she's so small. "Yes?" She swallows hard while shifting around on her feet clearly nervous. "When you take the children out of here, I will stay here." "You want to stay here?" She nods but I get the feeling that something is off. While she's saying she wants to stay here, the look on her face says otherwise. "Why?" Tony asks before I can. She looks down at her feet as she lets out the smallest laugh but when she looks back up I don't miss the tears in her eyes. "Look at me... I'm almost 8 months pregnant and huge. I can't go anywhere fast and I won't be responsible for us getting caught. I won't risk the chance of the children getting caught just because I couldn't move fast enough." "I'll stay too.""And me." "I'm not going anywhere fast either." "I doubt I'll even be able to climb up the ladder." I look at Tony wondering how we're going to make this work. We have five women here who are heavily pregnant and while I admire their want to stay back and allow the children more chance of escaping there's no way in hell that we are leaving them behind. "Are there any women in this room who want to stay here? And when I ask that question I mean acually want to stay here? While we won't force anyone to leave with us if they don't want to, we won't leave anyone behind that wants to come either." No one raises their hand. They all want to come. They're just scared and I get that. "I'm willing to fight my way out of here, to get the kids out of here but if something happens to me I need you to get my babies somewhere safe." The woman shouting from the back of the room is tall and doesn't appear to be too heavily pregnant but the fire in her eyes when she talks about keeping her babies safe makes me think that she's not talking about the one in her stomach. "Where are they?" Tony asks. She takes a step forward and takes the hand of a little boy who's standing just in front of her. He's maybe 2 or 3 years old and looks terrified. She takes another step and takes the hand of another little boy who doesn't look much older, next she takes a step to her left and calls out a name and a little girl comes to stand by one of the boys. Fuck, how many children does she have? I watch as she pulls more children to her side until she finally stops and looks at me and for maybe the first time in my life I find myself questioning my ability to count. "9... you have 9 children?" I imagine I sound like an ass asking her this when it's already pretty obvious but she seriously doesn't look old enough to have that many kids. "Yes, Alpha. I have 9 children and another one on the way." The look of heartbreak in her eyes hurts to see. What they are doing here... Fuck, I want to torture every single one of those pricks that have taken part in this. "Alpha, we have transport ready to clear out the tunnel. It's going to be a tight fit and we will have to put children on laps but we can make it work." I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear Shane's words. "What about getting out of here? Are we anywhere closer to winning?" "Yes, there's more of us than them now. I also have guards here ready to help get the women and children out." We both know that no matter how prepared we are things can go wrong and quickly. We only have one shot at this and we can't let it go wrong. "I need five additional men down here now. Five of the pregnant women will require extra help as well as protection."Within five minutes the door to the tunnel opens and the sound of carnage instantly fills the space. The fight is still going and by the sounds of it, there are a lot of wolves dying today, I just hope we haven't lost any of our pack members. Injuries we can deal with but the thought of us losing anyone... no I refuse to think like that. It's been a long time since we lost a member and I'd like to keep it that way. Of course, with the number of wolves here today the chances of us losing members are high but I refuse to acknowledge it for as long as I can. I shake my head trying to brush away those thoughts as loud thumps rattle the ground as my men start jumping through the open door before it's quickly closed back up. Warren, Wayne, Cole, Will, and Robbie all come to stand in front of me and im more than glad to see them. They will do whatever it takes to keep these women safe. I couldn't have asked for better men for the job. Tony is quick to get them directed to the women that they are here to protect but I can't help but notice that Robbie seems a little distracted. His attention seems to be wandering around the room rather than on the woman that he has been assigned to protect and it has me a little nervous. "You good, brother?" He meets my stare and nods but there's a niggling in my brain that says different but I can't figure out why. For now, I push it aside and quickly get things in motion, and before I know it the door is opened once more and our rescue mission begins.