Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder by Alice Knightsky
Chapter 163 An Unsuccessful Escape Attempt
**Rosalie’s POV**
Although I hadn’t been planning on fleeing my makeshift prison during the battle, when Seraphine and Soren showed up to help facilitate my rescue, I knew they were right. It was time for Rowan and me to go.
But that didn’t make it any easier to actually get my feet moving and head out of the tent.
Not only was it dangerous to take the baby out there where the battle was raging on, but I’d also made Ethan a promise, and now I was breaking it. Just because Ethan lied to me before didn’t mean that it was okay for me to turn around and do the same thing to him.
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However, I needed to think about what was best for me and Rowan at the moment, and that meant I needed to go while we had the opportunity. I followed Seraphine through the woods, Rowan nestled in my arms. I didn’t have a baby carrier for him this time, so I had to make due with carrying the squirmy baby in my arms. At least he was quiet. That last thing we needed was for him to start crying and give away our location. “We just needed to get out of the camp. Once we’re in the woods, we have friends who can help us hide our scents,” Soren smiled. “Friends?” I raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged, “New friends. Not rogues. Not someone from our past. I promise.”
I didn’t mean to pry to begin with, and this wasn’t the time for it either. I nodded and focused back on our escape. Seraphine was good at leading us through the forest, taking different routes to stay away from the wolves that were all around us. Most of them were too busy fighting to be paying close attention to us, especially when they couldn’t smell us easily from afar.
The deeper into the woods we ran, the more dangerous the situation became as the fight had spread all around, and it didn’t seem like there was any way to get around it. We would have to find a way to thread our way through and hope that we could slip past without anyone detecting us.
I followed Seraphine around a large shrub between two pine trees, jostling Rowan as I ran. Seraphine slowed up quickly, and I almost ran into the back of her.
Peering over her shoulder, I saw the reason why she had stopped. Two large gray wolves were facing off in the clearing just in front of us. They were lying on the ground at the moment, one on top of the other, the two of them snarling as one tried desperately to get to the other’s neck and the one on the bottom did his best to try and fight the other one off in order to save his own life.
The scent of blood filled the air as the one on top finally managed to find a way to clamp down on the other male’s neck. The dying wolf yelped and yipped for a moment, frantic high-pitched sounds coming from his mouth before he died and went still.
Leaving the other wolf unoccupied.
If he gave the air a good sniff, he’d no doubt realize he wasn’t alone and three adult humans were huddling nearby with a bite-sized morsel between them.
“Get ready to shift,” Soren whispered to Seraphine. She didn’t move, though. It was almost as if she thought she could will the large gray wolf to go the other way.
My heart was thundering in my chest as I watched him standing there catching his breath. In my mind, I was begging him to just turn and go the other direction.
The wolf lifted his head, his ears perking up. He was listening to something in the distance. A moment later, he bounded off back toward camp and was soon far enough away from us that we were safe to proceed.
I let out a long sigh, and when Seraphine started running again, I followed. We continued to wind our way through the forest, looking for larger trees to hide behind as we wove in and out of the trees.
Rowan’s little hand shot up and grabbed hold of my face, his fingers pinching my skin as he tried to shove his little fingers in my mouth. I grabbed hold of his hand and gently pulled it down, smiling at him, hoping he wasn’t sensing our stress. His little hand darted back up again, though, and I took hold of it again to move it.
His wrist was wearing the small leather bracelet with a few beads on it that Ethan had given it to him. Vicky said it was something that was done as a tradition in the Drogomor pack. Almost all kids had a bracelet that was made by their father.
As I saw Rowan’s little hand moving back and forth while I ran, I realized that bracelet might just be the last gift he ever got from his father. It might just be the only thing he ever had to remind him of his dad.
I tried not to think about that. I wanted Rowan to be able to see his father, but not under the circumstances Ethan had concocted. I had been held against my will for far too long, and Ethan was still trying to rule over me as if I was still the same naive girl that he had first met a year ago.
If Ethan truly cared about either one of us, he was going to have to learn how to compromise and listen to the needs of others. He couldn’t continue to just impose his will on us.
Seraphine slowed again at the sounds of snarling in front of us. She hunkered beneath the boughs of a pine tree, and Soren and I did the same, waiting to see if this battle in front of us would end soon, like the last one had.
It didn’t, and eventually, Seraphine decided we were in too dangerous of a position to continue to stay there. She turned and went in another direction, but quickly enough, we heard more wolves somewhere in the woods directly before our path.
We would have to change directions again, but we were running out of places to go. Seraphine turned us around again, and this time, we were headed back the way we had been coming from.
My arms were beginning to get tired. Rowan was getting so big now, he was heavy, and the fact that he was squirming wasn’t helping my cause. My biceps were beginning to feel like concrete.
“Do you want me to carry him?” Soren asked from behind me.
Initially, my first instinct was to tell him no. I didn’t want him carrying my son. What if we got separated, or what if something happened to Rowan because I couldn’t protect him? But after the third time Soren had asked me, I finally said, “Yes, but just for a little while so that my arms can rest.”
“Of course,” he said, taking Rowan from me. The baby immediately began to fuss since it was a stranger holding him. We’d just turned around again, and I was scared that Rowan’s cries would give away our location.
Within a few minutes, I had begun to ask Soren for my baby back, but he didn’t hand him over. We all just kept running, Rowan fussing, and Seraphine trying to find the right path to get us out of the camp.
A thought occurred to me. They could move a lot faster if they were wolves. I was slowing them down. “Should you two shift? I could ride on your back, Soren.”
“What about the baby?” he asked.
“I’ll hold him on your back,” I said. Just then, another group of wolves appeared in front of us. They were so busy fighting that they didn’t seem to notice us, but we had to switch directions again, and now, I felt like we were running right back into the camp.
“All right,” Soren said, stopping and thrusting Rowan back at me. He quickly shifted, and so did Seraphine. Once they were in their wolf forms, I prepared to climb onto Soren’s back so that we could move faster. I didn’t know if it would help, but it couldn’t be any worse than what we had been doing.
I was afraid if I shifted, I would slow them down since I wasn’t used to being in my wolf form.
Before I could even throw my leg over his back, though, we heard a low rumble in the bushes behind us.
I knew what I was going to see the moment I turned around, and a paralyzing fear shot through me. Soren glanced behind us, and his eyes widened in annoyance and a little bit of panic.
He couldn’t speak to me in this state, but I knew by his expression when he looked back at me that he wanted me to hurry and climb on.
I couldn’t do it, though. If I went with them, my son had little to no chance of getting away. I needed to stay and face the angry male behind me. Quickly, I tied Rowan’s blanket around him so that he wouldn’t fall out and then slipped the knot into Soren’s mouth.
“Run!” I told him. Soren shook his head, obviously not wanting to leave me behind, but as another growl echoed behind us, I saw the hesitation melt away. He knew—Soren knew—my baby was more important to me than anything else, including my life, and as Soren and Seraphine took off running through the trees, I turned around to stall the only man who would be fast enough to catch them.
Ethan.