Pregnant With Alpha’s Genius Twins

#Chapter 190 – Sand in the Hourglass

When Victor opens his eyes, there are spots in his vision. He blinks, trying to get them to clear, but then

groans with the effort.

God, does it seriously hurt to blink?

But then he realizes that it’s not the blinking that’s causing the pain – that the pain was there already. It

comes, sharply, with every breath, with every beat of his heart, which he can feel pounding in his head

and his chest and his veins.

Victor groans again, turning his head to the side, pressing his eyes closed – doing anything he can to

fight against the pain – anything he can to lessen it, ignore it, move on from it –

But he can’t – it’s there, in every piece of him. Taking over his body, his mind.

Victor tries to breathe more slowly, to pull the breath in through his nose and out of his mouth, to form

thoughts around the pain, or through it –

But god damnit, it’s everywhere. All encompassing.

He grits his teeth, but can’t help the whimper that escapes through the tiny spaces left between them.

God, is this what it feels like to die? Is that what’s happening here?

He hears the whimper again, knowing that it’s him, but somehow – bizarrely – distanced from it. Is he

dying?

If he is, then part of him wishes that he would just go ahead and do it already. Because this pain,

radiating throughout his body and centering itself, sharply, high in his back, just to the left of his spine –

the pain is just too much.

No, he thinks, clenching his jaw tighter, finally getting a clear word into his head. No.

He can’t give into this. Not now, not when he’s come so far –

Not when…

God damnit, he was so close. So close to her, to his children. So close to having them all back. He

wouldn’t give in now. There was still so, so much to do. So much to live for.

Victor knows he has to make a plan, has to do something. He had heard Joyce back in the room. Part

of him – some strange, ever-attentive part – had been listening even as he’d suffered the pain, been so

close to passing out he was sure it looked as though he was.

Joyce had said that the Walsh forces still held the house, and that was true. But not for long. Victor had

left enough of his Beta army outside that the Walsh Betas wouldn’t last long, no matter how hard Joyce

worked and hoped.

Victor’s commands were strong, his Betas were prepared. Rafe was at their head, and he would be

coming. He would be coming at any moment, to break through the final pieces of Walsh’s control and

take the pack from Joyce by force.

And there was absolutely no way Victor was going to die before he got to see the look on Joyce and

Walsh’s faces when he took the pack from them. Takes it from them forever.

Yes, Victor thinks, a bitter smile coming to his lips. That, alone, would be worth living for.

There is a noise, then, on the stairs, and Victor opens his eyes, trying to get a bearing on his

surroundings. He’s laying on the cement floor of some kind of cell. He looks around, seeing stone walls

ahead of him, thick with dirt and dust and damp.

The basement, then – yes, that lined up with what his Betas had learned about Walsh’s house, with

what Joyce had said upstairs. But Joyce’s words had been fuzzy – Victor can barely remember the tail

end of the events in the room.

Perhaps he really did pass out, at the end. He couldn’t remember.

Victor tries to shift, then, to see behind him where the noise is coming from, but the movement is

agony. He gives a sharp gasp and a little cry and then stops moving. The pain abates, but just barely.

Still. He won’t be trying to move again anytime soon.

He listens, instead, closing his eyes again, trying to slow his breathing so that he can hear over the

ragged sound it makes leaving his mouth.

Footsteps sound behind him, three sets, he’s sure – two sets in boots, and then another set, fumbling,

lighter.

“God damnit,” she growls and Victor’s whole body feels lighter at the sound of her voice. “Get your god

damn hands off of me, or I swear to god, when we take this pack I will cut them off with a butcher

knife.”

Victor can’t help the single laugh that echos through him, but he regrets it, groaning as it twinges the

muscles around the wound in his back and causing pain to lance through him.

“Yeah yeah,” one of the Betas replies, dismissive, and Victor hears the clang of keys against metal, the

creak of old hinges swinging open. The sound of a body shoved, and then her small cry of pain as she

hits the floor.

The Betas lock the door behind her, not saying another word as their footsteps fade away back up the

stairs.

“I mean it!” she calls after them, and he hears the slight clang of her bars, meaning she’s pressed

herself up against her door. “Play chopsticks one last time, or whatever it is you like to do with your

fingers, because when I am out of here they are gone –“

Victor bites his lip, working hard to stifle a laugh.

But then, he hears her gasp.

“Victor,” she whispers, her eyes apparently falling on him for the first time. “Victor!” She says it louder

now, calling to him. “Are you…are you…”

Alive?

His mind furnishes the word for her. He opens his eyes again and takes as deep a breath as he can

before he responds.

“Evie,” he says, the word light against his lips.

“Oh my god.” The words rush from her in relief and he hears her moving around, the bars of her door

clanging as she shakes them, trying to find any weakness, trying to get to him. “Victor – are you –“

“I’m alive,” he responds, working hard to control the pain in his voice. To ignore the way it shoots

through his body with every word. He’d take all the pain in the world, just to talk to her.

Maybe for the last time.

Now that he’s awake – really awake – Victor knows that it’s bad. He can feel the rapid rate of his heart,

the weakness in his limbs. Carefully, he works to wiggle his toes – and he thinks he can do it – but did

he?

Honestly, he doesn’t know.

He is mortally wounded, he knows that he is. He just hopes that he can hold on long enough for Rafe to

get into the house and get him to a hospital.

Long enough that Evelyn doesn’t have to sit in the cell across from him and watch him die.

Victor screws himself together at that thought, determining that he will do everything in his power to

stay alive. For her. To keep her from that horrible moment.

He’s going to live, damnit. For her, for Alvin and Ian, for himself, for the life they could build. God

damnit, but he’s going to live.

“Um,” he can hear the hesitation in Evelyn’s voice. “How bad is it, Victor?”

“I’m not going to lie, Evelyn,” Victor says, clenching his jaw as he pauses. “I have to get to a hospital

very, very soon.”

“Oh my god,” she says, pressing a hand to her mouth. He doesn’t know how he knows it, but he can

almost see her doing it. Knows, in his heart, that she’s staring at him, with all the love and fear in her

body present in her eyes.

Because they both know that it’s true. His body is still leaking blood. With his back to her, surely she

can see it pooling there on the cement floor.

He can be as determined to live as he wants to be. But every drop of blood that drips from him now is

another grain of sand in the hourglass.

And there is very, very little time left.