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…

children. So close to having them all back. He wouldn’t give in now. There was still

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

true. But not for long. Victor had left enough of his Beta army outside

and he would be coming. He would be coming at

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

coming to his lips. That, alone, would be worth living

get a bearing on his surroundings. He’s laying on the cement floor of some kind of

with what his Betas had learned about Walsh’s house, with what Joyce had said upstairs. But Joyce’s words had been fuzzy –

did pass out, at the end. He couldn’t

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

instead, closing his eyes again, trying to slow his breathing so that he can hear over the ragged sound it makes leaving

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

damn hands off of me, or I swear to god,

he regrets it, groaning as it twinges the muscles around the wound

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

behind her, not saying another word as their

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

lip, working hard to

then, he

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

Alive?

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

says, the word light against

words rush from her in relief and he hears her moving around, the bars of her door clanging as she shakes