Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 312

Natalia’s POV

I hesitated when the first face I saw was Celeste’s; my first instinct was that she was involved with what had happened to me and my children, and my hands clenched on instinct as fury raged through me like a wildfire. But those flames were quickly snuffed out when the other two figures came into view: David and… Karl?

I pushed through the briars without thinking, immediately revealing myself to them. “David,” I breathed.

“Natalia?” David whirled toward me with wide eyes and rushed toward me. “Thank the Goddess. We’ve been searching for hours.”

The three of them hurried over to me, and I found myself pulled into David’s arms before I could say anything. His grip was tight and desperate, and I could feel his heart pounding even through the leather armor he was wearing.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, pulling back to look at my face. “Where are the twins?”

“They’re sleeping.” I gestured toward the shelter. “They’re okay, but someone drugged them. Drugged all of us and dumped us out here.”

I turned my eyes on Celeste, then, and narrowed them dangerously. The look on her face told me all I needed to know: she knew what had happened. She knew all of it.

“So help me, Celeste,” I ground out, whirling on her, “if you had anything to do with terrorizing my children-

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“I didn’t. Not… technically,” she replied. The way she wrung her hands, fingers trembling just as they had in her chambers earlier that day, made my fury halt in its tracks.

Then, slowly, she pushed her hood down to reveal her face. She was covered in fresh bruises. Her lip was split. Her cheeks were still stained with tears and her hair was matted in one spot like it had been grabbed.

I knew, instantly, in my heart, that her mother had done that to her—a punishment. I wasn’t sure exactly why she had been punished, but I didn’t need to ask.

Celeste told us everything.

She told us how her mother had come to Bloodmoon with her when she was just a little girl. How Helena had seduced and eventually married my father. How she trained Celeste, who possessed Bloodmoon genetics already, to become the perfect weapon. The worst kind of all–the kind honed for seduction.

For years, Celeste’s mother prepared her to marry Karl in the hopes of one day creating a bloodline with the perfect abilities for their cause: a perfect mixture of Celeste’s tactical abilities and Karl’s photographic memory.

“I don’t know exactly why my father and mother wanted this for me, but I knew I had to obey,” Celeste said quietly, staring at her feet. “My one duty in life was to produce the ‘bloodline to end all men‘.”

She then went on to explain how this had apparently been planned for generations through careful manipulation and genetic plotting. She had other siblings, girls mostly, who failed the task and were killed by

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Helena

Celeste told us that as far as she knew, her mother had been working with the rogues her entire life. Once Celeste had her children, she was supposed to return to her ancestral home–where that was, none of us were certain, as Celeste was too young when they left to have any memory of the place—while the rogues overtook Bloodmoon

Everyone in Bloodmoon with a useful ability would be enslaved and forced to procreate. The rest would be slaughtered.

And then the rogues, developing an army of soldiers with abilities beyond our fathoming, would march on the territories,

“The forces you see now are nothing compared to what my mother and father have planned,” Celeste said. “ Once they develop the bloodline, no one will stand a chance,”

“But that could take decades,” I pointed out. “They’re playing a very long game, if that’s the case.”

“They’ve been playing it for generations.” Celeste gave me a meaningful look. “But my mother often speaks of some kind of ‘weapon‘, I’m not sure what it is, or what it does. Somehow, though, I have a feeling it might… shorten the process,”

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