Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 318

Natalia’s POV

+25 Borus

Andrei led me up the stairs to his chambers, past the broken banister and scorch marks on the walls from where the fighting had briefly spilled into the main house. Thankfully, the upstairs had been untouched, and Andrei’s bedroom–the room we once shared as husband and wife had also been unharmed during the battle.

“Bath first,” Andrei said, already moving toward the en suite bathroom with the large claw foot tub dominating the center. “Then we can talk.”

I nodded, grimacing at the sight of myself in the mirror. Two days in the forest had left me caked with dirt and dried blood, and my nightgown was torn and stained beyond repair. The twins and I must have looked like refugees when we stumbled out of that smoke, which I supposed, in a way, we were.

Andrei started the water running while I peeled off what remained of my clothes. The nightgown fell to the floor in tatters, and I tossed it straight into the waste basket.

“So,” Andrei said, glancing at me over his shoulder–green eyes briefly flickering with desire at the sight of my nude body, even though I was utterly filthy, “are you doing to tell me why you showed up in your nightgown like you had to escape in the night?”

I decided to just cut straight to the chase.

“Helena had us drugged and dumped in the Thornwood. When I woke up, there were pieces of the twins‘ clothing scattered around like bait.” I sank into the hot water with a groan. “I managed to find them, but couldn’t find my way back to Bloodmoon.”

Andrei was quiet as he stripped off his own blood–caked leathers. When he slid into the tub behind me, his hands found my shoulders and began working at the knots of tension there.

“Tell me everything,” he said in a surprisingly calm voice. I knew he was just controlling himself, though. Trying to keep the rage at bay until I told him the whole story.

So I did. I told him about the fake healer who lured me out of my room, about waking up alone in the forest with my children missing. I told him about finding Max and Jane confused and frightened, about building our shelter and spending the night terrified that something would find us.

I also told him everything I knew about Helena, Celeste, and the mysterious father figure who had apparently sent them both to Bloodmoon with a dark task.

As I spoke, Andrei’s face darkened until it was nearly black. Green eyes flickered with raging fires–not just at what had happened to me and the twins, but all of it.

When I finally finished telling him everything I knew, he was quiet for a long moment, working his jaw silently. After a while, he muttered almost as if more to himself than me, “If Helena has answers about the rogue attacks, about this Winter King… Then I need to find out what they are.”

“So you want to go back to Bloodmoon,” I said. It wasn’t a question, and admittedly, it was a notion that had crossed my mind several times over the past days. I loathed the idea of returning there after what happened, but Helena also might be the key to figuring out what was going on.

And I couldn’t leave my father and the people of Bloodmoon to face her wrath. Who knew what she had planned?

1/3

+25 Bonus

What if she didn’t believe that the twins and I were dead? What if she retallated for Karl disappearing? What then?

“I want to end this. All of it.” Andrel cupped water in his hands and rinsed the soap from my hair. “But it’s too. dangerous right now. We can’t even travel safely between packs, let alone through the Thornwood. Frankly, I’m surprised you even made it here in one plece.”

He was right. And I was surprised, too. It had been exhausting and extremely dangerous and it was something I never wanted to put the twins through again. And I certainly didn’t want to leave them here while I went off on another adventure.

“We need to think about this carefully. Plan it out.” I reached for the soap and began washing the grime from Andrel’s chest, careful around the fresh cuts and bruises.

Andrei was quiet as I continued washing him, his eyes studying my face in the candlelight. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

“That I almost lost you. Again.” His hands found my waist under the water. “When I saw you walking through that smoke, I thought…”

“I’m here,” I said, moving closer to him. “We’re all here.”

“I kept thinking about our baby. About whether I’d ever get to hold them.” Andrei’s palm pressed flat against my stomach. “About whether you’d have to raise three children alone because I was too busy fighting a war I didn’t understand.”

“You’re not fighting alone anymore. We’re in this together now.”

Andrei’s mouth found mine then, hungry and desperate. I kissed him back just as fiercely, my hands tangling in his wet hair as he pulled me against him.

We stayed in the bath until the water started to cool, washing away the grime and blood and fear of the past few days. When we finally climbed out, Andrei wrapped me in a soft towel and carried me straight to the bed.

Making love to him felt like coming home. Every touch was a promise that we were safe, that we were together, that nothing would tear us apart again. When he moved inside me, slow and careful, mindful of our growing baby, I felt whole for the first time since he’d left me in Bloodmoon, and I made an internal vow never to part from him again.

Afterward, we lay tangled together in the sheets, my head on Andrei’s chest as his fingers traced lazy patterns on my bare shoulder. The room was quiet except for the distant sounds of voices outside as the estate was restored.

“You should rest,” Andrei murmured into my hair. “It’s safe here. For now.”

I nodded, too exhausted to fight it even as a little voice in the back of my head worried constantly about the twins. But as I started to get more comfortable, something on the bedside table caught my eye.

It was the knife with a ruby–encrusted handle–the one that Andrei had found during that raid in the Thornwood. The blade was stained with dried blood, but the red stones were still shining and caught the candlelight like drops of fire.

Rubies.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify