Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 337

Chapter 337

Natalia’s POV

The house was far too quiet the next day.

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Grace and Damon had long since left to return to Ashmoor. Without their usual banter, and without Andrei’s presence to ground me, I found myself wandering the halls like a wraith with nothing better to do except haunt the place.

I spent most of the morning, when I wasn’t checking on the twins or tending to various pack tasks, reading the book the metalsmith had given me in various places around the house.

The book was even more interesting the closer I got to the end; I learned about how the rubies were initially mined, how a wealthy pack tycoon “discovered” the veins within the mountain–although who actually ” discovered” the rubies was up for debate, as the author claimed that people native to that region likely found them first–and began mining within weeks of tapping into them.

The process of mining them had been extensive and thorough. The mines had dug deep into the mountain in every direction, sapping every available ruby until there were none left.

But the tycoon hadn’t given up. He’d insisted that there were still rubies deep within the mountain, and he just needed to dig further down to find them.

Of course, as all such stories go, the tycoon dug far too deep and far too greedily.

The mines eventually collapsed in a colossal catastrophe, killing dozens of poor miners. The book claimed that their bodies were still buried within those old mineshafts, never to be found or given a proper burial.

The whole thing made me shiver.

I couldn’t imagine having to toil in such conditions day in and day out just for a measly salary; that mountainous region was already cold and inhabitable enough, and then to be forced into the mines like that, only to meet a horrific end?

Some so–called scholars went on to claim that the tycoon’s desperation wasn’t purely built on greed, but rather on necessity.

According to the text, the Alphas of the early territories at the time–of which there used to be only three, although now there were more than a dozen across the continent–were on the brink of war.

Bloodmoon, one of the three territories at the time, had been in negotiation talks with one of the other territories about a piece of land stretching across the east coast of the continent. However, another pack, Waning Crescent, believed that that land was holy–and that it was their Goddess–given right to have it.

Waning Crescent was furious that the other two packs would negotiate without their consent, even if the land had previously been uninhabited. And when peace talks didn’t pan out the way they wanted, when Bloodmoon and the others refused to simply hand the land over without compensation, Waning Crescent prepared an attack of devastating proportions.

According to the book, the tycoon had actually been hired by Waning Crescent to mine the fabled rubies for their properties. They’d intended to use them in…

Weapons.

The moment I read those lines, I jolted up from where I’d been lounging in a sunlit window seat, the book spread open on my lap.

“Weapons,” I breathed, tracing my fingers along the passage. The book claimed that the rubies, when infused

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Chapter 347

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with the right materials, could potentially create weapons unlike anything the world had seen before.

I snapped the book shut and hurried upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. The ruby–encrusted knife that Andrei had found was still sitting in its leather sheath on the bedside table; he’d left it for me, just in case I wanted to have it by my pillow at night. It wasn’t typically the style of weapon I preferred these days, but I did like having it close for some reason.

I crossed the room and picked it up, slipping the knife out of the hilt. The rubies caught the afternoon sunlight, gleaming as if lit by fires from within.

I pulled the knife out the rest of the way and held it up, turning it this way and that. It was a very pretty knife, I had to admit I’d always thought that it probably had a more ceremonial purpose rather than an actual intention to be used for battle, though. It was heavy as if made of pure silver and the rubies made the handle a bit impractical to hold.

Curious, I lightly ran my thumb along the tip and hissed through my teeth as a spark of pain jolted through me. Pulling my finger away, I looked down to see that red blood had already begun to bead along the surface of my skin.

“Sharp little thing, aren’t you?” I whispered, sucking my thumb to ease the pain. Ceremonial or not, it was as sharp as a razor. Unless Andrei had recently honed it himself, the man that allegedly owned it before must have kept it in pristine condition.

I sat on the bed, carefully holding the knife in my hand while I flipped the book back open to the page I’d left off on. I traced my finger along the page until I spotted an entry about potential uses for the weapons.

“The weapons, in the right hands, could allegedly be controlled by their wielders,” the book read. “They were not like normal weapons, which typically adhere to the logic that the wielder need only stick their enemies with the sharp end, or hit them quite hard.”

I snorted softly at that and flipped the page.

“No,” the book went on, “the rubies in these weapons were said to bind to their wielders as if they had a mind of their own; their wielders, once ‘chosen‘ by the weapons, so to speak, could command their weapons to act. To stab, to cut, to bludgeon–without ever lifting a finger themselves.”

Well, that sounded utterly absurd. I’d wielded quite a few weapons during my training, and I’d never encountered any weapon that didn’t require its user to be controlling the other end of it.

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