Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 402

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Chapter 402

Natalia’s POV

The room, roughly the same size as the throne room, was lined with the cases–and each one was filled with a single person. Mostly men, all nude, all pale and trembling. Their eyes were glassy and vacant, their faces gaunt and expressionless, but their bodies were perfect walls of muscle and sinew.

Warriors. All of them.

“Everyone you see in this room was once a child,” Damon said, casually strolling through the room with his arm hooked through mine as if we were exploring a carefully curated garden and not a tomb of flesh and muscle. “ We all were, of course.” He snorted at his own joke. “But their aging process was much quicker. More seamless.”

“They look mindless,” I muttered, stopping in front of a case with a man kneeling, eyes fixed unwaveringly on the ground before him. His skin was utterly perfect and smooth, each muscle seemingly carved from stone.

Damon lifted his chin. “Not mindless. Just… clean. Unsullied.” He approached the glass and looked upon the man inside almost… lovingly. Like a father would look at his son. “Aging naturally often involves so many unwanted side effects; outside influences, personality quirks, skin blemishes, grudges and desires…”

“Those are all parts of what it means to truly be alive,” I whispered before I could stop myself.

He pulled his gaze away from the glass. “My children are all alive. And they are perfect. They are so much better than I am, so much better than anyone could ever be. Imagine a world filled with such perfection. There would be no war, no rape, no hatred.”

“No love,” I pointed out. “No art. No fears and hopes and dreams. None of the beautiful, broken things that make us mortal.”

Damon gazed up at the man in the case again, and the way his lips twitched into a faint, possessive smile made a chill scuttle up my spine. “Perhaps one day, when we take all of the territories as our own, we can teach them to paint,” he whispered. “They are blank slates. We can make them whatever we want–artists, lovers, musicians. For now, they are warriors, but it needn’t be forever.”

I resisted the urge to curl my lip in disgust.

He continued yanking me along, toward the back of the room, where there was a pedestal upon which sat a steel box. I could see the red glow of a ruby slipping through the seams in the lid.

Damon stopped in front of the pedestal and released his grip on me. My muscles bunched to run, but I willed myself to remain still. To remain deceptively docile.

He opened the case with a small key he kept in his pocket. Inside was a nondescript but beautiful ruby- perfectly smooth and round like a stone gently washed by the tide over many years.

He lifted it gingerly and held it in his palm so I could see the way it caught the light from the torches. It looked like a tiny ball of fire, and I couldn’t help but gasp softly at the way the flames danced within the layers of crimson.

“Would you like to see how it works?” Damon whispered.

I pulled my head back abruptly. My hand instinctively moved to my hip, where I usually kept my knife, but I

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Chapter 402

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found nothing but the fabric of my skirt, still cold and damp from my journey. But Damon didn’t use the ruby on

1. me.

Instead, he grabbed my arm again and pulled me along. He led me through a maze of cases, the people–if they could even be called that–blurring as we passed. Eventually, we approached a case that was different from the

rest.

I nearly collapsed when I saw the wriggling little form within. A baby, squirming and red–faced, naked and screaming for a mother that would never come.

Damon said nothing. He merely lifted the ruby flat on his palm.

“Wait!” I said, grabbing Damon’s arm. But it was too late. The ruby pulsed once. Twice. Three times.

Quickly, too quickly, the form in the case began to writhe and change. Tiny limbs stretched and thinned. Muscles sprouted from fatty pockets of baby flesh. Bones cracked and broke, reformed and strengthened.

And those screams… I couldn’t hear them. The glass was too thick, too soundproof.

But I could see that face twisted in agony. That mouth open as wide as it could stretch, spittle and blood flying in equal measure.

I wanted to force Damon to stop. I wanted to break the glass. I wanted to pound at Damon’s chest with my fists. I wanted to shatter the ruby beneath the heel of my boot.

But I could only stand. Stare. And feel my heart shatter as, finally, the growing stopped.

And there, amongst a puddle of blood and viscera, knelt a man. Young. Handsome. Blond–haired and… perfect.

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