Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 443

Natalia’s POV

My baby was coming five months too early. All because of this monster and the ruby he held in his palm.

“No!” I snarled, lunging toward him. I tried to grab the stone from his hand, but he held it out of my reach. The ruby flashed again, and another contraction overwhelmed me. I cried out and doubled over, clutching my belly- my belly, which had grown by several inches within the span of mere moments.

Just moments ago, my belly had been a slight swell, the baby within perhaps no more than the size of an avocado.

But thanks to the ruby that the King held in his hand, it had grown. My baby had grown. I could feel its limbs stretching and contorting unnaturally, bones growing too fast, months of gestation happening in the span of seconds.

“What… are you… doing to me?” I groaned through clenched teeth. The pain was unlike anything I’d experienced before; even the twins‘ birth hadn’t been this painful. Because this was no normal labor. It was months of pregnancy on top of labor happening at the same fucking time.

The King’s mouth curved into a smirk. He pocketed the ruby, and before I could stop him, he walked over to me and scooped me up into his arms.

“I think you know already, don’t you?” he said. I pressed against his chest, but I was too weak, in too much pain to fight back. “Don’t worry, my love. It won’t hurt the baby.

,

I gnashed my teeth. How did he know that? How did he know that this process wouldn’t leave my body with twisted limbs, half–developed organs, and a plethora of health issues that would never go away?

The King calmly carried me through the halls of the palace. Dark stone shimmered as if carved from glittering obsidian as torches flickered to life ahead of us. Cobwebs hung from the ceilings. The air was cold and damp and smelled of dust and mildew.

He took me to a large, oaken door that groaned loudly, echoing in the empty palace, as he opened it. The room inside was the same as the other–everything was covered in a layer of dust.

There was a large bed in the center of the space. He laid me down on it, then coolly walked over to the fireplace and lit it. Once the flames licked against the petrified wood, I could see the way sweat had already begun to coat my skin, and my legs were slick with amniotic fluid.

I could already see the baby moving under my skin. My belly was like a planet now, large and round and impossibly ready. I cried out and gripped the dusty bedsheets as another wave of pain washed over me. This one was so intense that my vision blurred, then blacked out entirely.

When I came to, I found the King standing over me with that same cool, almost amused smirk curling his lips. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, and he was holding a bucket of water and a pile of towels.

I tried to fight back as he began to work, but I couldn’t. I was too weak from the pain, and my wolf was just a whisper now. I clawed at his arms as he pushed my skirt up around my hips. I gnashed my teeth at him as he positioned himself between my legs.

None of it made a difference.

Every movement he made was cold. Clinical. Unnervingly calm; because he had done this hundreds of times before. How many women had toiled on this very bed for his sick fantasies, I wondered? He had three hundred and forty- seven of his “perfect” soldiers. I wasn’t sure how many of the crippled ones there were.

And now many had never survived at all? How many children came out too twisted and broken to even draw their

Chapter 443

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first breaths? How many women died, right here, clutching the bedposts just as I was doing now, crying out for help that would never come and a baby that they would never get to hold?

The labor itself was a blur of agony, sweat, and tears. There was a lot of blood, too. So much blood–far too much for a healthy labor.

I must have lost consciousness four or five times, perhaps even more. My vision ebbed and flowed so much that I eventually lost count. Every time I opened my eyes, I would see that speckled head moving between my legs, that stringy hair falling into a face I didn’t and could never trust.

Somehow, though, I made it through. When he told me to push, I did–if only for my child. Not for him.

It lasted hours. Far, far longer than my labor with the twins ever did. It could have been days for all I knew, but here, in this dark palace hidden deep within the mountain, there was no way for me to know for sure. No sunlight. No moonlight. No passing of time to note other than counting the minutes of pain like a macabre clock ticking closer and closer to the end of everything.

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