Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 15

ANDREI

I didn’t hear the door open.

elbows

I didn’t even look up when footsteps crossed the room and stopped just short of the hearth. I sat with my on my knees, head in my hands, trying to breathe past the hollow ache in my chest that had been growing since morning.

“You need to come with me,” Damon said quietly.

I looked up. He stood in the doorway, unreadable as ever, tension coiled through his frame like a live wire.

“What is it?” I asked, my voice hoarse from a sleepless night.

“Just… come.”

There was something in his tone. Not urgency. Not command. But something final.

I stood without questioning him.

He didn’t speak again as we walked, only led me through the winding halls of the packhouse and out toward the far side of the estate, where the trees grew closer and the shadows darker. The path curved toward the back stables, where the air smelled of damp hay and salt carried from the cliffs nearby.

The sea.

The same sea I’d stared at for weeks now, each wave mocking me with all it refused to give up.

Natalia had gone off a cliff into that same sea.

I’d seen the footage with my own eyes–a grainy security clip, time–stamped and shaky, showing her car being forced off the coastal road. The vehicle plummeting down. Disappearing.

The video had vanished soon after, scrubbed from every server. Whoever had done it had been thorough. My tech team tried everything.

But by then, the car had already been lost to the ocean. No retrieval. No proof.

Just water.

And silence.

But now… now Damon was bringing me here.

We stopped at the base of a bluff near the far end of the property. The wind whipped off the water, sharp with brine and cold.

A long black SUV sat parked beside the edge of the tree line. Its back doors were open. A large case–flat, metal, sterile–rested inside.

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My pulse kicked.

Damon turned to me.

“I need you to brace yourself.”

“What is this?” I asked. “What am I about to see?”

He motioned toward the SUV. “Go look.”

I walked slowly. Every step felt like it pulled me deeper into quicksand.

The case wasn’t locked.

I unlatched it and lifted the lid.

Inside lay a body bag, sealed but fogged from within. The glass–like plastic shimmered faintly in the gray morning light. A cooling unit beneath it hummed quietly.

I looked back at Damon.

He met my eyes and nodded once.

Hands shaking, I reached forward and peeled back the top section of the seal.

A wave of something unholy hit me–salt, decay, time.

The body inside was battered and disfigured beyond easy recognition. Water damage. Partial decomposition. Bones cracked and shifted from the pressure of the sea. Most of the facial tissue had collapsed or been eroded. But there was a shape to it. A size.

And then–my eyes caught it.

On the right hand, half–curled, clinging to bone and sinew, was a ring.

Platinum. Scratched.

But hers.

Natalia’s wedding band.

The one she never took off.

I reeled back, gasping like I’d been punched in the gut.

“No,” I said, voice raw. “No, no–this can’t be real.”

Damon stood behind me, silent.

I turned to him. “Where did you get this?”

“There was a tide shift,” he said. “Two nights ago. Some wreckage floated in. A rogue scout found it caught in the

rocks along the eastern cove. We brought it up this morning.”

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I stared at him. “And you didn’t call me the second you knew?”

“I wanted to be sure,” he said. “I wanted you to see it for yourself.‘

I staggered back from the vehicle, breathing hard, vision starting to go black at the edges.

“She’s not…” My voice broke. “She can’t be. Damon, she’s not-“}

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