Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 18

Chapter 18

LILITH

He murmured her name in his sleep again.

It came out like a prayer, soft and slurred, tangled in breath and wine. “Natalia…”

I froze where I stood beside the bed, the towel still in my hands, dripping with the water I’d used to wipe his fevered brow. The room smelled of alcohol and crushed flowers, and the moonlight painted pale stripes across his bare shoulders.

Even unconscious, he reached for her.

Even in his dreams, he wanted someone else.

I forced a smile onto my lips and returned the towel to the basin. No matter. This was temporary. He’d drunk more than usual–grief and guilt mixing into something toxic–and I’d simply been there to catch him when he fell.

Natalia was gone.

That was all that mattered.

He could grieve her now, if he needed to. Mourn what might have been. But grief would pass. It always did. And when it did, I would still be here.

Because I had never left him.

Because I had always been the one meant to stay.

Y

Still… I couldn’t help the itch at the base of my spine. That creeping, simmering thing I hadn’t been able to shake since Damon returned with the corpse.

The “body” had been unrecognizable. Mutilated beyond identification. But it had her ring. Her scarf. A few personal effects. Enough to satisfy the Council. Enough to pacify Andrei.

But not me.

I had arranged for the attack myself. It hadn’t been hard to pay off a few desperate rogues. They were to impersonate Andrei’s men, run Natalia off the road, and disappear into the sea. I’d even sent them to Damon’s land to make sure she was gone.

No matter what had happened, Andrei would assume it was a rogue ambush. That his enemies had taken her.

But confirmation had never come.

The mercenaries I hired vanished. No report. No proof.

It wasn’t until Damon surfaced with a corpse and Natalia’s ring that the world began to move again.

Still, some part of me wondered: why hadn’t I seen it through myself?

1/2

Chapter 10

Why had I trusted fate to finish what I started?

Because she was dead now.

She had to be.

ய

And even if Andrei mourned her, it wasn’t really her. It was the child. His first heir. That’s what he was truly grieving.

If I could give him another…

If I gave him the next child, the next Alpha, the next Luna, the future he would finally see where his loyalty belonged.

Tonight would be the first step.

I pulled the covers over his shoulders and slipped into the bed beside him. He didn’t stir. His breath was deep, slow. I laid there quietly, watching the moon drift across the ceiling.

By morning, he would remember this only in fragments—warmth, comfort, the sense that someone had cared for him through the worst of it.

He would wake, and I would be there.

***

He woke just before dawn.

I felt the moment he stiffened beside me. His muscles tensed. His arm withdrew.

“Andrei?” I said sleepily, turning toward him with carefully blinking eyes. “You’re awake.”

He stared at me. Groggy. Confused. And then–regret passed across his features like a shadow.

I sat up slowly, brushing my hair from my face. “You drank too much last night. You were in the garden. I found you–half frozen and muttering things I didn’t understand. I couldn’t leave you like that.”

He sat up and rubbed his temples. “Right.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember enough.”

He swung his legs off the bed and stood.

I slipped out of the sheets, wrapping a robe around myself. “You were hurting. I wanted to help.”

“Thank you,” he said politely.

Polite.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify