Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 553

Natalia’s POV

The translation took approximately nine days.

Karl worked on it in the evenings mostly, after dinner, when the house was quiet. He’d commandeered a corner of the library and surrounded himself with reference texts he’d sent away for, stacked in towers on either side of his chair. I checked in on him every night before bed. Sometimes he’d have something new to show me. Sometimes he’d just wave me off without looking up.

In the meantime, I had other things to keep me busy.

The Aurelius situation sat at the back of my mind like a constant splinter stuck under my fingernail.

Twenty–nine days, then twenty, then fifteen. I trained harder than ever with Mila, practicing until my lungs burned and my muscles ached so bad I could hardly get up the stairs, but it never felt like enough.

Aurelius was twice my size and twice as mean. No amount of training in the world could change that.

I just hoped it wouldn’t come to a fight anyway.

The missing persons list was still on my desk. My Beta had come back with very little–no connections between the eight names, no shared history, no overlap in territory.

The other packs had stopped asking about it, chalking it up to coincidence. I hadn’t thrown the list away, but I stopped thinking about it too much.

On the ninth night, I was almost asleep when I heard Karl knock on my door.

I pulled on a robe and opened it. He was standing in the hallway with the grimoire under his arm and a tired but excited look on his face.

“You’ve got it,” I said.

“Most of it.” He pushed into the room without invitation. “It’s enough, though.”

We sat at the small table in the corner of my room and he walked me through what he’d found. The grimoire was mostly useless, either too weathered from age or simply too complex to translate. But he managed to translate the spell that Celeste had mentioned. He’d transcribed it onto a separate sheet of paper.

I read it twice.

“The ruby has to be brought to the portal site,” he said, watching me read. “The symbols on it act as a kind of key–they match a sequence described in the book. You speak the sequence aloud, and the ruby should activate in response.” He paused, ” Emphasis on should.”

“How confident are you in the translation?”

“Eighty percent.”

“What’s the other twenty?” I asked.

“The book is very damaged, rendering much of it unreadable. I had to make educated guesses on a few words.” He folded his hands on the table. “I want to be honest with you about that.”

I set the paper down. “I appreciate it, Karl.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “You’re going to go, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Chapter 553

+25 Bonus

“On your own?”

“I can’t bring anyone with me.” I looked at him. “You know that. If something goes wrong, Moonshadow needs its leadership intact. And I’m not bringing my children anywhere near a portal to the underworld. If it even exists.”

Karl looked at me for a long time before he nodded. He didn’t argue, which told me he’d already thought it through himself and come to the same conclusion.

“I’ll need you to hold things together here while I’m gone,” I said. “You and my Beta together can keep the pack in order. And Aurelius-”

“I’ll handle Aurelius.”

The conviction in Karl’s voice took me by surprise, but I didn’t question it.

Just then, the door creaked. Karl and I both turned.

The twins were standing in the doorway. Max in his socks with his hair disheveled, Jane in her nightgown. Both of them had their arms folded like they’d just caught us in the act of something they would normally get grounded for.

“How much did you hear?” I asked simply.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify