Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 558

Chapter 558

The night she had told me Andrei had to die.

I stared at the illuminated path. It pitched upward, toward the mountains. I’d have to traverse them to follow it. It would be dangerous, but I knew her light would guide me.

But if I followed it… Would I have no choice but to fulfill my “destiny“? To kill my mate when I was trying to save him?

I hadn’t accepted it back then, five years ago, and I didn’t want to accept it now.

“I heard you the first time,” I said. “And I told you I’m not doing it.”

The wind blew a little harder, making me shiver as pebbles rolled down the slopes above me. But I ignored it and limped back to

my camp.

The fire was completely dead. I rebuilt it with numb fingers and sat close to it for the rest of the night, not sleeping, letting my wolf heal my wounds as the fire slowly warmed me. The mountain lion’s carcass lay several yards away, but I tried not to look at

1. it.

I didn’t sleep. All night, I thought about the vision I’d had five years ago.

I had thought about it a hundred times before, turned it over and over in my mind until it became smooth like a stone polished by the tide. I had looked at it from every angle and I had never found a way out of the Moon Goddess’s prophecy, but I had also never found a real reason to follow it.

And even now, I still didn’t see one.

There had to be another way. I pulled the heart–shaped ruby out of my pack and studied it. Was this the way to save Andrei and stop the darkness before it spread? Or was this all part of the Moon Goddess’s prophecy, too?

I shuddered at the thought that my sudden and desperate urge to go through with this dangerous journey was purely because of the destiny laid out before me and not of my own free will.

At some point, the sky started to lighten. The cloud cover had moved back in and the moonlight was gone, leaving behind the dull gray color of a cold morning. I broke camp, packed up, and ate the last of the previous day’s food while I studied my map.

The path the Moon Goddess had lit went west–northwest, curving away from the route Celeste had marked and over the mountain range. It would be difficult and dangerous terrain, but the Moon Goddess’s light would protect me just like it had last night, and it would shave time off my journey.

I put my thumb over the divergence point and traced Celeste’s line instead, following it north with my eyes to the marker she’d drawn at the portal site. Two days.

The Moon Goddess’s path would be quicker.

But I wouldn’t follow it.

The Moon Goddess knew things I didn’t. She saw everything, knew everything that had ever happened and everything that was to come. She was everything. She was the wind that passed over the land and the light that lit the ground on cold nights and the warm water caressing your feet on the beach.

Maybe refusing to follow her was stupid and dangerous, but she had to know that I would follow any own path anyway, right? That I would find another way, against all odds?

So whether she liked it or not, I was following my own path. And she might be my Goddess, but she could stuff it, because hadn’t come here to fulfill a prophecy or a destiny. I’d come here to save my fucking husband.

I folded the map and put it in my jacket, then grabbed my pack and set out, diverging around the mountains.

The path might be longer, but it was mine. And my mate was at the end of it.