Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 581

Chapter 581

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I straightened up. My heart was pounding. I looked around the room and for a single, disorienting moment, I had no idea where I was. The black stone walls, the red sky beyond the window, the dead air of this place–none of it felt right. None of it felt like mine. I felt like a man who had woken up mid–dream in a place he didn’t recognize.

What the hell was happening?

What was I-

“Andrei.”

My Lord’s voice came down like a guillotine. The door in the back of my mind swung shut, and I heard it latch, and whatever had been on the other side of it went quiet again.

I exhaled slowly.

The guilt was still there, faint now, a residue. But it was manageable.

“I’m fine,” I said, although he hadn’t asked.

“It’s time.”

I straightened my jacket, rolled my shoulders back, and walked out.

The platform had been built at the front of the castle grounds, elevated enough that all of them could see. My subjects filled the space below in every direction–souls, demons, the shackled workers brought in from the camps just to witness spectacle. The noise they made was enormous, crashing over me the moment I stepped outside.

I walked to the edge of the platform and looked out over them.

I had given speeches from this platform before. I knew how to do it. You waited for the noise to die down of its own accord, then you spoke clearly and without hesitation, and they listened because the alternative was something none of them wanted to

consider.

The noise died down.

I opened my mouth.

What came out was the right words. The correct words for this occasion–betrayal, consequence, the law of this realm, a lesson to anyone else who thought they could come here uninvited and act against me.

I could hear myself saying them. I knew they were true in the way that all of the rules of this place were true, had made them true, and his word was the architecture everything else was built on.

because my

Lord

But they felt… wrong. Like the voice wasn’t my own, not really, and the words were just a script I had memorized.

The crowd was rapt, though, and I kept going, delivering each line carefully and succinctly. Finally, my speech ended, and the guards brought her up the steps.

She looked worse than yesterday. The dark circles under her eyes had deepened, and she was limping somewhat. But she held her head up. She was looking out at the crowd rather than at the platform.

Odd. Usually, they couldn’t stop looking at the noose.

She dragged her eyes away from the crowd then. Looked at me and held my gaze.

Her eyes narrowed. Something in that look made my chest cave in, and for a moment, I felt this strange, instinctual urge to go to her.

I didn’t do that, of course. I resisted the urge, reminding myself that it was just another one of her tricks, and watched as the

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Chapter 581

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