His new stepsister His biggest threat (Claire and Elijah) novel Chapter 254

Chapter 254

Claire’s POV

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The Manor was buzzing with a frantic, low-frequency energy th made the silver platters in the dining room rattle against the sideboard.

It was the sound of a fortress preparing for an unwanted guest. las was entrenched in the study, his voice a gravelly roar as he negotiated with three different Northern Alphas over encrypted lines.

Ethan was a shadow on the perimeter, triple-checking the ancient stone wards that guarded the estate’s borders.

The “Regency Friday countdown was painted in invisible ink or every wall, a ticking clock that resonated in the marrow of every wolf in the house.

But while the adults were playing high-stakes political chess, Elijh and I were tucked away in the old stone carriage house.

The air here was damp and smelled of motor oil and old hay, a far cry from the polished tension of the main house. We weren’t alone.

Valerius stood in the center of the room, looking vastly different from the girl who had spent the day blending into the high school background.

She had traded her school lanyard for matte-black tactical gear, er dark hair pulled back into a tight, severe braid.

She looked less like a student and more like the Sentinel she was born to be.

“If the Regency sees you as a ‘miracle, they’ll study you,” Val said, her voice echoing sharply off the damp stone walls. She paced a tight circle around me, her eyes scanning me like a biological sensor. “If they see you as a ‘weapon,’ they’ll lock you in a titanium cage at the Citadel and throw away the key. But if they see you as unstable? They’ll execute the ‘Cleanse’ protocol on the entire Red Pine territory. They’ll burn the forest to the ground to make sure the infection doesn’t spread.”

Elijah stepped forward, his jaw so tight I feared his teeth might crack.

His protective aura was flaring, a warm, golden heat that usually soothed me, but today it just felt like another layer of pressure. “So what’s the plan? We just pretend Claire is a normal high schooler with a weird heart? They aren’t going to buy a ‘faulty pacemaker’ story, Val.”

“No,” Valerius said, stopping directly in front of me. “We teach her how to lie to their sensors. The Regency doesn’t use their eyes to judge a threat; they use resonance scanners. When they arrive on Friday, they’re going to look at your heartbeat, Claire. They want to see if your pulse aligns with the frequency of the Great Well. If you’re ‘Phase-Locked’ to the mountain, they’ll know you’re the Anchor. And once they know that, the audit becomes a harvest.”

“I can’t just change my heart rate on command,” I protested, my hand flying to my chest. I could feel it fluttering now, a nervous bird trapped in a cage of ribs. 88 bpm.

“Actually, you can,” Val said, pulling a small, glowing crystal from her pocket. It looked like a shard of the Hearth Well, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic light. “It’s called Phase-Locking. It how Sentinels hide their power levels during deep-cover missions. Elijah, take her hand.”

Elijah didn’t hesitate. He grabbed my hand, his grip warm and solid, his fingers interlocking with mine.

The bond immediately surged-a familiar, golden hum that settled between us like a physical bridge.

“Now,” Valerius commanded, her voice dropping into a drill-sergeant bark. “Elijah, I want you to project the feeling of the North Ridge-the cold, the extreme height, the absolute isolation of the peak. Claire, I want you to pull that energy into your chest, but don’t let it settle. Don’t let it ground into your fee. Loop it. Make your heart beat for him, and only for him. Lock onto his rhythm, not the mountain’s.”

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10:07 Mon, Jan 26 GB.

Chapter 254

77%

B 55 vouchers

It was the hardest thing I’d ever tried to do. Usually, the Well’s energy felt like a massive, incoming tide-a force of nature I just had to survive.

It was a constant, subterranean thrum that lived in the background of my life. Now, Val was asking me to act as a dam, to sever the connection that kept me upright.

“Focus, Claire.” Elijah whispered, his eyes turning that molten,

datory gold. He stepped closer, his free hand coming up to

cup my face, his thumb grazing my cheekbone. “Think of the morning in my room. The quiet. The gold light on the floor. Just us. No Wells. No Council. No war. Just the two of us.”

I closed my eyes, trying to drown out the roar of the mountain. pushed the energy of the red pines away.

I ignored the deep, pulsing thrum of the Hearth Well beneath our feet and focused entirely on the heat of Elijah’s palm and the steady, certain rhythm of his heart against his ribs.

I pictured my pulse as a metronome, slowing down, syncing with the boy in front of me instead of the earth beneath me.

I felt the golden light in my chest protest.

It wanted to reach out, to tether itself to the Great Well on the peak, but I pulled it back. I tucked it away behind my ribs, wrapping it in the memory of Elijah’s voice.

“Ninety… eighty-five… seventy-two,” Valerius read off her tablet, er voice showing the first hint of genuine surprise. “Look at that. You’re masking the signature. To a Regency resonance scanner, you now look like a standard, healthy human with a slightly elevated resting heart rate due to ‘adolescent stress.”

“Why are you doing this, Val?” Elijah asked, finally letting go of my hand. The sudden lack of contact made me feel dizzy, the world tilting as the mountain’s energy rushed back in to fill the void. “You’re a Sentinel. You’re teaching the very ‘anomaly’ your people are hunting how to hide from them. If they catch you, it’s treason.”

Valerius began packing her gear into a sleek black bag, her face returning to its unreadable, porcelain mask. “My people want a war they can’t win, Hale. They think the North is a battery they can just swap out. They don’t understand that if they break this territory, they break the world. If the Regency finds out Claire is actually the ‘Prime Anchor,’ they’ll move in with a full battalion of Enforcers. Red Pine will burn, and my father will be the one holding the torch because he thinks it’s ‘progress! I’d rather have a living neighbor than a dead, blackened territor

She walked to the heavy wooden door of the carriage house, pausing in the long shadows. The moonlight caught the silver of her lanyard, which she had stuffed carelessly into her pocket.

“Friday morning. 8:00 AM. The Regency will meet you in the Great Hall of the Manor. Dress like a student. Act like a victim of circumstance. And whatever you do, Claire… don’t let your heart spike above 100 bpm when they touch the testing crystal to your chest. If you do, the lie falls apart, and I won’t be able to stop what happens next.”

She vanished into the night, the sound of her motorcycle engine a distant, fading growl that was swallowed by the pines.

The carriage house felt colder now, the silence heavy with the weight of the secret we were now carrying.

Elijah turned to me, pulling me into a fierce, desperate hug that knocked the breath out of me.

He held me as if he were trying to fuse our two hearts into one, is head resting against mine.

“We’re going to get through Friday,” he promised into my hair, his voice vibrating with a conviction I wished I felt. “We’ll play their game, we’ll tell their lie, and then we’ll send them back to the South.”

“We have to,” I whispered, clutching the back of his shirt. “Because if we don’t, there won’t be a North left to protect. And I’m not ready to lose our home.”

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