His new stepsister His biggest threat (Claire and Elijah) novel Chapter 257

Chapter 257

Claire’s POV

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The breakfast table was a battlefield of clinking silver and forced smiles. The “energy drop” from our midnight operation had left the Manor feeling hollow, like a lung that couldn’t quite catch a full breath.

To a human, it was just a bit chillier than usual, the kind of damp cold that seeped through the floorboards; to a wolf, it was like the world had gone grayscale. The vibrant hum of the territory had been replaced by a low, static hiss that made the hair on the back of everyone’s necks stand up.

High Proctor Vane sat at the head of the table, her bone-white hair shimmering under the crystal chandelier like a crown of ice. She wasn’t eating the eggs or the artisanal toast prepared by the frantic kitchen staff. Instead, she was staring at a flickering holographic readout on her wrist-comm, her obsidian eyes darting back and forth across a series of jagged graphs.

“Strange,” Vane remarked, her voice cutting through the morning quiet like a razor through silk. “My sensors indicate a sixty percent decrease in the Manor’s ambient mana output since three bells. Ethan, surely your ‘faulty boiler’ hasn’t escalated from a plumbing nuisance to a systemic collapse of the regional grid?”

Ethan took a slow, deliberate sip of black coffee. He looked remarkably composed for a man who had half the night dragging a radioactive sapphire through a damp tunnel.

spent

“We’re cycling the conduits, Proctor,” he replied, his voice a masterclass in Alpha indifference. “After the… unfortunate interference at the school, the Wells require a period of low-draw stabilization to prevent crystal fatigue. It’s a standard maintenance procedure in the North.”

“Standard,” Vane repeated, her gaze sliding across the table until it locked onto me.

70 bpm. I was focused entirely on my oatmeal, stirring it into a gray sludge.

My heart was locked onto Elijah’s steady, rhythmic thrumming under the table, our feet pressing against each other for support. I felt like a ghost in my own skin, a hollow vessel trying to pretend there wasn’t a mountain’s worth of power hidden just a few hundred yards away.

“If the output is low,” Marcus Valerius interjected, his voice tight and strained, “then perhaps the Regency has seen enough. We should conclude the audit and return to the Citadel before the environmental conditions become… unpredictable.” He was looking at his daughter, Valerius, who sat beside him like a statue of marble. He was scared. He knew the Hales were hiding something, and he knew that when Vane found it, the fallout would be nuclear.

Vane ignored him completely. She stood up, her charcoal robes rustling with a sound like dry leaves. “Actually, Marcus, I find the unpredictability fascinating. It’s the anomalies that define the truth. I’ve decided to move up the final inspection. We will visit the ‘Old Well’ shaft this afternoon. I want to see how a deactivated relay handles a low-draw’ cycle in person.”

My heart jumped. 88 bpm. “The Old Well is a ruin, Proctor,” Silas said, his voice a low, growling warning. He didn’t rise from his chair, but the power in his frame was palpable. “It’s been decommissioned for fifty years. It’s structurally unsound and shielded with lead. There’s nothing to see but dust.”

“Then I shall tread carefully,” Vane replied, her gaze lingering on me for one second too long. “And I want

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Chapter 257

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Claire to accompany us. Her ‘residual’ connection might prove useful. Think of her as a canary in the coal mine.”

The afternoon air was biting, a precursor to a storm that was currently brewing in the high peaks of the Ridge. We stood at the edge of the Old Well-a stone-lined throat in the earth that seemed to swallow the gray daylight. It was located in a clearing where the trees grew stunted and twisted, a natural reaction to the heavy shielding buried beneath the soil.

Sentinels in silver-and-grey tactical gear stood guard, their resonance-suppression fields active. The fields created a pressurized silence that made my ears pop and the back of my neck ache. Felix was sweating despite the sub-zero wind, clutching his tablet with white-knuckled intensity. He knew, as well as I did, that the Core- Link we had moved last night was buried only thirty feet directly below where Proctor Vane was currently standing.

“The static here is… intense,” Vane noted, stepping toward the rusted iron grate of the shaft. She reached into her robes and pulled out the Testing Crystal. Instead of the clear, milky light it had shown earlier, it began to flicker with a jagged, sickly violet light. “This isn’t a low-draw cycle, Ethan. This isn’t maintenance. This is a mask.”

She turned her head slowly, looking at me. “Claire. Step forward. Reach into the shaft. Tell me what the mountain is saying to you. Or more importantly, tell me what you are saying to the mountain.”

“I… I don’t think I can,” I stammered, my pulse climbing. 94 bpm. The Phase-Lock was beginning to fray. The Core below was screaming at me. It felt my presence through the lead shielding; it recognized its Anchor, and it wanted to be found. It was a siren song of sapphire light, begging for a human heartbeat to unlock its true potential.

“Do it,” Vane commanded, her eyes flashing with a sudden, terrifying hunger. “Or I will have my Sentinels descend with thermal drills and bring up whatever it is you’re hiding in the dark. I am the Proctor of the Citadel, child. I do not like being lied to by a variable.”

I looked at Elijah. His hands were curled into lethal fists at his sides, his eyes a dark, dangerous amber. He was one second away from shifting, from tearing through the Regency guards to get to me, but we both knew that would trigger the Cleanse. If we fought here, the Regency would have the legal right to level the entire county.

I stepped to the edge of the pit. The air coming out of the shaft was freezing, smelling of ancient moss and wet lead.

Stay quiet, I begged the crystal in my mind. Be a stone. Be the earth. Don’t let her see you.

I reached my hand over the dark abyss. The wind whipped my hair across my face, stinging my eyes.

“I don’t feel anything,” I lied, my voice trembling with the effort of the deception. “Just… cold. And a bit of a headache.”

Vane stepped behind me, her hand gripping my shoulder with a strength that felt like a vise. Her touch was like ice. “Liar,” she whispered directly into my ear.

She shoved the Testing Crystal against my spine, forcing a direct conduit between my nervous system and the device.

The reaction was instantaneous. The Core below recognized the Regency’s intrusive, artificial probe as a

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threat and fought back with the fury of a cornered predator. A pillar of blinding sapphire light erupted from the shaft, blowing the heavy iron grate into the sky like a tossed coin. The shockwave knocked everyone back, the Sentinels’ suppression fields shattering like glass under a hammer.

I was suspended at the very edge, the energy of the Core roaring through me like a freight train.

115 bpm. 130 bpm.

The Phase-Lock was gone. I was wide open. The Great Well’s signature flared through the valley like a flare in the dead of night, and the Testing Crystal in Vane’s hand didn’t just turn amber-it turned a blinding, crystalline gold before exploding into a thousand shards.

Vane scrambled to her feet, blood trickling from a cut on her cheek where a shard had grazed her, but she was smiling. It was a horrific, triumphant expression.

“There you are,” she breathed, shielded from the wind by her robes, looking at me as I hovered, my eyes glowing with the stolen, ancient light of the mountain. “The Prime Anchor. The true heart of the North.”

She turned to her Sentinels, who were already recovering and raising their silver-tipped rifles. “Signal the Citadel. The audit is over. The harvest begins now. Secure the girl at all costs!”

Elijah let out a roar that shook the very trees, his body blurring into his massive wolf form mid-air as he lunged for the Proctor.

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