His new stepsister His biggest threat (Claire and Elijah) novel Chapter 269

Chapter 269

Claire’s POV

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The atmosphere in the Manor after the Reaper’s departure was thick and suffocating, like the air right before a massive thunderstorm breaks.

We were supposed to be prepping, packing our lives into waterproof bags for the trek into the Witches’ territory, but every movement felt heavy. The silence was louder than the fight had been.

“Felix, I need a hard reset on the perimeter sensors,” Ethan’s voice boomed from the foyer, echoing off the cracked marble walls. “The void signature left a trail of static. It’s like trying to see through a blizzard out there.”

“I’m trying, Alpha!” Felix’s voice came from the library, sounding strained and frantic. “The code is literally melting. The Reaper didn’t just pass through our wards; it digitized the concept of ‘nothing’ and shoved it into our servers. Give me five minutes!”

I was in the sunroom, the furthest wing of the house. It was a beautiful, glass-walled space that overlooked the northern cliffs, usually my favorite spot to watch the moon rise over the pines.

Tonight, it felt like a cage made of reflections. I was kneeling by a velvet armchair, trying to shove my heavy laptop charger and a few spare batteries into a backpack.

102 bpm. My pulse was a constant, annoying drum in my ears. Every time a floorboard creaked or a branch tapped against the glass, my skin crawled.

“Hey,” Elijah said, his voice soft as he appeared in the doorway. He looked like he’d been through a war-his tactical jacket was shredded at the shoulder, and there was a smudge of soot across his jaw.

But his eyes were focused entirely on me. He walked over, his boots silent on the rug, and gently took the tangled cords out of my hands. “You’re vibrating, Claire. Look at your fingers. You’re going to snap the wire.”

“I can’t stop it,” I whispered, finally looking up at him. The blue glow was gone from my skin, but I felt hollowed out, like a carved-out pumpkin with a flickering candle inside. “Elijah, when I touched that thing’s mind… it wasn’t just a monster. It was a vacuum. It didn’t just want the Well’s power; it wanted to erase the fact that I even exist. And now it knows what I ‘taste’ like. It left a mark on me.”

“It’s gone,” he promised, pulling me up from the floor and into a quick, fierce hug. He smelled like cedar and adrenaline, a combination that usually made me feel safe, but even his heat couldn’t touch the chill in my bones. “We’re leaving in five minutes. Ethan’s bringing the reinforced transport around to the service entrance. No lights, no comms, no electronic footprint. We’re going ghost until we hit the Peak.”

“I just need to grab my backup drive from the side table,” I said, pulling away just an inch. “I’ll be right back at the staging area. I promise. One minute.”

“One minute,” Elijah warned, his hand lingering on my arm for a second too long. “And stay away from the glass. If I don’t see you in sixty seconds, I’m coming back in here with teeth out.”

I gave him a small, shaky nod. I watched him head back toward the Great Hall to help Silas with the heavy

crates.

18:07 Tue, Feb 3

Chapter 269

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The Manor was a maze of half-packed boxes and shadows. I turned toward the small mahogany table near the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The moon was massive tonight, casting a silver light that turned the snow on the cliffs into a field of diamonds.

I reached for the drive, my heart thudding against my ribs. 110 bpm. Then, the world went dead quiet.

It wasn’t that the house got silent-it was as if the concept of sound had been deleted. No wind. No crickets. No muffled shouts from Ethan.

Just a sudden, pressurized vacuum that made my ears pop.

I didn’t hear a footstep. I didn’t see a shadow move in the reflection of the glass.

One second I was reaching for my bag, and the next, a hand covered in a slick, black tactical glove-material so matte it seemed to drink the moonlight-slammed over my mouth.

I tried to scream, my lungs burning, but the sound died instantly against the heavy palm. I tried to reach for the Great Well, to spark that sapphire fire that had driven the Reaper away, but a sharp, localized sting flared in the side of my neck.

A sedative. High-potency, fast-acting.

“Shhh,” a voice whispered directly into my ear. It wasn’t the Reaper’s dry-leaf hiss. It was human. Cold. Professional.

Terrifyingly familiar. “Don’t spike, Anchor. If you flare that energy now, the feedback loop will kill everyone in this wing. The Proctor wants you conscious for the transit. Let’s not make this messy.”

My knees buckled. My vision started to fray at the edges, the beautiful moonlit mountains outside the glass turning into a jagged smear of grey and black.

I tried to kick back, to claw at the arm holding me, but my muscles felt like they were turning into wet sand. My connection to the earth-the thrum of the red pines-was being severed by a chemical fog.

Through the haze, I saw the silhouette of a man reflected in the glass. He wasn’t a Sentinel in silver armor. He was wearing an unmarked, matte-black combat suit, his face hidden behind a high-tech respirator mask that glowed with a faint, ghostly green light.

He was a Ghost-the Regency’s elite extraction unit. They weren’t there to fight a war; they were there to collect a prize.

“Package secured,” he murmured into a comm-link embedded in his collar. His voice was steady, like he was checking off a grocery list. “Deploying the phantom-decoy. Exfiltrating via the north cliff’ ledge. Three

minutes to rendezvous.”

I tried to call out for Elijah. Elijah, please. Look back.

But my voice was a ghost. The last thing I felt was the sensation of being lifted, the cold night air hitting my face as the sliding glass door was eased open with a practiced silence.

18:07 Tue, Feb 3

Chapter 269

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25

55 vouchers

I felt the rush of the wind as we stepped onto the ledge, the terrifying drop of the cliffside looming below, and then the dark swallowed me whole.

“Claire? Sixty seconds is up! Let’s move!”

Elijah’s voice echoed down the long hallway of the East Wing. When no answer came, he didn’t wait.

He didn’t hesitate. He burst into the sunroom, his heart rate spiking as his wolf-senses screamed that something was wrong.

The air in the room was too still. Too cold.

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