His new stepsister His biggest threat (Claire and Elijah) novel Chapter 276

Chapter 276

Elijah’s POV

My head was a wreckage of white noise and jagged glass.

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Standing on that mountain pass, staring at the empty, hollowed-out husk of the Regency transport, I couldn’t breathe.

Every time I tried to draw a full lungful of air, it felt like I was inhaling needles.

The pack was around me-I could hear dad shouting orders, could feel Silas’s heavy hand on my shoulder-but they felt like ghosts. Distant, flickering projections from a life I didn’t recognize anymore.

My heart was hitting my ribs with a violence that made my vision blur.

Being separated from Claire wasn’t just a loss; it was a physical amputation. It felt like someone had reached into my chest, grabbed the thread of my soul, and yanked.

Now, all that was left was a raw, bleeding end that sizzled every time the wind blew. I couldn’t focus.

I’d try to look at the ground for tracks, and the gravel would start to move, shifting into the shape of her face, her eyes, the way she looked right before the black-gloved hand took her.

The internal static was deafening. It was a high-frequency whine that scrambled my thoughts before they could even form.

I looked at the transport again, and for a split second, I forgot why I was there. I forgot the Regency, the war, the North Ridge. I just knew there was a hole in the world, and I was falling into it.

“Elijah! Look at me!” Ethan’s voice cracked like a whip, forcing my eyes to snap to his.

He looked terrified. I realized then that my claws were out,

digging deep furrows into the asphalt of the road, and my jaw was locked in a snarl that I couldn’t release.

My skin felt too tight, like the wolf was trying to turn inside out just to find a scent that wasn’t there.

“She’s… I can’t find her,” I rasped. My voice didn’t even sound like mine. It was a low, guttural rasp, stripped of everything human. “The scent… it’s gone, Ethan. It’s just gone.”

I shoved past him, stumbling toward the back of the truck. My mind was spinning, a chaotic loop of where-is-she-where-is- she-where-is-she..

I grabbed the edge of the metal doors-the ones that had been dissolved into that strange, black silt-and I felt the hum.

It wasn’t a sound. It was a vibration that bypassed my ears and went straight to the base of my skull.

It felt like ice water. It felt like the moon. It was a lingering residue of magic that didn’t belong to the Regency’s machines or the Hale’s bloodline. It was cold, patient, and impossibly deep.

“Kael,” I whispered.

The name brought a flash of clarity through the static, but it was a jagged, painful kind of clarity. The messenger. The silver- eyed shadow who had been playing both sides.

He hadn’t just rescued her; he had stolen her. He had taken her to the one place where a wolf’s senses are useless.

“He took her into the stone,” I said, my voice rising as the realization hit me. I spun around, staring at the sheer obsidian wall of the cliffside. “The Coven. They have her in the Veins.”

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Chapter 276

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“Elijah, get back from the edge,” Silas warned, stepping toward me. His voice was calm, but I could hear the tremor of fear in his chest-not for himself, but for me. “If you try to track through the shadow-veil without a pillar of focus, you’ll lose your mind. You aren’t thinking straight, son. Your bond is spiking-you’re in shock. Your brain is trying to process a severance that hasn’t happened yet.”

“I don’t care!” I roared, the sound echoing off the peaks. I clutched my head, my fingers tangling in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, just to feel something other than the hollow ache. “I can feel her, Dad! It’s like a wire wrapped around my throat, and every second she’s in there, it’s getting tighter. I can’t. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I just need to get to her!”

The world began to tilt. The grey sky and the black mountains swapped places. I leaned against the side of the transport, my breath coming in short, panicked bursts.

This was the dark side of the bond-the part the history books don’t tell you. When the Anchor is gone, the wolf doesn’t just get angry. It unravels. It loses the ability to distinguish between the self and the other.

Without her presence to anchor me, the wolf was clawing at the walls of my mind, desperate to take over, to just shred everything in sight until the pain stopped.

The separation was a poison. It made the air feel too thin and the light feel too bright. Every sound-the wind, the clicking of the cooling engine, Ethan’s heavy boots-felt like a physical blow to my eardrums.

I was overstimulated and completely empty at the same time.

“Look at the dust, Elijah,” Ethan said, his voice softer now. He pointed to the shimmering silt on the floor. “He used the Shadow-Step. He’s taking her to the Inner Sanctum. If we go in there as a pack, we trigger every ward they have. We’d be fighting the mountain itself.”

“I don’t need a pack,” I muttered, my eyes fixated on a single point on the cliff where the shadows seemed a little too thick, a little too rhythmic.

“You can’t even stand up straight!” Silas barked, losing his patience. “You’re vibrating, Elijah. Your resonance is off the charts. You’ll burn yourself out before you even find the first gate.”

He was right. I knew he was right. I could feel the heat radiating off my skin, the sapphire-and-gold energy of the bond flickering wildly because it had no destination.

It was like a live wire flopping around in a puddle. But the logic didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the fading pulse in the back of my head.

I forced myself to close my eyes. I had to find the gold.

Back at the Manor, when I’d touched her soul, I hadn’t just made a promise; I’d left a piece of myself behind.

I stopped trying to use my nose. I stopped trying to hear the wind. I went deep, past the panic, past the static of my own failing mind, until I found the tiny, vibrating frequency that was Claire.

It was a pinprick of light in a vast, cold ocean. It wasn’t moving. I was sinking.

I’m coming, I whispered into the dark of my own mind.

I pushed away from the transport. My first few steps were clums, my boots dragging on the asphalt. My head felt like it was being squeezed in a vice, the mental noise screaming at me to turn back, to find safety, to find the pack.

I ignored it. I shoved through the sensory overload, focused entirely on that one shimmering spot on the obsidian wall.

“Elijah, wait!”

I didn’t wait. I couldn’t. Every second apart felt like a year of aging. My brain was screaming at me that she was dying, that she was fading, that the mountain was eating her alive.

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