His new stepsister His biggest threat (Claire and Elijah) novel Chapter 283

Chapter 283

Elijah’s POV

The moment Claire’s hands made contact with the central conduit, the world stopped being made of stone and glass.

It became a map of raw, pulsing veins. I could feel the Spire’s hunger through her-a cold, mechanical thirst that had been draining her for days-but this time, she wasn’t letting it take.

She wasn’t just a victim anymore; she was a conduit for every ounce of rage that had been building since they first dragged her from the North.

She was shoving back.

210 bpm. My heart was a frantic drum, but I stood like a statue behind her, my arms wrapped around her waist, my forehead pressed against the space between her shoulder blades.

I was the ground. I was the anchor. I felt the sapphire energy roar through her and into me, a searing, electric heat that turned my veins into liquid fire.

It felt like my skin was being pulled tight over my bones, like the very cells of my body were vibrating at a frequency that shouldn’t exist.

But I didn’t let go.

“Enough!”

If I let go, she would drift off into the current of that power and never come back.

Claire’s voice didn’t sound like her own. It was a chorus, a thunderclap, the sound of the mountain itself waking up in a foul mood and deciding it was done with the parasites clinging to its peaks.

It was the sound of a girl who had been poked, prodded, and violated until there was nothing left but a diamond-hard core of defiance.

The sapphire light didn’t just glow; it turned into a supernova. I watched, blinded, as the blue fire raced up the central pillar, devouring the violet Regency energy like a wolf in a sheep pen.

The hum of the Spire rose to a localized shriek, a high-pitched mechanical scream that made my ears bleed.

The floor beneath us vibrated so hard I could feel the structural bolts starting to shear, the very foundation of the High Spire groaning under the weight of an energy it was never meant to contain.

“What are you doing?” Thorne’s voice crackled over the speakers, no longer bored. The clinical mask had finally slipped, replaced by a jagged, panicked edge. “Claire, stop! You’ll destabilize the entire upper quadrant! You’ll kill us all!”

“Then we die free!” she roared back.

The surge was absolute. The holographic map in the center of the room flared white and then vanished into a cloud of ozone and acrid smoke.

All around us, the “impenetrable” carbonite walls began to spiderweb. The energy Claire was channeling wasn’t just power; it was her fury, her memory of the medical bay, the phantom weight of Thorne’s presence, and the crushing isolation of the holding cells.

It was a weapon made of pure, unadulterated consequence,

She wasn’t a battery anymore. She was the storm, and the storm was breaking the cage.

The central conduit exploded in a shower of molten silver and white-hot sparks. The feedback loop Thorne had designed backfired with a vengeance, sending a massive surge of sapphire energy straight up the line toward his private terminal.

I heard a distant, muffled blast from the floors above-the sound of his control center being turned into a smoldering crater.

Every light in the Spire flickered once and then died, plunged into a darkness that was only broken by the terrifying, holy blue glow emanating from Claire.

Then, the windows went.

With a sound like a thousand crystal bells shattering at once, the reinforced carbonite panels blew outward.

The pressure differential was violent, a massive hand of wind trying to suck us out into the open sky. I dug my claws into the silver floor, the metal screaming as I tore into it, my muscles bulging as I held Claire against the vacuum.

Below us, the lower ridge rushed up to meet us. The dark, jagged line of the forest loomed, and I saw the sparks of fire-the signals of the Red Pine strike team.

Ethan and Silas were there, their eyes glowing like beacons in the shadows of the pines.

I hit the snow-covered slope a mile from the Spire’s base, the impact rolling us through the drifts. I shifted back as we came to a stop, my body battered, smoking from the energy discharge, and bruised from the fall, but alive.

I checked Claire immediately. She was breathing-shallow, ragged breaths-but the blue light beneath her skin was steady now. It wasn’t the frantic, leaking glow of a broken battery; it was the quiet, simmering ember of a girl who had reclaimed her soul.

Silas and Ethan were on us in seconds, their heavy paws crunching through the crust of the snow. They shifted back, their faces pale with shock as they looked from us to the smoking ruin of the Spire above.

“You’re crazy,” Ethan rasped, his voice trembling as he threw a heavy, fleece-lined fur cloak over my shivering shoulders. “You actually jumped from the peak. We saw the explosion… we thought the whole tower was coming down.”

“She had enough,” I said, my voice raw and broken. I looked back up at the High Spire.

The top twenty floors were dark, the crown of the Regency’s power flickering like a dying candle against the moonlight. Smoke billowed into the night air, obscuring the stars.

We had her back. I could feel her heartbeat against mine, slow and steadying. But as I looked at the dark, angry bruises on her wrists and the way she flinched even in her sleep, the rage I’d been holding back didn’t dissipate. It crystallized.

“Take her to the Manor,” I told Silas, my eyes turning a hard, lethal gold. “Go. Now. Use the back trails and don’t stop for anything.”

“Elijah, where are you going?” Silas asked, his hand catching my arm.

I looked at the smoking tower. Somewhere up there, Thorne was crawling out of the wreckage of his ambition. He had tried to own her. He had tried to break her.

He had treated her like a machine to be calibrated, and he had left marks on her that might never fade.

“I’m going to make sure Thorne never breathes the air of the North again,” I said. “He wanted a demon. He found one.”