His new stepsister His biggest threat (Claire and Elijah) novel Chapter 290

Chapter 290

Claire’s POV

The sky was no longer a canopy of wars, it was a hungry, blinking grid of red and white. The beay-in transports of the Fourth Division descended like prehistoric raptors, their thrusters scorching the ancient penes and bring up a trivand of ash and needles. The violet dome pulsed over the Manor, a dig fever that turned the very air into a thick sufiicating syrup.

My heart was dowing. It wasn’t the serum this time, and it wasntthe hollowness of the discharge. It was the Tap. I could feel every wolf pinned to the courtyard floor. I could feel the life force being pulled from the younger ones-Kael, Etitan, the pups in the nursery-flowing through the Regency’s ‘medical inhibitors and into the central device Kane had triggered.

I was the conductor. I was the bridge. Because I had signed that treaty, because I had wanted to believe in a quiet life, my pack was being used as a series of biological batteries to power the very machines that were coming to cage us.

“Claire!” Elijah’s voice was a ragged shadow of itself. He was pinned near the fountain, his silver-grey for ripping with the violet infection. He was fighting it, his muscles bulging as he tried to claw his way toward me, but the device was feeding off his Alpha strength, using his own power to keep him down. “Don don’t let them… take the mountain…

I looked at the Envoy. She stood by the gate, her tablet glowing as she monitored the harvest. She looked up at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of genuine curiosity in her eyes.

“The resonance is perfect,” she said, her voice amplified by her comms unit to cut through the roar of the thrusters. “By using the pack as a buffer, we’ve stabilized your output. You won’t burn out, Claire. You’ll be the heart of the Southern Grid for the next century. You’ll be immortal”

“I don’t want to be immortal,” I whispered. My voice was quiet, but as the sapphire light began to leak from my eyes, it carried the weight of the ridge. “I want to be home.”

I looked at Elijah. Our eyes met, gold clashing with sapphire across the violet haze. In that look, everything passed between us. The memory of the sunroom. The jump from the Spire. The fries with too much salt. The promise that we were the ground and the storm.

I have to break it, I told him through the bond. I have to break the circuit.

It’ll take everything, he replied, his voice a ghost in my mind. Claire, if you blow the Tap from the inside. vessel left.

Then let the mountain hold me.

I closed my eyes and stopped fighting the violet light. Instead, I opened the floodgates.

For weeks, I had been trying to control the power, to meter it, to discharge” it safely. I had been playing by their trying to be a battery that wouldn’t explode. But I wasn’t a battery. I was an Anchor to a Well-site that had been dri earth’s fire for millions of years.

I reached deep, past the trauma, past the memory blocks, past the fear. I reached into the very roots of the Manor, down through the stone, down to the white-hot veins of the world.

The sound that left my throat wasn’t a scream; it was a tectonic event.

The sapphire light didn’t just glow-it ignited. It turned the courtyard into a sun. I felt the Regency’s device shriek as it tried to process the sudden, infinite influx of energy. It was like trying to catch a waterfall in a thimble. The violet dome shattered first, the shards of digital energy evaporating into the night.

The wolves on the ground gasped as the pressure vanished, but wasn’t done.

“Elijah! Now!” I roared.

The pack moved. Relieved of the paralysis, the wolves of the North Ridge became a blur of silver and shadow. They didn’t wait for orders. They saw the transports, they saw the Envoy, and they saw the girl in the center of the fire.

Elijah reached the central device first. He didn’t just crush it; he tore the metal apart with a primal fury that shorted out the entire courtyard’s electrical system.

The Envoy turned to run, but she was met by Silas and a dozen others. There were no diplomatic gestures tonight. There was only the law of the woods.

Above us, the lead transport tried to bank away, realizing too late that the “stable” power source had turned into a tactical nuke. I looked up at the red lights and pointed.

The sapphire fire leapt from my fingertips, a jagged spear of pure resonance that pierced the lead ship’s hull. It didn’t explode in fire; it imploded in a flash of blue, the Regency’s own tech collapsing under the weight of the mountain’s rejection.

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