Chapter 65 Chapter 65
AMINA
The penthouse was a cathedral of glass and impending death. Outside, the skyline of Meridian City flickered like a dying heartbeat, but inside, the air was so thick with kinetic static that the hair on my arms stood on end. The smell of ozone was suffocating—a sharp, metallic tang that tasted like a lightning strike held in the mouth.
"Lay him down. Now!" I shouted, my voice cracking under the weight of the power coiling in my gut.
Silas, his face gaunt and streaked with soot, helped me lower Rian onto the center of the ritual circle I’d scorched into the mahogany floor. Rian was barely conscious. His skin was the color of curdled milk, and the "Wasting"—that necrotic, silver webbing of fractured Lycan DNA—was crawling up his throat, pulsing with a life of its own. It looked like a parasite trying to choke the life out of him.
"Amina..." Rian rasped. His hand, shaking and cold, clawed at the air until I caught it. His grip was weak, the strength of the Alpha leaking out of him like water through a sieve.
"I’m right here, Rian. I’m not letting you go. Do you hear me? You don't get to quit."
I straddled his hips, the silk of my trousers whispering against his tactical gear. This wasn't about the heat we’d shared in the bookstore or the desperate, sweat-slicked nights in the Lodge. This was clinical. This was war. I was the bridge, and he was the fortress about to collapse.
I pressed my palms flat against his bare chest, right over his stuttering heart. The Sovereign’s Heart in my own chest—the thing that made me a "battery" for the world—began to spin. It was a physical sensation, a grinding of gears in my marrow that sent a white-hot surge of violet energy down my arms.
"Tethering now," I whispered, closing my eyes.
The moment the Link slammed shut, it wasn't a warm embrace. It was a head-on collision.
I screamed, my head snapping back as the "Wasting" surged into my nervous system. It felt like liquid mercury, cold and poisonous, trying to drown me. But I pushed back, reaching deep into the Earth Pulse, dragging the raw, tectonic strength of the ground beneath the skyscraper up through my boots and into Rian’s sternum.
Accept it, damn you, I pleaded through the Bond. Rian, open the gates!
But his body buckled. His back arched off the floor with a sickening crack of bone, and a golden shockwave erupted from the contact point. It hit the floor-to-ceiling windows, spider-webbing the reinforced glass with a sound like a gunshot.
"He’s rejecting the surge!" Silas yelled, hovering over the biometric monitors. "The mutation is seeing the Earth Pulse as a pathogen! Amina, if you don't force the resonance, the feedback will liquefy his organs!"
"I know! I fucking know!"
I leaned down, pressing my forehead against Rian’s, trying to find the man beneath the monster. I dived into his mind, navigating through the fog of his pain, searching for that one golden thread that was him.
And that’s when I felt it.
Hidden beneath the silver rot of the Wasting, there was something else. It was a secondary siphon—a thin, oily needle of dark energy buried deep in Rian’s subconscious, disguised as his own heartbeat. It felt cold. It felt greedy. It felt like Magnus.
You bastand. You’re still alive.
My stomach did a slow, nauseating flip. Magnus hadn't just died in the rubble of the Spire. He had left a parasitic hook in his son’s soul. Every watt of healing energy I was pouring into Rian wasn't just fixing his heart; it was being bled off, redirected through that needle to wherever Magnus was hiding. I was literally feeding the man who wanted to hollow me out.
Think, Amina. Think.
If I stopped, Rian died. If I continued, I was building Magnus a new body.
"Silas, he’s siphoning!" I gasped, my vision blurring as the violet light around my hands began to flicker. "Magnus is on the line! He’s stealing the resurrection!"
"Then change the frequency!" Silas barked, his eyes wide with terror. "Shift the Pulse! If Magnus is tuned to the Earth, take it to the Void! You have to 'Frequency-Hop' the magic before he drains you dry!"
I groaned, the effort of holding the energy back feeling like trying to stop a dam with my bare hands. I had to do something I’d been terrified of since the Spire: I had to tap into my Mother’s legacy. The Void.
I shifted my intent. I stopped pulling from the warm, stable Earth and reached for the cold, silent vacuum between the stars. The violet light in my palms turned a bruising, abyssal purple. I felt the needle in Rian’s mind jump, lose its grip, and then shrivel as it failed to process the change in 'voltage.'
Rian’s eyes flew open. They weren't amber anymore. They were a terrifying, swirling storm of gold and shadow. He gasped, his lungs finally catching air that didn't taste like ash.
"That's it," I whispered, tears of relief pricking my eyes. "That's it, Rian. Stay with me."
But the universe wasn't done with us.
A sharp, electronic chirp echoed through the penthouse, followed by the hum of the external holographic projectors. The giant screens across the city—the ones meant for luxury ads and stock tickers—suddenly flared to life, bathing the room in a harsh, clinical blue light.
I looked toward the window, my heart stopping.
The broadcast was live. It was the Council courtyard. Seraphina Thorne stood at the center, her face a mask of cold, judicial fury. Behind her, lined up like cattle for the slaughter, were the remaining members of the Vale pack who hadn't made it to the Tower. Kira was there, her face bruised but defiant. Jasper was there, his head bowed in shame.
"Citizens of Meridian," Thorne’s voice boomed, amplified by the city’s sound system until the very floorboards under me vibrated. "The Shroud has fallen because of the rot within the Vale lineage. To preserve the future, we must excise the past."
"No," I breathed, my grip tightening on Rian’s chest. "No, no, no..."
"Watch," Thorne commanded.
She stepped aside. The camera panned to a figure standing in the shadows behind her. A woman in a tattered white gown that looked like a shroud. Her skin was the color of bone, and her hair floated around her head as if she were underwater.
My breath hitched. My Mother.
Elena stepped into the light. She didn't look like the broken woman I’d seen in the vat. She looked powerful. She looked ancient. And her eyes... they weren't the violet of a Seer. They were two pits of absolute, abyssal black.
She didn't look at the prisoners. She looked directly into the camera. She looked directly at me.
"Rian! Don't look!" I screamed, trying to shield his eyes, but it was too late.
Rian’s Bond with his pack was wide open because of the ritual. He felt the collective terror of his people through the link, a tidal wave of psychic agony that threatened to shatter the First Seal I’d just placed on his heart.
The Wasting roared back with a vengeance, the silver lines glowing like hot wires. Rian let out a guttural, animalistic howl of pain, his claws digging into my thighs as his focus shattered.
On the screen, my mother raised her hand. A blade of shadow-matter, darker than the night sky, formed in the air above Kira’s neck. Elena’s lips moved, her voice whispering through the speakers, a cold, dead sound that bypassed my ears and echoed directly in my soul.
"Burn."
The screen went black.
The silence that followed was louder than the explosion of the Spire. The ritual circle beneath us sparked and died. Rian’s body went limp, his eyes rolling back into his head, as the "Wasting" surged past his throat and toward his brain.
"Rian! Rian, look at me!" I screamed, shaking him, but he was gone, lost in the psychic backlash.
And then, I heard it.
Above the sound of the wind howling through the cracked glass, I heard the rhythmic, screeching bite of steel on steel.
VREEEEEE-CHUNK. VREEEEEE-CHUNK.
The elevator shaft. They weren't just coming for us anymore. They were here to finish the harvest.
"Silas!" I yelled, standing up, my skin erupting in a blinding, violent white light. "Get the Shard! They’re in the shaft!"
I didn't care about the laws anymore. I didn't care about the Shroud. My mother had just declared war on the world, and I was the only one left to stand in her way.