Chapter 3 Chapter 3
RIAN
The elevator didn't just stop; it died.
The emergency red lights in the lift flickered, casting my face in a jagged, bloody hue. The hum of the Vale Tower—that constant, reassuring vibration of billions of dollars and high-tech security—vanished, replaced by a hollow, predatory silence.
"He’s here," I rasped.
The Mate Bond wasn't just humming now; it was screaming. It was a biological malfunction, a glitch in the Alpha code that made my protective instincts override every scrap of logic I possessed. I looked at Amina, pinned against the back wall of the lift, her eyes wide with the lingering terror of the Blood Sight.
His life is held by the Hybrid’s hand. The Prophecy wasn't lore anymore. It was an active contract, and the air was getting thin.
"Rian, the power," Amina whispered, her voice trembling. "I can't feel the Earth Pulse. It’s like the building is swallowing the ground."
"The Siphon-Array," I growled, punching the emergency release on the ceiling hatch. "My father isn't just cutting the power. He’s using a kinetic vacuum. He’s draining the ambient energy of every Lycan in this tower to fuel his own shift. He’s turning his own pack into husks to make himself a god."
I hauled myself through the hatch, then reached back down for her. My hand brushed hers, and the spark was so violent I nearly lost my grip. It wasn't just desire; it was a desperate, grounding necessity.
"Kira!" I barked into my comms. Static. "Jasper!"
Silence. Magnus had effectively lobotomized the Spire.
I pulled Amina up onto the top of the elevator car. We were stuck in the shaft, thirty floors above the lobby where my father was currently executing my loyalists.
"We have to go up," I said, pointing to the maintenance ladder. "The penthouse has a standalone Ley-line conduit. If we can reach it, Amina, you can anchor the Shroud. You can stop the Siphon."
"And if I can't?" she asked, her eyes searching mine. "Rian, your father... he said I was a battery. What if I'm just swapping one cage for another?"
The honesty in her voice cut through my Alpha pride. I stopped, the ladder vibrating under my hand. "Amina, if we stay here, he kills us both. If we get to the penthouse, I give you the override codes. You won't be a battery. You'll be the switch. You decide who stays in the dark."
We climbed. Every rung was a battle against the gravity-well Magnus was creating. Below us, I could hear the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of the Sanitizers breaching the shaft. They were coming for the Heart.
We reached the 60th-floor maintenance hatch and tumbled into the Observation Deck. It was a ruin. The panoramic glass was spider-webbed, and the air smelled of ozone and burnt copper.
"Rian, look." Amina pointed to the monitors.
They weren't dead. They were slaved to a new feed. It wasn't the lobby. It was an underground chamber—one I hadn't seen in twenty years.
There, suspended in a vat of glowing violet fluid, was a woman. Her hair floated like silver smoke, and her skin was translucent, showing veins that pulsed with a rhythmic, artificial light.
Amina let out a choked, horrific sob. "Mother?"
"No," I breathed, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "That’s not possible. Your mother died during the Purge."
"She didn't die," a voice boomed from the shadows of the deck.
Magnus Vale stepped into the light. He wasn't shifting, but his skin was rippling, the stolen kinetic energy of his pack making him look younger, larger, and infinitely more terrifying. He held a remote trigger in his hand, wired directly into the tower’s core.
"She didn't die, Amina," Magnus said, a cruel smile twisting his lips. "She was just... inefficient. A Seer’s heart can only stabilize a city for so long before it wears out. I’ve been keeping her on life support for two decades, waiting for the bloodline to produce a fresh successor."
He looked at me, his eyes twin voids of ambition. "And you, Rian. My son. You did the one thing I couldn't. You found the Mate. The perfect resonance. You didn't just bring me a battery; you brought me the ultimate power source."
"I'm going to kill you," I growled, my claws extending, the shift tearing through my skin.
"With what strength?" Magnus laughed. He pressed a button on the trigger.
The Siphon-Array didn't just drain the room; it inverted. A pillar of black light erupted from the center of the deck, hitting Amina. She screamed, her body arching as her violet energy began to flow toward the monitors,toward the vat where her mother was being kept.
"Amina!" I lunged for her, but the Siphon hit me too, pinning me to the floor. My muscles felt like they were being turned to lead.
"Don't worry, Rian," Magnus said, walking toward the screaming girl. "I’ll keep you alive to watch. Once she’s fully integrated into the Spire, you’ll see what a true Alpha can do with a Sovereign’s Heart."
Amina’s eyes met mine. Through the agony of the Siphon, I felt the Bond flare one last time. It wasn't a call for help. It was a transfer.
Take it, her voice echoed in my head.
She wasn't being drained. She was pushing. She was flooding the Siphon-Array with more power than it could handle. The violet energy turned white, the heat becoming unbearable.
"What are you doing?!" Magnus yelled, stumbling back as the monitors began to explode.
"I'm not a battery," Amina gasped, her skin glowing with the intensity of a dying star. "I'm the surge."
The Observation Deck windows didn't just break; they vaporized. The explosion of raw, unfiltered Earth Pulse blew outward, throwing Magnus across the room and shattering the Siphon-Array. For a second, there was total, blinding light.
Then, the weight of the tower shifted. The Spire groaned, tilting dangerously to the East. "Rian!" Amina’s voice was a whisper in the dark. I crawled toward her, but the floor beneath us gave way. As we fell through the hole into the levels below, I saw the vat on the monitor shatter. Amina’s mother opened her eyes… her eyes that weren't violet, but a deep, abyssal black.
She didn't look like a victim.
She looked like a predator that had been waiting twenty years for a reason to wake up. And her first word, echoing through the crumbling tower, wasn't a name.
It was a command:
"Destroy."