Chapter 68 Chapter 68
AMINA
The world went silent, but it wasn’t peaceful. It was the screaming, pressurized silence of the deep ocean, a weight that wanted to collapse my ribcage and pop the vessels in my eyes. The Nullifier, that horrific birdcage of bone and my mother’s living tissue, had sucked every molecule of life out of the penthouse.
I clawed at my throat, my fingernails drawing blood I couldn't even feel. There was no air to carry my scream. There was only the vibration of my own terror rattling in my skull.
Alarie stood over me, his silver-plated boots heavy on the floorboards. He looked like a god in his high-tech armor, a clinical executioner who didn't even have the decency to look me in the eye as he suffocated me with a piece of my own mother.
Fight it, Amina. Fucking fight it.
But my magic was dead. The Earth Pulse was gone, severed by the field. The Void energy I’d unleashed moments ago had been vacuumed up, leaving me hollowed out and shivering. I looked over at Rian. He was a statue of silver rot and shadow. He shouldn't have been moving. He was clinically dead, or so close to it that the difference didn't matter.
Then, the floorboards groaned.
It wasn’t a sound; it was a physical shift in the building's structure. I looked at Rian’s hand. His fingers, previously webbed with the silver "Wasting," were now stained an ink-black. The shadow didn't just sit on his skin; it seemed to be eating the silver, consuming the rot to fuel something much older.
Rian’s eyes snapped open. They weren't gold. They weren't violet. They were twin eclipses, voids of pure Primal Alpha rage that looked right through the vacuum.
He didn't stand up; he rose like a specter.
Alarie spun around, his armor whirring as the servos fought the sudden increase in local gravity. "Impossible," Alarie hissed, though I only saw his lips move. "The Null-Field is absolute. You shouldn't have enough neural activity to blink, let alone stand."
Rian didn't respond with words. He lunged.
The collision was a shockwave of pure kinetic force that I felt in my teeth. Without air to dampen the blow, the impact sent a ripple through the very foundation of the tower. Rian slammed into Alarie, his black-clawed hands tearing at the silver plating of the Council’s armor.
But Alarie wasn't just fighting with his own strength. I saw the shimmer of the "Siphon-Link" glowing on the back of Alarie’s neck. It was the same jagged, obsidian brand I’d seen on Jasper.
Magnus. The bastard was "Remote-Possessing" the armor. Through the link, Magnus was pouring his stolen kinetic reserves into Alarie, turning the Council leader into a meat-puppet with the strength of a hundred Alphas.
Rian’s movements were jagged, desperate. Every punch he threw, every time he lunged to protect me, I could see the cost. His skin was beginning to crack, the black energy leaking out of his pores like smoke. He was burning his own life force as fuel because there was nothing else left in the room to take.
He’s killing himself to keep me breathing, I realized, a sob catching in my bone-dry throat.
I tried to move, to crawl toward the birdcage, but the Nullifier’s field was strongest near the device. The closer I got, the more my vision grayed out. I looked at the pulsing fragment of my mother’s heart inside the cage. It was rhythmic, agonizing. Each spasm sent a fresh wave of "Null-Energy" through the room.
Rian pinned Alarie against the reinforced steel of the elevator bank. His teeth were bared, his face a mask of primal fury. He reached for the birdcage, his hand trembling as it entered the most intense part of the field.
"Rian, no!" I tried to scream, the sound nothing but a wet wheeze.
If he touched that device, the feedback would shatter his mind. The Nullifier was tuned to my mother’s pain, and Rian was her Mate-kin by bloodline now. The resonance would be a physical hammer.
Alarie—or Magnus, speaking through him—grabbed Rian’s throat. I saw the silver plating on the armor begin to glow a sickly green.
"You were always the weak one, Rian," Alarie’s lips moved, the mockery clear in the cruel set of his mouth. "Obsessed with 'balance.' Obsessed with this Hybrid girl. You’re dying for a battery that’s already empty."
Rian didn't pull away. He leaned in, his forehead pressing against Alarie’s helmet. Through the Bond, I felt a sudden, sharp spike of absolute clarity from him.
I'm sorry, Amina.
"NO!" My silent scream tore through my mind as Rian’s hand closed around the obsidian bars of the birdcage.
The explosion wasn't fire. It was a psychic scream that leveled the room.
I saw the violet fluid inside the cage flash a blinding, lethal white. The fragment of my mother’s heart let out a final, massive contraction—a pulse of raw agony that Rian absorbed directly into his soul. He wasn't just breaking the machine; he was breaking the link.
To destroy the Nullifier, he had to literally sever the connection to my mother. He had to "kill" the piece of her that was keeping us trapped.
The birdcage shattered. The obsidian bars turned to dust, and the Null-Field vanished in a rush of returning atmosphere.
Air slammed back into the room. I gasped, the oxygen burning my lungs like fire, my ears popping painfully as the pressure equalized. I fell forward, coughing, my vision finally clearing.
Rian was standing over Alarie, the broken remnants of the device at his feet. But he wasn't the man I knew. He was a hollowed-out shell. The black energy had vanished, leaving him pale and translucent.
Alarie lay in the wreckage of his armor, unconscious or dead, the "Siphon-Mark" on his neck burned out and black.
Rian turned to me. He tried to smile, but his eyes were vacant, the golden light completely extinguished.
"Amina..."
His voice was a ghost of a sound. He took one step toward me, and then his knees buckled.
He didn't just fall; he collapsed like a building whose foundations had been pulled out. I scrambled to him, sliding across the floorboards, catching his head before it hit the mahogany.
"Rian! Rian, stay with me! The air is back! You did it!"
I grabbed his wrist, searching for a pulse.
Nothing.
I pressed my ear to his chest. Silence. The Wasting had finally reached his heart, and the effort of breaking the Nullifier had finished the job. He was cold. So cold.
"No. No, no, no. Rian, wake up! That’s an order, you arrogant prick! Wake up!"
I started CPR, slamming my fists against his chest, trying to jumpstart the Alpha heart that had beaten for me when no one else's would. I poured every remaining scrap of my Earth Pulse into him, but it was like throwing water into a desert. He was empty.
"Silas! Help me!"
But Silas was slumped against the wall, barely conscious himself.
Then, the penthouse’s PA system crackled to life. The high-end speakers, undamaged by the vacuum, hissed with static before a voice filled the room, a voice that sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a grave.
"Magnus Vale," I hissed, my tears blurring the sight of Rian’s still face.
The laugh that followed was cold, melodic, and utterly devoid of mercy. It echoed off the glass and the ruins of the penthouse, mocking my grief.
"Bravo, Amina," Magnus’s voice boomed. "A truly moving performance. My son was always a sentimental fool. He traded his life for a few breaths of air for you. A poetic end for a mediocre Alpha."
"I will kill you!" I screamed at the ceiling. "I will find you and I will burn you to ash!"
"You'll have to find me first, little Heart," Magnus purred. "But I think you’ll be a bit busy. Look at him. Look at the 'Ascended Alpha' now."
A red light flickered on the PA console.
"Finally," Magnus sighed, his voice full of dark satisfaction. "The spare is discarded. The lineage is pruned. And now, the real work begins. Goodbye, Amina. Try not to die in the collapse."
The building let out a massive, structural groan. The floor beneath us began to tilt.
Rian’s body stayed limp in my arms, his heart as silent as the grave Magnus had dug for him.
As the tower began its final, slow-motion fall toward the city, I felt a sudden, violent vibration in Rian’s chest. It wasn't a heartbeat. It was the Sanguine Shard in Silas's hand, glowing with a light so bright it turned the room into a silhouette. The Shard wasn't reacting to me. It was reacting to the death of an Alpha.
"Amina!" Silas yelled, crawling toward us. "The Shard... it's a soul-vessel! If his heart has stopped, his soul is looking for a place to go! You have to bridge it! You have to be the conduit or he's gone forever!"
I looked at the glowing crystal, then at Rian’s cold lips. I didn't have time to be a Seer. I didn't have time to be a Hybrid.
I only had time to be his Mate.