Chapter 314 She's Seen Everything
Elias stared at the screen, the scrolling green and red light casting ghoulish shadows over his face. He felt the weight of Jax’s question like a physical press against his chest.
"Honestly, Jax... I can't answer that question yet," Elias admitted, his voice barely a whisper. He didn't look up; he couldn't bear to see the devastation on the Beta’s face. "I'm searching. I’m looking for every anomaly, every fail-safe. But I think we have time. Ginny seems to be strong, and a strong woman can do amazing things. I’ve seen it in my ER, I’ve seen it in surgery. Sometimes the soul keeps the body together when the biology should have given up."
Jax wasn't listening to the medical platitudes. He was pacing the small, high-tech space like a caged predator, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow bursts.
"Leela has been to the brink and back so many times because of our father," Jax growled, the words vibrating in the air like a low-frequency hum. "And to know now that he did this to MY Ginny... to my Iggy..." He stopped, his shoulders bunching under his shirt. "I want to rip him to pieces again. I want to dig him up just to kill him a second time."
He spun around, his eyes flashing a brilliant, terrifying gold that seemed to illuminate the dark corners of the lab.
"If I hadn't gone all he-wolf on her," Jax choked out, the guilt bleeding through his anger, "she might not have stayed. She might have run back to the human world where she was safe. Instead, I claimed her, and I put her through all of this."
Jax needed to punch something. He needed to destroy the reality that was staring back at him from the monitors. As the realization of his father’s ultimate betrayal settled in, the massive Beta emitted a pulse of raw, Alpha-lineage dominance so thick and suffocating that the air in the room felt like it had turned to lead.
It was a psychic scream of territorial fury and agonizing grief.
Elias staggered back, his knees hitting the swivel chair. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard it was painful. His primal, human instincts were screaming at him to flee, to hide, to vanish. For a long, paralyzed minute, Elias had to clench every muscle in his body just to keep from either bursting into tears or shitting his pants. The sheer, predatory force of Jax’s presence made the High Council’s threats feel like a playground taunt.
Fennigan stepped into the path of Jax’s energy, his own royal aura rising like a stone wall to buffer the doctor. He didn't speak; he just placed a hand on his brother’s chest, feeling the violent thud of a heart that was breaking for its mate.
"Jax," Fennigan rumbled, his voice a steadying anchor. "Breathe. The guilt is the leash Damon left for you. Don't let him pull it from the grave."
Jax’s chest heaved, his nostrils flaring as he fought for control. Slowly, the crushing pressure in the room began to dissipate, though the air remained charged with a dangerous, electric tension.
Elias dragged in a desperate lungful of oxygen, his hands trembling so violently he had to tuck them under his armpits.
"I'm... I'm going back into the files," Elias managed to stammer, his voice three octaves higher than usual. "I’ll find the failure point, Jax. I swear. I’ll find the way to keep them both."
"We haven’t sent the Elders home yet," Fennigan reminded them, his voice gaining a resonance that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards. "And Veda... she brought the others back from the brink with nothing but simple heat and the old ways. If the Council used science to tie these knots, maybe the old magic is what we need to cut them."
Jax’s breathing began to level out, though he still looked as if he were carved from ice. "Veda," he repeated. The name of the ancient pack elder acted like a cooling balm on his frayed nerves.
Veda wasn't a medic; she was one of the Old Ones, a permanent fixture on the Elder Council. She had seen the rise and fall of Alphas for more generations than most cared to count. While the world moved toward computers and synthetic splicing, she remained anchored in the primal truth of their kind. Even now, the other two high elders—Thorpe and Horne—were still there at the estate, their presence a silent, looming reminder of the pack's ancient laws and mystical resilience.
"She’s seen everything," Jax rumbled, his fierce Beta energy focusing into a single, sharp point of purpose. "If our father was hiding this, she might have seen the signs years ago and not even known what they meant. She knows the scent of a corrupted soul better than anyone."
"Exactly," Fennigan said. "Elias, keep digging into the 'how.' Find the chemical breakdown. But I’m going to bring Veda in. She, Thorpe, and Horne represent the triad of our history. If there is a way to protect a human soul from a synthetic wolf’s bite, they will find it in the old lore."
Elias nodded, finally feeling his pulse slow down to a non-lethal rhythm. The idea of a healer—someone who worked with the living, breathing essence of a person rather than just data—was a relief.
"If she can stabilize Ginny’s core temperature and keep her system from overworking while I look for the 'off-switch' in the DNA... we might just stand a chance," Elias admitted.
Jax looked at the monitor one last time—at the jagged red lines of his mate’s hijacked biology—and then he turned his back on it. He headed for the door, his pace urgent. He needed to get back to the room. He needed to be near the scent of Ginny’s skin and the sound of Iggy’s heartbeat.
"Call her, Fenn," Jax commanded as he stepped into the hall. "Bring Veda. Bring the Elders. Bring anyone who knows how to fight a ghost. Because I’m not losing them. Not to the Council, and not to the man who shared my blood."
As the heavy doors of the lab hissed shut behind them, the atmosphere changed. The cold, blue light of the technology was left behind, replaced by the warm, flickering torchlight of the estate's older corridors. They were moving away from the Council's twisted future and heading straight back into the heart of the ancient past, where Veda, Thorpe, and Horne waited to see if they could mend what the "New World" had broken.