Alpha Xander's Undoing Chasing my Unknown Mate Back novel Chapter 70

Chapter 70

Chapter 70

*Rory*

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The circle tightened again when I tried to move, heat biting across my skin so cleanly it split me open.

Zerina threw herself against the inside of my ribs, her snarl vibrating in my bones.

‘Let me out. Burn him!’ she demanded.

I couldn’t. I had no leverage, no breath, no limbs that belonged to me.

This wasn’t chalk and theory anymore. The geometry down here was older and meaner.

I was going to break.

But just as I was, a voice hit the chamber like a bell made of iron.

“Enough.”

The air shuddered. The runes along the walls flickered. In the archway-a figure, black robes moving like stormcloud.

Headmistress Varra.

She didn’t sweep in; she drove the room back in front of her. Fury stood with her-the kind that breaks instead of blazes.

She took in the circle, the scorched floor, the ash and key, my body hung like a warning sign-and something in her face changed. Shock.

“What,” she said, and her voice was a blade, “have you done under my roof?”

Durnham smiled as if she were late to a party. “Headmistress. I’m relieved you could join us. Council business often strains schedules.”

“This is not Council business,” Varra snapped. “This is a felony ritual conducted without authorization. Release the seal.”

He lifted the key a fraction. “I have approved writ-”

“Show it,” she said.

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t.

Varra flicked her wrist. The air in the chamber changed temperature, like it had been waiting for permission

to storm.

Lines of light sprang up along her forearm-a counter-rune I’d never seen before, older than Vallin’s drawings, older than the annotations in Xander’s book. Her lips moved. The sound she made wasn’t words. It

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Chapter 70

was command.

The circle stuttered.

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The band around my ribs loosened by a hair. I dragged an inch of air into a scorched throat and saw Durnham’s eyes change with annoyance.

“Release it,” Varra said again, and this time the room seemed to agree.

Durnham’s smile thinned. He extended his hand toward my throat. The rune at my mark flared bright enough to white-out my vision.

Varra threw her palm toward the floor. The counter-rune leapt-and hit the circle like a hammer.

The geometry screamed.

I didn’t know shapes could scream. The light that bound me fractured into a thousand thin lines and snapped tight again, then cracked. Not all the way, but enough to send a shock through my body so hard my knees buckled and I fell forward into nothing.

Xander got to me first.

One second I was held up by pain, the next I was falling, and then I was not. Arms caught me. Him. His scent wrapped around me like a blanket of love itself, and despite the ache in my entire body, I felt safe-at home.

He swore, a sound half-prayer, half-promise, and hauled me against his chest like he could keep me from falling any further by sheer refusal.

“Rory, look at me,” he begged, hands framing my face. His thumbs shook as he brushed hair back, as if he needed to be sure it was my face with my name still in it. “Breathe. Please. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

I tried. The first breath scraped. The second hurt. The third tasted like iron and ash and him.

Zerina’s voice flickered, then came back in a whisper. ‘Stay. I’m… here. Just… hold-‘

Static swallowed her.

“Headmistress,” Durnham said politely, as if none of that had just happened, as if my skin wasn’t scorched and the room didn’t reek of ritual. “You’re interfering with a sanctioned extraction.”

“There is nothing sanctioned about this.” Varra stepped between him and what was left of the circle. Her hands were empty; the air was not. “Stand down.”

He cocked his head. “If you wished to impress the Council with your devotion to neutrality, Headmistress, this spectacle might not be the route.”

Azrien moved under Xander’s skin. I felt it where his chest pressed to my shoulder-the deep rumble he barely held. Dharra had pulled herself to her feet; she clutched the damaged strip of parchment to her chest like a talisman and stared at the broken runes under my feet with the kind of focus that means a person is moving fear into action.

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Chapter 70

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Varra’s eyes didn’t move off Durnham. “Where is the student you removed from her dormitory?”

His smile returned. “Safe.”

Varra’s control slipped for the first time. “Where,” she said, and it wasn’t a question anymore.

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