My Sister Stole My Mate, And I Let Her

Chapter 490: Chapter 490 RAGE AND DESPERATION

SERAPHINA’S POV

Terribly late.

The words seemed to echo endlessly through the ritual chamber, bouncing off the black crystal suspended from the ceiling and the ancient stone beneath my feet until they became something far larger than a simple sentence.

Terribly late.

Terribly late.

Terribly late.

My gaze remained fixed on my mother’s body.

Margaret Lockwood lay crumpled where Catherine had thrown her, hair spilling across the bloodstained floor, stark against the darkness surrounding her.

I couldn’t feel Sylvia at all.

The bond that had connected us through dreams and blood and distance had disappeared so abruptly that panic instantly flooded my veins.

No.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

No.

She couldn’t be dead.

Not after everything.

Not after hearing her call me her precious little girl.

Not after she’d finally looked at me with love I’d spent most of my life believing never existed.

Grief struck first, sudden and disorienting, as if the ground had dropped beneath me. It seized the air from my lungs and left a single unbearable certainty in its wake.

My mother was dead.

I was going to fucking kill Catherine.

Rage erupted so violently that I barely recognized it as my own.

Power exploded through my markings. Silver light burst from under my skin in blinding waves as every instinct inside me abandoned reason.

The chamber shook. The symbols carved throughout the floor flashed erratically. The blood channels surrounding the ritual platform rippled as if responding to my fury.

”You killed her!” My voice cracked through the room.

Catherine’s smile faltered as I charged.

The distance between us vanished in an instant as Sovereign power surged through my body. Silver claws formed around my hands, glowing so brightly they illuminated the chamber like lightning.

A split second before my claws reached Catherine, a massive barrier erupted between us.

The collision reverberated through the chamber. The impact struck so hard that ancient stone splintered beneath my feet.

A shockwave blasted outward, rattling the silver chains dangling from the ceiling and sending cracks spidering across the crystal formations.

But Catherine remained untouched.

I stared at the barrier separating us.

The shield shimmered like liquid glass, layer upon layer of protection overlapping until it became nearly impossible to distinguish where one ended and another began.

Psychic power and witchcraft woven together.

My fury only intensified, and I struck the barrier, the impact sending a violent ripple through its surface.

I struck it a second time, harder, and hairline fractures began to spider across the shield.

A third blow followed without hesitation, then a fourth, each one driven deeper by rage and desperation.

Yet somehow the barrier held.

My chest rose and fell heavily as I slammed both hands against the shield.

”Come out and fight me, you fucking coward!”

Catherine laughed softly. The sound made my skin crawl.

“Is that really what you think?”

Only then did I notice something strange about her, something that didn’t fit the version of Catherine I had come to expect.

She looked exhausted. Not weakened in a way that suggested defeat, but drained in a way that suggested cost.

The woman standing before me was no longer the composed, untouchable mastermind I knew.

Her face had gone unnaturally pale, dark circles shadowing her eyes as though she had not slept in days, and even the simple act of standing still seemed to require deliberate effort.

Understanding followed instantly, cold and sharp. The ritual wasn’t complete.

Whatever she had taken from Mother wasn’t fully hers yet. She had stolen something, and now she was trying to absorb it, to digest it, to force it into her control before it could resist her.

Which meant she wasn’t standing behind that barrier because she feared me at all.

She was standing there because she needed time.

I needed to reach her before she fully absorbed my mother’s power.

But the barrier wasn’t just resisting me; it was adapting to me, smoothing itself over every time I tried to force an opening.

I pushed harder anyway, silver power surging through my arms and into the shield in waves strong enough to make the entire structure shudder, but each time I found a weakness and drove into it, the crack sealed itself again almost instantly, erasing my progress as if I had never made it at all.

My breathing grew heavier as I persisted, refusing to accept what my instincts already sensed.

I wasn’t just fighting a barrier; I was fighting Catherine’s experience, her control, and whatever kind of witchcraft allowed her to shape psychic force like living material.

Every strike I made was met with quiet, infuriating correction on the other side, the barrier reforming itself with patient, clinical precision while she remained untouched behind it.

“Is that all you can do?” Catherine’s voice drifted through the distortion with maddening calm, almost conversational. “You really thought becoming a Sovereign would put you on my level?”

The words grated on my nerves, not because they were true but because they were said with the kind of certainty that came from someone who had never once doubted their own superiority.

I wanted—no, needed—to wipe that smug smile off her face.

I forced another surge of power into the barrier, ignoring the strain building in my core. Catherine watched with faint amusement as the cracks I created sealed themselves again.

“On your level?” I repeated, my voice sharp enough to cut through the chamber’s pressure. “You mean stealing power and corrupting it until it bends to your will?”

Catherine’s expression didn’t change, but the amusement in her eyes deepened as if I had confirmed something she already believed about me.

“Stealing,” she echoed lightly, as though the word itself was amusing. “Such a simplistic way to describe understanding what others are too weak to hold properly.”

I pushed again, harder this time, and felt the strain ripple through my body as the barrier absorbed and redistributed the force rather than breaking.

The realization crept in slowly, unwanted but unavoidable, that I was burning through my strength faster than I was making any real progress.

Catherine tilted her head slightly as she watched me, as if studying a specimen struggling while pinned to a board.

“You’re exhausting yourself, dear,” she said softly. “You’ll burn out before you ever break through this barrier.”

I gritted my teeth and struck again anyway, but the barrier simply folded and corrected itself around the impact, absorbing it like it had learned my rhythm.

My arms were starting to feel heavier, my breathing uneven in a way I refused to acknowledge, but she didn’t miss it.

“Well,” Catherine continued, her tone shifting into something almost playful, “how about something to encourage you?”

She paused, tapping her fingers on her chin as if considering her next words.

Then she gasped like she’d had a eureka moment. “I know!” She sounded absolutely delighted with herself. “Since your mother is no more, perhaps you need another parent to fight for.”

The words landed wrong immediately, sharp enough to freeze something inside my chest.

Before I could ask what she meant, I saw the subtle shift in her gaze toward the shadows beyond the barrier, the faintest signal of intent passing through her expression before she spoke again.

“Come on out,” she said calmly.

A moment later, the darkness behind her moved.

The air in the chamber tightened at the same time, pressing against my lungs in a way that made me instinctively still, as though my body had decided before my mind did that I needed to hold my breath.

The barrier beneath my hands felt distant for a second, unimportant, as my attention was dragged entirely toward the opening in the darkness.

Something was coming out of it, and every instinct I had screamed that I was not ready to see it.

A figure stepped forward.

At first, I couldn’t process what I was looking at.

My mind refused to give it shape, refused to assign meaning to the outline forming in front of Catherine’s barrier. It was only when the figure fully emerged into the ritual light that I could deny it no longer.

Shock hit me so hard I staggered backward.

The world narrowed until there was nothing but him standing there.

Edward Lockwood.