The Billionaire’s Scavenger Omega

Chapter 10: The Dying Pulse

The ride from the Sterling Plaza to the private medical wing was a blur of illegal speed and engine roar. Dante didn't wait for the car to fully stop. He was out of the door before the tires had finished screeching against the asphalt, his charcoal suit jacket discarded somewhere on the floor of the SUV.

Astra was right behind him, her silver gown hiked up to her knees, her bare feet hitting the cold pavement. She didn't feel the gravel biting into her skin. All she felt was the jagged, hollow void where her connection to Leo usually lived.

"Clear the halls!" Dante’s voice was a thunderous growl that sent the midnight-shift nurses scrambling for the walls.

They burst into the intensive care unit. The room was bathed in a rhythmic, terrifying red strobe light. A chorus of alarms was screaming from the life-support machines, a dissonant wall of sound that made Astra’s ears ring.

"Vitals are flatlining!" a doctor shouted, his hands buried in Leo’s chest as he performed manual compressions. "The serum was spiked with silver-nitrate. His heart is seizing!"

Astra’s world narrowed down to the sight of her brother’s pale, sweat-soaked face. He looked so small in the center of all that high tech machinery, a scrap of the Grey Zone being chewed up by the High-Rise’s poisons.

"Get out," Astra said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the sirens like a blade.

"Miss Astra, we need to"

"I said, get out!"

Dante grabbed the doctor by the shoulder and physically hauled him away from the bed. He didn't ask questions. He didn't check the monitors. He just looked at Astra, his eyes burning with a desperate, molten gold. "Do it, Astra. Now."

Astra lunged for the bed. She didn't look at the needles or the tubes. She grabbed Leo’s hand, the one that was turning a sickly, translucent gray.

Find him, her wolf whispered, a low, ancient resonance that vibrated in her skull. The moon doesn't just destroy. It heals what it claims.

Astra closed her eyes. She didn't try to "think" of the power; she reached for the cold, silver light she’d felt in the cathedral. She forced it down her arms, through her palms, and into Leo’s skin.

For a second, nothing happened. The flatline on the monitor remained a steady, mocking whistle.

"Come on, Leo," Astra hissed through clenched teeth. "Don't you dare leave me in this glass cage alone."

She pushed harder. It felt like her veins were being filled with liquid nitrogen. The silver crescent on her palm began to glow, the light so intense it bled through the bandages. She could feel the poison in Leo’s blood, it felt like shards of broken glass scraping against his heart.

Extract it, the voice commanded.

Astra didn't just push her energy in; she pulled. She acted as a filter, drawing the silver-nitrate out of his tiny veins and into her own body.

A sharp, blinding pain shot up Astra’s arm. It felt like she had dipped her hand into a furnace. She let out a choked scream, her knees hitting the linoleum floor, but she didn't let go.

"Astra!" Dante was at her back in an instant, his large hands gripping her shoulders. He could smell the burning, the scent of silver searing into her Lunar blood. "You’re taking the poison yourself! Stop!"

"No!" Astra gasped, her eyes snapping open. They were no longer silver; they were a blinding, incandescent white. "I have... to finish it."

The alarms suddenly changed pitch. The long whistle broke into a stutter, and then thump-thump.

The monitor flickered to life. A jagged green line began to crawl across the screen. Leo’s chest rose in a deep, shivering breath, the gray tint fading from his skin as a faint, silvery glow settled over him.

Astra collapsed against the side of the bed, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gulps. Her right arm was black and bruised up to the elbow, the silver-poison still sizzling under her skin.

Dante scooped her off the floor before she could hit the ground. He didn't look at the doctors who were rushing back in to check Leo. He looked at Astra, his face a mask of raw, terrified adoration.

"You're a lunatic," he whispered, his forehead pressing against hers. His scent, woodsmoke and iron, was the only thing keeping her from slipping into the black.

"I'm a sister," Astra croaked, her fingers curling into his shirt. "Did we get it? Is it gone?"

"It’s gone," Dante said, his voice thick. He looked over his shoulder at the empty serum vial on the tray. It was shattered. "But the people who did this? They aren't."

He carried her out of the room, his stride long and murderous. He didn't take her back to the bedroom. He took her to the "War Room" a soundproofed chamber filled with holographic maps and tactical displays.

He set her down in a leather chair and pulled a burner phone from his pocket.

"Silas didn't do this alone," Dante said, his eyes locking onto hers. "The security breach came from inside the Sterling firewall. Someone on my board gave them the code. Someone who knew exactly how much Leo meant to you."

Astra looked at her blackened arm, then at the man who looked ready to burn the city to the ground for her. The scavenger in her was gone. The girl who hid in the shadows was dead.

"I don't want them arrested, Dante," Astra said, her voice turning cold and sharp as a winter frost.

Dante stopped, his thumb hovering over a contact on his phone. He looked at her, a slow, predatory smirk spreading across his face. "What do you want, my Queen?"

"I want to see them fall," Astra said, the silver crescent on her palm beginning to pulse with a dark, vengeful light. "I want to take their towers, their money, and their pride. I want to show them what happens when you try to kill a Scavenger’s heart."

Dante leaned down, his lips brushing her ear. "Then let’s start the hostile takeover. Tonight, we don't just hunt wolves. We hunt empires."