The Rejected Mate

Chapter9

Selene’s POV

The high-frequency hum from Aria’s device sliced through the air, vibrating straight into the core of my womb. It felt like a physical blade twisting between my twins. Inside me, the golden hum became chaotic, a frantic, agonizing thrashing as my babies screamed in my mind. Their pain triggered a primal, terrifying response in my own blood. My vision blurred, flashing between the dark, rainy reality of the cliffs and a blinding, celestial white light.

"Stop it!" I choked out, my hands gripping my stomach protectively as I sank to one knee. The rock beneath me was slick with rain and Sebastian’s blood.

"Oh, does that hurt?" Aria mocked, her smile widening into something genuinely monstrous. She took a step closer, the heavy mud squelching beneath her tactical boots. The four Syndicate mercenaries moved with her, their red eyes locked onto me like predators cornering a wounded animal. "Good. I want you to feel a fraction of the agony I felt when you took my life from me, Selene. You thought you were so special, the perfect little Luna. But you were just a placeholder."

At my feet, the massive black wolf let out a weak, agonizing groan. Sebastian’s amber eyes flickered open, clouded by the dark, web-like veins of the corrupted wolfsbane pulsing through his system. With a desperate, heartbreaking effort, he tried to lift his heavy head. His jaw snapped weakly at the air in front of my dress, his front paws clawing at the stone, trying to drag his massive, dying frame between me and the guns.

He’s dying, I realized, looking at the black fluid oozing from his wounds. *He used the absolute last drop of his alpha life force just to run to this cliff.

"Look at him," Aria laughed, a sharp, ugly sound that cut through the roaring wind. "The great Alpha King, reduced to a dog dying in the mud. Don't worry, Seb. Once I take her back to the fortress and harvest those lovely little atavistic heirs, I’ll make sure to send you a piece of them. Or what's left of them, anyway."

Sebastian’s inner wolf let out a raw, broken whine, a sound of pure, unadulterated failure. He looked up at me, his golden eyes filled with a mute, crushing plea for forgiveness. He knew. In his final moments, he finally realized the full scope of his stupidity. He had thrown away the only woman who loved him for a woman who had literally poisoned his soul and sold his people into s*****y.

But I couldn't focus on his regret. I had to save my children.

I looked behind me. The edge of the cliff was less than two inches from my heel. Below, the dark, violent ocean churned against the jagged rocks, a black void that promised death to anyone who dared to enter it. But the ocean was wild. The ocean belonged to nature, not the Syndicate.

"Secure her," Aria commanded, her tone suddenly turning business-like as she lowered the sonic device slightly. "Inject her with the paralytic serum. If she jumps, the fall will kill the fetuses, and the scientists need them alive."

Two of the mercenaries stepped forward, pulling heavy silver syringes from their tactical vests. The needles caught the flash of lightning, gleaming wickedly in the dark.

"Selene..." a faint, weak voice called out from the ground behind me.

I glanced down. My mother was stirring, her hand weakly reaching out toward the discarded crossbow. But she was too slow. She was very heavily injured from the mutated wolf's attack. If the mercenaries reached me, it was over. They would drug me, lock me in a cage, and turn my children into a science experiment.

No.

I looked Aria dead in the eye. The celestial white light in my vision suddenly stopped flickering. It stabilized, turning my soft amethyst eyes into two solid, glowing orbs of blinding, spiritual fire. The sheer pressure of my bloodline radiated outward, a sudden, heavy wave of ancient authority that made the two advancing mercenaries freeze in their tracks, their wolves whining in instinctual terror.

"You think you've won, Aria," I said, my voice echoing with a dual resonance that didn't sound entirely human. It was the voice of the old priestesses, the voice of a mother who had chosen her own destiny. "But you forgot one thing. I am the source of the protection. And I would rather give my children to the sea than let a parasite like you touch them."

Aria’s eyes widened in sudden, frantic panic. "Shoot her! Shoot her in the legs! Don't let her—"

Before the mercenaries could pull their triggers, I looked down at Sebastian one last time.

"You chose this end, Sebastian," I whispered. "Live with it."

With a final, definitive push, I threw myself backward off the ledge.

The wind roared in my ears as gravity took hold, ripping me away from the cliff side. The freezing rain pelted my face as I fell into the absolute darkness of the three-hundred-foot drop. For a split second, time seemed to stop. I saw the silhouette of the cliff fading above me, the glowing red eyes of the mercenaries shrinking into tiny dots, and the massive black wolf dragging himself to the edge, letting out a final, desperate howl of pure despair that was swallowed by the storm.

I clutched my stomach with both arms, curling my body into a protective ball around my swell. Hold on, I prayed to the spirits of my ancestors, to the Moon Goddess, to the very blood in my veins. Hold on to me.

Inside my womb, the twins responded. The golden hum didn't break. It expanded, projecting outward until a literal sphere of shimmering, warm golden light encased my entire body, cutting through the freezing air like a falling star.

Then, I hit the water.

The impact was like slamming into a wall of solid ice. The golden shield shattered upon contact with the waves, and the black, freezing current of the ocean swallowed me whole. The pressure crushed the remaining air from my lungs, and bubbles escaped my lips as I was dragged down into the dark, churning depths.

I fought against the current, my limbs feeling heavy and unresponsive as the freezing temperature began to numb my nervous system. I pushed upward, trying to swim toward the faint, stormy light of the surface, but a massive undertow caught my legs, twisting me around and dragging me deeper into the underwater cavern system beneath the cliffs.

My vision began to fade, dark spots dancing at the edges of my sight as oxygen deprivation took hold. My strength was entirely gone.

I'm sorry, I thought, a tear mixing with the saltwater as my arms loosely fell away from my stomach. *I tried. I tried so hard to protect you.

Just as my conscious mind began to slip into the quiet, welcoming void of death, a strange warmth enveloped my right wrist.

It wasn't the burning, painful heat of the Syndicate's weapons, nor was it the frantic, dying energy of Sebastian's wolf. It was a firm, incredibly strong, and rhythmic grip.

My eyes snapped open underwater, a final burst of adrenaline clearing my vision for a fraction of a second. Through the murky, churning bubbles of the dark ocean, a figure was swimming toward me with supernatural speed.

It wasn't a wolf.

The upper torso belonged to a powerfully built man with broad shoulders and long, dark hair that floated around his face like a halo of shadows. But his skin didn't look human; it possessed a faint, iridescent shimmer, like the scales of a deep-sea predator, and his eyes—completely devoid of whites—glowed with a piercing, luminescent silver light. Where his legs should have been, a massive, powerful tail cut through the heavy ocean current with absolute ease, shifting the water around us like a localized whirlpool.

A creature of the deep. A myth that even the oldest werewolf elders spoke of only in hushed, fearful whispers. A true Triton rogue.

He pulled my sinking body into his massive chest, his touch surprisingly gentle despite the terrifying strength behind it. He placed a large, webbed hand directly over my pregnant belly, and instantly, a cold, protective bubble of pressurized air formed around my face, allowing me to take a sharp, gasping breath of pure oxygen underwater.

I stared at him in utter shock, my heart hammering against my ribs as he locked his glowing silver eyes onto mine. He didn't look at me like a monster looks at prey. He looked at me with a strange, ancient familiarity, as if he had been waiting at the bottom of this cliff for centuries just for me to fall.

Before I could even process what was happening, the man shifted his grip, pulling me securely against his shoulder. He turned, his powerful tail striking the water with a force that sent a shock wave through the cavern, and began to dive deeper into the pitch-black abyss of the underwater trenches, carrying me and my unborn heirs away from the world of the surface entirely.