The Rejected Mate

Chapter14

Selene’s POV

The freezing Atlantic water hit me like a wall of shattered glass. It roared into the cabin, a violent, high-pressure torrent that tossed equipment like toys and threatened to drown the very air from my lungs. The lights in the pod flickered and died, leaving us in a swirling, strobe-lit nightmare of blue emergency sparks and the terrifying, black-and-crimson gaze peering down from the ruptured hull.

"Seal the cabin!" I screamed, the sound muffled by the incoming water.

Sebastian reacted with the speed of a desperate predator. He slammed his shoulder into the control override panel, ignoring the jagged metal tearing into his skin. His alpha strength was fueled by the raw energy of the twins still fighting to be born. With a roar of exertion, he engaged the emergency bulkhead plates.

The heavy tungsten doors groaned and slid into place, slicing through the incoming water like a guillotine. The flood stopped, but the pod was now listing at a forty-five-degree angle, drifting deeper into the crushing darkness of the abyss.

Caspian was on his feet in an instant, his silver eyes flashing as he pulled a secondary, high-density energy blade from his belt. He stood over me, his body acting as a shield between me and the jagged hole above.

"The structural integrity is at twelve percent," Caspian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "The entity... it’s not attacking the hull anymore. It’s feeding on the energy surge from birth. It’s waiting."

I lay back on the wet gel-pads, my lungs burning, the twins thrashing against my ribcage. The pain had shifted, turning from sharp, rhythmic pulses into a heavy, crushing ache that seemed to radiate from my very marrow. I could feel the twins—their consciousnesses, their ancient, untamed wolf spirits—tearing at the veil of my own mind. They were ready. They were hungry.

"We can't stay here," Sebastian said, his breathing ragged. He was still kneeling beside me, one hand firmly locked to my wrist, acting as the conduit for the feedback loop. He was shivering, his skin pale and translucent, his veins glowing with the white light he was siphoning away from me. "If we stay in this pod, we’re just sitting targets. The entity wants them, Selene. It wants the First Blood."

"If we go out there, the pressure will crush us," Caspian retorted, though he never took his eyes off the breached ceiling. "But staying here guarantees we will die. We have to reach the secondary docking station at the Trench Outpost. It's five hundred meters down, but the exterior shields are armored."

I looked at the monitors. They were failing, but one line of data remained clear: the twins were nearing their final transition.

"Caspian," I whispered, gripping his hand with my free one. "How far is the Outpost?"

"Three minutes of travel if we use the emergency thrusters," he replied.

"Do it," I said, my voice hardening. "Sebastian, keep the conduit open. Don't you dare let go."

"I won't," he promised, his eyes meeting mine. For a fleeting second, the coldness between us evaporated. In that look, I saw the man he had been before the crown, before politics, before the betrayal. It hurts more than labor. "I’m not letting anything happen to them. Or you."

Caspian lunged for the pilot’s console. He bypassed the main navigation computer and hotwired the emergency thrusters directly to the pod's engine core. The entire vessel shuddered, a high-pitched whine filling the cabin as the thrusters flared.

We rocketed forward, a metallic bullet speeding through the crushing dark.

Above us, the entity—that horrific, merged version of my brother Lucian and the ancient horror—did not pursue us with speed. It tracked us with malice. We could feel its presence pressing against the hull, a psychic weight that made the air inside the pod heavy and bitter. It was whispering to me, a chorus of thousands of voices, all of them promising that my children would never see the light of day.

*They are mine, the voices hissed in my mind. *They were born of the Blood, and they will return to the Source.*

"Focus on me," Sebastian shouted, his voice cutting through the mental assault. He squeezed my wrist, sending a fresh surge of grounding energy into my nervous system. "Don't listen to it, Selene! Look at me! Breathe!"

I focused on his eyes. The white light flowing from the twins through him made his pupils look like dying stars. I channeled every ounce of my will into the bond, pushing back against the encroaching darkness of the entity outside.

Suddenly, the pod lurched.

We had hit something. The sound was like a thunderclap, the force of the impact throwing me forward. The pod spun uncontrollably, the emergency lights exploding in a shower of sparks. We were tumbling through the water, plummeting deeper into the trench.

"The thrusters are dead!" Caspian shouted over the sound of metal groaning under the immense pressure.

We were spiraling toward the ocean floor. The sonar displayed a jagged, rocky terrain approaching fast.

"We're going to crash!" Sebastian yelled, wrapping his massive arms around my body, shielding me from the violent jolts.

"Brace!" Caspian cried out.

The impact wasn't a single hit. It was a series of bone-jarring crashes as we skidded across a shelf of stone. The pod finally came to a grinding halt, tilting vertically into a crevice.

Silence followed.

For a heartbeat, the only sound was the creaking of the metal hull as it buckled under the immense weight of the ocean above. Then, the rhythmic, heavy sound of *claws* against the exterior hull began again.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The entity had followed us down. It wasn't rushing. It was enjoying the hunt.

I felt a final, overwhelming shift within my body. The twins were crowning.

The pain was no longer a pulse—it was a constant, searing flame. I let out a cry that was less human and more the primal call of a Luna at the height of her power. A wave of raw, celestial energy erupted from me, shattering the remaining monitors and sending shards of glass flying across the cabin.

"They're coming!" my mother’s voice came over the comms, faint and distorted. She was in the primary pod, which had apparently survived the crash and was nearby. "Selene, the transition is hitting the peak! The pressure is too much—the hull is going to implode!"