The Rejected Mate

Chapter15

Selene’s POV

"Let it," I groaned, my vision tunneling. The energy surge was so potent it turned the water outside the pod into a glowing, luminescent blue.

Sebastian was shaking uncontrollably, his body acting as a buffer for the immense power of the birth. "Selene... I can't... I can't hold it much longer!"

"You have to!" I commanded, my voice booming with a power that wasn't entirely my own. "If you let go, the surge will kill us all!"

Outside, the clack-clack-clack stopped.

A moment of absolute stillness descended. Then, the ceiling of our pod didn't just rip—it exploded.

The entity descended. It moved like smoke, a dark, spindly horror that oozed into the cabin, filling the space with the smell of ozone and wet earth. It stood tall, its black limbs stretching out to fill the small room. It looked at me, its crimson-ringed eyes widening as it felt the immense life-force of the twins ready to emerge.

It raised a long, jagged claw, poised to strike at my throat.

Caspian leaped, his blade glowing with ancient Triton power, but the entity waved a hand, and Caspian was slammed against the wall, pinned by an invisible force, his blade clattering to the floor.

Sebastian screamed as he threw his body over mine, absorbing the entity's focus.

The creature didn't kill him. It reached down and gripped Sebastian by the neck, lifting him off the medical berth like he weighed nothing. It stared into his eyes, and for a moment, the entity laughed—a sound like dry leaves skittering over a tombstone.

"The Alpha who failed his Luna," the creature spoke, its voice a horrific harmony of a thousand souls. "You are not the father of these things. You are merely the fuel."

It tossed Sebastian aside like a broken doll. He hit the far bulkhead with a sickening crunch and slumped, unconscious.

The conduit was broken.

The surge of energy, no longer grounded by Sebastian, began to backfire. My skin began to tear, tiny golden lines appearing where the power was seeking an escape. The pod’s internal temperature skyrocketed.

The entity loomed over me, its cold, wet claw reaching out toward my stomach. It didn't want to kill me. It wanted to harvest the heirs of the bloodline.

"No," I whispered.

I wasn't just a Luna. I was a vessel of the Source.

I gathered every scrap of my remaining strength, every drop of blood in my body, and I didn't push the power *out*. I pulled it in. I collapsed the entire spiritual field of the room into a single point, focusing it directly into the center of the birth.

I didn't care about the entity. I didn't care about the crushing depth of the ocean. I didn't care if I died.

The pod shook. The surrounding water began to boil.

The entity’s crimson eyes widened in genuine shock as it realized what I was doing. It tried to pull back, but the gravity I was creating was too strong.

"You fool," it hissed, its form beginning to stretch and unravel toward me. "You’ll trigger the collapse of the entire trench!"

"Then let it fall," I screamed.

A blinding, supernova-bright light filled the cabin, white as pure spirit, hot as the sun. The sound was not a bang—it was a silence so absolute it stopped the heart.

The hull of the pod disintegrated, turned into dust by the pressure of the discharge. We were exposed to the open ocean, the crushing weight of five hundred meters of water rushing in, but it didn't touch us. The bubble of my spiritual energy held it back.

In that bubble of light, the twins were born.

The world seemed to hold its breath. Even the entity had frozen, its form shattered into thousands of swirling, dark particles.

I felt them arrive—two distinct, ancient, and terrifyingly powerful spirits. They were golden, their skin glowing with the same celestial fire that fueled the stars. They didn't cry. They didn't breathe. They just looked at me with eyes as silver as the moon itself.

The bubble of light began to dim. The pressure of the deep sea began to push inward, the water reclaiming its domain.

I clutched the two infants to my chest, my arms feeling as heavy as lead. My vision was fading. The energy I had used was everything I had.

I looked over at Sebastian. He was lying motionless in the wreckage of the cabin, bleeding. Caspian was slumped in the corner, unconscious.

The entity began to reform, the particles pulling together, dark and hungry. It was weakened, but it was coming back.

I looked at my children. They were safe, but they were exhausted, their light flickering like candle flames in a storm.

I tried to reach out to the comms unit, to signal my mother, but it was gone, lost in the debris. I was drifting, the current dragging me deeper into the trench, away from the docking station, away from help.

The darkness was closing in. The entity was only feet away, its claw reaching out, its eyes fixed on the babies.

I felt a final, icy grip on my ankle.

I looked down.

A hand, pale and translucent, was reaching up from the black silt of the ocean floor, anchoring me. It wasn't the entity. It wasn't Caspian.

It was a woman. She was dressed in the robes of the High Priestesses of the Lost Sea, her skin glowing with a cold, pale light. She had been dead for centuries, a guardian of the Trench.

She looked at me, her expression unreadable, and her fingers tightened on my ankle with a strength that shouldn't have been possible.

She pulled.

I was dragged down, beneath the floor of the trench, into a hidden, ancient structure that began to glow with a light I hadn't seen since the library of the Old World.

The entity lunged for us, but the opening in the silt slammed shut, cutting off its path.

I found myself in a cavern—vast, cold, and silent. I was laying on an altar of polished obsidian. The twins were silent, their eyes closed.

I tried to get up, but my body wouldn't obey. My limbs were locked in place.

I heard footsteps—heavy, rhythmic, and familiar.

I turned my head as far as I could.

Walking toward the altar was not the entity. It was not a ghost.

It was Lucian.

But he was wrong. He was wearing the armor of the First Blood, and his eyes... one was silver, one was crimson. He held a sword in his hand, the metal dripping with a dark, viscous substance.

He looked at the twins, then at me. A smile touched his lips—a smile that was both loving and utterly murderous.

"Hello, sister," he said, his voice echoing through the cave. "I've been waiting for this moment since the dawn of time."

He raised the sword.

But as he swung it down, the cave ceiling cracked, and the entire ocean seemed to come crashing through, filling the room with a roar of white foam, sweeping us into a vortex of water, shadow, and shifting stone, leaving me spinning into a void where I couldn't tell if the twins were still in my arms, or if the sea had finally claimed them.