The Rejected Mate

Chapter 16

Selene’s POV

The world became a washing machine of crushing pressure, churning silt, and freezing black water. The vortex tore through the hidden cavern with a sound like a thousand trains colliding at once. I was ripped off the obsidian altar, the violent current spinning me around until I didn't know which way was up, down, or deep.

But my arms never unlocked. I held the twins against my chest with a death grip fueled by the absolute final reserves of my maternal instinct. Their small, golden bodies were warm against my freezing tactical armor, a tiny hearth of divine fire in a desert of ice.

*Protect them, the voice of my ancestors echoed faintly in my fading consciousness. *Protect the anchors.*

The water violently threw me forward, slamming my shoulder against a jagged piece of a collapsing stone pillar. The pain was sharp and blinding, but it forced a gasp of air from my lungs—air that was thankfully still trapped within the fading, pressurized bubble that the priestess ghost had triggered before the cave-in.

Suddenly, the spinning stopped. The heavy undertow spat me out of the narrow rock fissure, depositing my body onto a soft, sloping bed of deep-sea sand.

I coughed violently, spitting out a mixture of saltwater and blood. I blinked through the murky darkness, my celestial white vision straining to pierce the blackness of this subterranean abyss. The environment was completely silent now, save for the distant, muffled booms of the trench collapsing miles above us.

"Babies," I rasped, my voice sounding hollow and weak inside the tiny pocket of air.

I looked down at my chest. The twins were perfectly still. Their silver eyes were closed, their long, dark lashes resting against glowing golden skin. For a terrifying second, my heart stopped. I thought the impact had killed them. But then, a soft, synchronized hum vibrated from their tiny chests. They weren't dead; they were in a deep, magical hibernation, their infant systems shutting down to survive the extreme pressure changes of the deep sea.

I let out a ragged sob of relief, pressing my forehead against their soft heads.

"You're alive," I whispered. "You're still here."

"But for how long?" a voice asked from the darkness behind me.

I snapped my head around, my hand instantly flying to my thigh to draw my mother's silver dagger. But my fingers gripped empty air. The weapon had been lost in the vortex. I was completely unarmed, my body battered from advanced labor, and my spiritual energy running on absolute zero.

A figure stepped out from behind a massive, hydrothermal vent that spewed black, mineral-rich smoke into the water.

It was Lucian.

Or at least, the entity that wore his face. He walked across the ocean floor with an unnatural, heavy grace, his silver-and-black tactical uniform torn to shreds, revealing pale, marble-like skin underneath. The dual-colored eyes—one glowing with a sharp, luminescent silver, the other burning with a double ring of crimson fire—locked directly onto me. The obsidian sword he held was no longer dripping; it was vibrating, humming with a frequency that made my ears bleed.

"You are a stubborn creature, Selene," Lucian said, his voice echoing through the water as if he were speaking inside a grand cathedral. "You jump off cliffs, you drown in trenches, you detonate spiritual bombs... yet you keep breathing. It’s almost admirable."

I dragged my body backward through the sand, using my elbows to propel myself away from him as he advanced. I kept the twins buried beneath my chin, shielding them with my entire upper torso. "Stay back, Lucian. If you have any trace of Sebastian’s blood left in you, you won't touch these children."

Lucian stopped five paces away, tilting his chiseled head to the side. A dark, hollow laugh escaped his lips. "Sebastian’s blood? You still think of him? That weak, pathetic pup is currently drowning in a sinking metal coffin at the top of the ridge, Selene. He was a distraction. A genetic shield designed to take the blows of the world while the true king was forged in the dark vaults."

He raised the obsidian blade, pointing the tip directly at my throat.

"I don't want to kill you, sister," Lucian said, his voice dropping into a tone of chilling, elegant reason. "The ancient entity and I are one now. We possess the primal memories of the first packs, and the genetic perfection of modern science. But we lack the anchor. Your twins carry the original blueprint of the priestess protection spell. Give them to me, and I will let you live as the matriarch of the new world order."

"I would rather watch this entire planet burn to ash," I spat, my eyes flashing with a final, desperate spark of celestial white fire.

"A predictable answer," Lucian sighed, his expression turning cold and ruthless. "Then I will take them by force."

He raised the sword high above his head, ready to drive it down through my chest to reach the infants.

I closed my eyes, pulling my children as close as physically possible, waiting for the final, fatal blow. *I'm sorry,* I prayed to them silently. *I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you.

BOOM.

A sudden, high-velocity projectile slammed into Lucian’s side with the force of a missile. The impact sent him flying twenty feet across the ocean floor, his obsidian blade slicing a useless arc through the sand before he crashed into the rocky base of the hydrothermal vent.

My eyes snapped open.

Cutting through the dark water with furious speed was a damaged, heavily scarred mechanical vessel. It was the primary transport pod—the one my mother and Aria had been inside. The exterior armor plating was warped and dented, and the propulsion thrusters were spitting out wild streaks of blue and green sparks, but it was still functional.

The main hatch blew open, and a figure vaulted out into the water.

It wasn't a Triton warrior. It was my mother, Elara.

She wore a heavy, deep-sea pressure suit designed by Caspian’s engineers, her silver-white hair tied back tightly inside a transparent helmet. In her hands, she held the lightweight tactical crossbow she had retrieved from the cottage ruins, loaded with a massive, heavy-duty silver harpoon bolt that was glowing with a pure, concentrated silver liquid.

"Get away from my daughter!" Elara roared through the suit's external speakers, her voice crackling with fury.

She didn't wait for Lucian to recover. Thrip. She fired the harpoon bolt point-blank into his chest.

Lucian let out a sharp, metallic shriek of pain as the silver-tipped projectile pierced his shoulder, pinning him directly to the stone wall of the thermal vent. The glowing silver liquid entered his system instantly, forcing his synthetic, dual-natured biology to violently reject itself. White and red sparks exploded from his skin as he thrashed against the stone, trying to tear the harpoon from his flesh.

My mother sprinted across the sand, dropping the empty crossbow and falling to her knees beside me. She frantically checked my vitals, her hands hovering over the twins.

"Selene, we have to go now!" she yelled over the comms, her face pale with terror behind the visor. "The primary pod is stable enough for one more short-range launch, but the sublevel vaults have entirely collapsed. The pressure wave is traveling down the trench. This whole sector is going to cave in!"

"Where... where is Caspian?" I gasped, my voice barely audible as she helped me to my feet. "Where is Sebastian?"

My mother’s expression darkened, a look of profound grief crossing her features. "Caspian’s pod took the brunt of the initial collapse, Selene. He managed to eject Sebastian’s unconscious body into our pod's auxiliary airlock before his own vessel was crushed by the landslide. Sebastian is inside... but he's barely breathing. His heart is failing from the spiritual feedback."

A heavy, suffocating weight settled on my chest. Caspian... the arrogant, powerful Triton king who had saved me from the sea, was gone, buried beneath thousands of tons of rock. And Sebastian was dying in an airlock, his life force spent trying to act as a shield for children he had once rejected.

"We can't leave him," I whispered, the words surprising even myself. "If he dies, the twins lose their biological grounding. The feedback will start again."

"I know," my mother said, gripping my arm tightly as she guided my stumbling, exhausted frame toward the open hatch of the primary pod. "That’s why we’re taking him. Move!"

We scrambled inside the damaged vessel. The interior was crowded and chaotic. Aria was huddled in the corner of the small cabin, her grey hair disheveled, her eyes completely vacant as she clutched her knees, rocking back and forth in a state of total catatonia. In the small auxiliary airlock chamber at the rear of the cabin, Sebastian lay flat on his back, his massive chest barely moving, a faint, ghostly white light still leaking from his mouth and nose.

My mother slammed the main hatch shut, the automated seals locking with a weak, sputtering hiss. The interior lights flickered a sickly amber color, the onboard computer chirping out a continuous series of system failure warnings.

"Warning. Hull integrity at four percent. Primary propulsion offline. Initializing emergency ballast ejection."*

"Hold onto something!" Elara yelled, throwing herself into the pilot’s seat and slamming both hands onto the manual launch levers.

The pod lurched violently, a high-pitched scream tearing from the structural beams as the emergency ballast tanks detached. We rocketed upward, leaving the dark ocean floor behind as we shot toward the surface space.

Through the rear viewport, I saw the subterranean trench.

Lucian had finally managed to snap the silver harpoon bolt. He stood on the collapsing sand bed, his dual-colored eyes burning through the murky water like a demon's headlights. He didn't chase us. Instead, he raised his pale hand, pointing his index finger directly at our escaping vessel.

A massive, swirling vortex of black, corrosive liquid exploded from his palm, chasing our pod through the dark water like a living shadow.

The pod shook violently as the edge of the black vortex clipped our rear thrusters. The computer panels erupted in a shower of sparks, blinding me for a split second. The engine let out a final, dying groan, and the cabin was suddenly filled with the terrifying sound of rushing air as a structural c***k began to spider-web across the front view-screen.

"We're losing pressure!" Elara screamed, fighting the unresponsive steering columns. "We're not going to make the surface! We're coming up in the Forbidden Marshes!"

Before I could answer, a violent impact from below sent the pod spinning out of control. My head slammed against the steel bulkhead, and the world went completely black.

Hours later...

The sound of crickets and the thick, suffocating smell of stagnant mud and sulfur woke me.

I blinked open my eyes, my vision blurry and unfocused. The celestial white fire in my sight had faded, replaced by a dull, throbbing ache behind my temples. I was no longer underwater. The pod had crashed, its mangled, metallic hull half-buried in the thick, black mud of a desolate marshland. The sky above was dark, the crimson Blood Moon finally setting behind a dense layer of weeping willow trees.

I looked down at my arms. The twins were still securely cradled against my chest, their skin warm, their breathing steady. They had survived the crash.

"Mother?" I called out, my voice a dry whisper.

There was no answer. I looked toward the front of the cabin. The pilot’s seat was empty. The windshield was completely shattered, and a trail of blood led out through the broken frame into the dark swamp. My mother’s helmet lay discarded on the floor, cracked in two.

"Aria?" I turned my head. The corner where my half-sister had been huddling was also empty. The auxiliary airlock door was hanging wide open, swinging weakly on its hinges. Sebastian was gone.

The entire pod was completely deserted. I was entirely alone with two newborn atavistic heirs in the middle of the most hostile, lawless territory on the pack borders—the Forbidden Marshes, a place where rogue wolves, exiled witches, and corporate bounty hunters hunted for sport.

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my veins. I forced my battered, exhausted body to move, crawling out through the shattered frame of the windshield and dropping onto the wet, squelching mud of the swamp.

The night air was dead silent, save for the rhythmic dripping of water from the willow trees. The smell of blood was heavy in the air—fresh blood, tracking away from the crash site into the deep shadows of the marsh.

I clutched my babies tightly, taking a single, trembling step into the mud, my eyes scanning the darkness for any sign of my mother or Sebastian.

Suddenly, the rustling of reeds to my left made me freeze.

I snapped my head around, my heart hammering against my ribs as a massive shadow stepped out from behind a weeping willow tree. It wasn't a wolf. It wasn't Lucian.

It was a man dressed in a long, tattered black trench coat, his face obscured by a silver, expressionless porcelain mask. In his right hand, he held a massive, high-caliber sniper rifle, and pinned beneath his heavy, combat-booted foot was my mother’s unconscious, bleeding form.

Beside him, two massive, cybernetically altered rogue wolves bared their glowing yellow fangs at me, their cyber-netic implants hissing with hydraulic fluid.

The masked man slowly raised his rifle, aiming the barrel directly at my chest, his voice sounding completely modulated and robotic through the mask.

"Selene Vance," the man said, a cold, mechanical click echoing from the weapon. "The Blackwood Syndicate has increased the bounty on your children to fifty million corporate credits. Dead or alive. Step away from the heirs, or I will take the payment in blood."

Before I could even breathe, a second, agonizing rustle echoed from the dark water behind me, and a pale, hand with entirely black claws slowly broke the surface of the swamp mud, gripping my ankle with an icy, familiar strength.