Chapter 602: Selene
Back on Earth, inside one of Alaric’s safest hidden bases, Selene jolted awake from her unconscious state.
Her eyes snapped open. Her body sat up too quickly, and a sharp wave of dizziness rushed through her head.
Her hand caught the edge of the bed to steady herself. The room around her was unfamiliar.
Alaric was seated in a sofa beside the bed.
He looked up from the tablet in his hands as she stirred.
"Good morning."
His expression was calm. His face was tired but composed.
Selene took a moment to gather her thoughts. Her mind sorted through the last things she could remember. The tournament arena. The dark figures moving through the western wall. The figures clad in black. Her rushing forward to fight. Then nothing but darkness.
She frowned.
"What happened?"
Alaric didn’t lie.
He didn’t sugarcoat it either. He told her the truth of the plan he had built with Moon the night before the tournament.
He told her about the decision to remove her from the battlefield the moment the attack began. He told her about the specific concerns behind that decision, which he framed carefully, focusing on the value of protecting her rather than any implication about her ability to hold her own.
"Emma was the one that took you out of the arena."
Emma, seated in the same sofa a few feet from Alaric, sighed audibly.
"Alaric. Did you really have to name me? You could have just kept my involvement out of the briefing."
Alaric shrugged his shoulders. Naming Emma was his best chance at not making his sister angry at him. By placing Emma in the mix, comforting Selene became much easier.
Emma turned to Selene with a wry, apologetic smile.
"I’m sorry, girly. Your brother and your boyfriend forced me to do this. I was just following orders. If there is someone to blame, it’s them. Although, I do see why they did it."
Selene’s brain caught on one specific word which made her cheeks flush instantly. She sneaked a quick glance at Alaric who had no reaction, before turning to Emma, "B-Boyfriend?"
The word came out like a yelp.
Emma nodded, her smile widening.
"Yes. Boyfriend. Moon was the one who insisted on the plan. He was the one who told Alaric that if the attack happens, you had to be pulled out before it started. He was also the one who insisted that the operative doing the extraction be a woman, not a man. He was very specific about it. He didn’t want you to wake up somewhere unfamiliar with a strange man carrying you."
Emma tilted her head.
"He’s quite protective. Lucky you."
Selene lowered her eyes.
For a long moment, she said nothing.
The conflicting emotions collided in her chest. Part of her felt an unexpected warmth. Moon had been thinking about her long before the battle began. He had already arranged for her safety with her own brother, making sure she would be protected no matter what happened. It was a gesture she never would have anticipated, especially when she’d spent so much time worrying about how her brother would react to Moon being close to her.
Underneath that happiness, there was something else. Something that felt like a stone lodged in her ribs.
She had been taken away before she could fight properly like they all did.
She had not stood beside Moon or her brother against the attack. She had barely contributed anything to the defense of the venue.
When the moment had come, when everything she had trained for should have been on display, she had been removed from the field like a piece of furniture that needed to be protected from breaking.
Emma was still talking. But Selene barely heard the words.
’I’m useless.’
The thought was suffocating, empowered by every hour she had spent training, and fighting monsters in the Second Sanctuary to grow stronger.
Every early morning. Every late night. Every year she had spent trying to prove to herself, and to him, that she wasn’t the failure he had always called her.
Every hour of that work had been meant to end in a single moment.
She had wanted to stand next to Moon in a real fight, one day, and be a shoulder to rely on. An actual contributor, someone whose presence made the fight easier rather than harder.
Instead, she had been unconscious in an underground facility while Moon fought with her brother, defending the arena.
Emma noticed her expression.
She stood up from the sofa and moved to sit beside Selene on the bed. Her hand rested gently on Selene’s shoulder.
"It’s okay, sweetie." Her voice softened. "Everything will be fine. You’re safe. Your brother is safe. Moon is safe. The attack has ended across the city, that’s what is most important. You don’t have to carry any of this alone."
Selene stared down at her own hands folded in her lap.
Her voice came out quieter than she had intended.
"I didn’t do anything."
Emma paused.
"Selene, that’s not what—"
"I trained for so long for this..." Her tone continued to be quiet, and condescending, more to herself than to Emma.
"I trained until my hands bled and my legs gave out. I did it because I wanted to be there when you guys needed me. I wanted to be useful. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t what HE always said I was."
Her fingers curled slightly against her palms.
"And when it finally happened. When the fight actually came. I was asleep in a bed under the city. I wasn’t there. Alaric fought. Moon fought. You fought. And I was tucked away like something that couldn’t be trusted to stand up on its own."
Her voice hitched for a fraction of a second.
Selene swallowed the lump in her throat.
"I’m not angry at you. I understand why you did it. It was the right choice. I know it was."
Her shoulders dropped by the smallest fraction.
"That’s what hurts. That it was the right choice. That the right choice, from anyone who cares about me, is to make sure I’m not there when it matters."
Emma didn’t say anything for a moment.
Her hand moved slowly across Selene’s shoulder in a small, careful stroke.
Selene didn’t look up.
Her eyes stayed on her hands.