Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 274: Episode 272: Sorry, Syris.

"Alright, this isn’t the right place to be fighting."

Roxy pushed herself directly between them. She yanked her hand out of Caspian’s crushing grip and planted herself squarely in the space separating the two of them.

On one side stood Caspian, his fangs were bared, his eyes fixed on Syris with rage. On the other side hovered Syris, perfectly calm, his long emerald coils shifting slowly in the current. He didn’t look intimidated by the Merman King’s sheer size. He just looked calculating.

"I am not fighting, Roxy," Syris hissed smoothly, his green eyes narrowing into sharp, vertical slits as he analyzed Caspian. "I am merely observing the male who kept you in the dark."

Caspian let out a deep, chest-rattling snarl. The water pressure violently displaced as he surged forward a half-inch, stopping only because Roxy held up a hand.

"You are trespassing in my waters, Surface-dweller," Caspian growled, his voice a dark rumble that shook Roxy’s bones. "If she wasn’t standing right here, I would snap your spine and feed you to the trench."

Syris tilted his head, completely unbothered by the threat. A slow, incredibly cold smirk spread across his pale face.

"You could certainly try," Syris replied. "Though I suspect you prefer to strike from the shadows when your enemies cannot see you."

Roxy frowned, looking back and forth between them. "Sy, what are you talking about?"

Syris kept his eyes locked firmly on Caspian. "When you were trapped down here, Roxy, we did not simply wait on the surface. I was able to make a vessel. A metal sphere powered, and we drove it directly into the ocean to come and get you."

Caspian’s jaw locked. His entire body went rigid.

"We barely made it past the reef," Syris continued, his voice turning lethally sharp. "Some of your scent was attached to something that was trying to direct us to the volcanic vents, and if we didn’t slam a button down to eject us back to the surface, we wouldn’t be with you anymore, maybe boiled alive.."

Roxy’s breath caught in her throat. She remembered Kaelen briefly mentioning a failed rescue attempt, but she hadn’t known the details.

Syris’s smirk vanished, replaced by a dark, furious glare. "A beast of the deep intentionally dragged us there. Didn’t it, King Caspian?"

Roxy whipped her head around to look at her abyssal husband.

"Caspian?" Roxy asked, her voice trembling with sudden dread. "What does he mean?"

Caspian looked down at her. He didn’t lie. He couldn’t lie to her, not when she was looking at him with those wide, desperate green eyes. The Merman King’s chest heaved, his eyes flashing with a desperate, manic justification.

"They were coming to steal you from me!" Caspian roared. "You were mine! I had just gotten you, Roxy. I was losing my mind trying to keep you safe in the Spires, and then I felt their foreign magic breaching my waters. I couldn’t let them take you back to the sun!"

"Oh my god," Roxy whispered, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. The nerve of this fucking beast!

"I made the Stingray to intercept your scent," Caspian confessed, reaching out toward her, his face twisting with a desperate need for her to understand. "I ordered it to drag them to the vents. I wanted the metal to melt. I wanted them dead so you would never have a reason to look toward the surface again!"

Absolute horror crashed over Roxy.

She stared at Caspian as if she were looking at a complete stranger. These were her mates. Zarek, Kaelen, Ren, Syris. The men she loved. The fathers of her children. Caspian had intentionally tried to burn them alive in a metal box at the bottom of the ocean simply because he couldn’t handle sharing her.

"You tried to murder them," Roxy choked out. She couldn’t even imagine what would have happened if they didn’t have the safety eject?

Caspian realized his mistake the second the words left his mouth. He saw the pure, unfiltered betrayal in her eyes, and panic immediately seized him.

"Roxy, wait, listen to me," Caspian pleaded, surging forward. He reached out with both hands, desperate to grab her, to hold her, to force her to understand the madness of his abyssal instincts. "I was terrified of losing you. I am a King, and I protect what is mine! Please, let me explain—"

Roxy didn’t let him touch her.

She flinched violently, slapping his massive hands away. The physical rejection hit Caspian hard. He froze, his eyes widening in sheer agony as Roxy quickly backpedaled through the water.

She swam directly to Syris, pressing her back against the Snake Beastman’s cool chest. Syris instantly wrapped a protective arm around her waist, anchoring her to him.

Caspian stared at the two of them, completely devastated. The sight of his wife seeking refuge in the arms of a Surface Alpha was a knife twisting directly into his heart.

Syris looked at the broken Merman King. The Snake Beastman did not gloat, but his final words were laced with a polite, devastatingly arrogant finality.

"Thank you for taking care of our Queen, Your Grace," Syris stated coldly. "We will be taking her home now."

Syris didn’t wait for a response. He turned, his powerful emerald tail whipping the water as he propelled them both upward toward the surface light.

Roxy didn’t look back. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the brightening blue water above them. Her heart was a shredded, bleeding mess in her chest. The betrayal stung worse than the freezing water.

Caspian had tried to kill her family. She loved him, she loved the child she had left behind with him, but the sheer, ruthless cruelty of his actions left a foul, bitter taste in her mouth. She couldn’t even stomach the thought of looking at his face right now.

They swam in silence, leaving the Merman King alone in the crushing dark of the twilight zone.

Minutes later, they broke the surface.

Roxy gasped, her lungs eagerly pulling in the crisp, biting air of the Surface world. The heavy, oppressive pressure of the ocean vanished instantly. She swam toward the jagged black rocks at the base of the Iron-Wood cliffside and hauled her exhausted body out of the churning water.

The moment she cleared the water, her abyssal magic faded. The shimmering violet and pearl scales of her mermaid tail dissolved, splitting back into her pale, shivering human legs.

The sleek, waterproof leathers she had stored in her System inventory materialized back onto her body.

Roxy dragged herself up the wet rock face and collapsed against a large boulder. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms tightly around her legs. Her entire body was trembling, and her mood was absolutely foul.

She had just abandoned her infant son. She had discovered her Abyssal husband was a hypocrite. It was leaving her feeling hollow and incredibly angry.

A moment later, Syris hauled himself onto the rocks beside her. Water dripped from his long, green hair, his pale skin glowing faintly in the daylight.

Syris saw the hard, miserable line of her jaw. He moved closer, settling onto the rock beside her. He wrapped a long, cool arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his side. He leaned down, gently nuzzling his face into the crook of her neck, inhaling the scent of the ocean and the sharp tang of her distress.

"You have the vial," Syris noted quietly, feeling the hard lump of the pouch at her hip. He pressed a soft kiss to her jawline. "You succeeded, my Queen. So why do you look like the world has ended?"

Roxy stared blankly at the crashing waves below. She let out a long, heavy, utterly defeated sigh. She turned her head, looking into Syris’s sharp green eyes.

"Syris..." Roxy whispered, her voice cracking. "I’m sorry."