Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 298: Episode 296: You touched her?!

Deep in the Sea, someone was restless.

Caspian hovered in the center of his chamber. The beautiful, iridescent walls offered no comfort. Outside the heavy, leviathan-bone doors, a dozen of Nerissa’s elite guards maintained a vigilant patrol, their tridents crossed to ensure the Merman King did not take a single scale outside the palace.

Caspian had been swimming in tight, agitated circles for hours.

He had to get out. Every second he spent trapped in this cage was another second Roxy spent on the Surface, believing he was nothing more than a treacherous monster.

Suddenly, the dense, magical water pressure sealing the vault doors subtly shifted.

Caspian’s silver-blue eyes narrowed into lethal slits. He braced his broad shoulders, fully prepared to blast his way through whichever guards his mother had sent to check on him.

But the heavy bone doors didn’t swing wide open. Instead, a small, hidden service panel near the base of the wall, used centuries ago by servants to clean the royal vaults, glowed with a faint blue light and silently slid open.

Nimue slipped through the narrow gap. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The younger princess looked around frantically, her shimmering blue tail flicking as she ensured she hadn’t been followed. She swam upward, floating level with her massive brother. Her delicate face was pale, and she was clutching a heavily encrypted royal cipher-stone in her hands.

"Nimue," Caspian breathed, his rigid posture relaxing marginally. "What are you doing here? Mother will have you confined to the lower wards if she catches you bypassing the vault seals."

"I don’t care," Nimue whispered, her voice trembling slightly, though her eyes burned with fierce defiance. She swam closer, looking at the exhausted, desperate lines of her brother’s face. "Mother thinks you will eventually cool down. She thinks if she leaves you in here long enough, the madness of the Surface will fade, and you will submit to the Spires again."

"I will die before I submit," Caspian stated, his voice a cold, immovable absolute.

"I know," Nimue replied softly. She lowered her gaze, her fingers nervously tracing the runes on the cipher-stone. "Which is why I am going to sneak you out."

Caspian blinked, utterly stunned. Less than a day ago, Nimue had been screaming at him for abandoning his throne and defending a Surface-dweller. "You? Why would you commit treason against Mother to help me? You despise the fact that I am leaving."

Nimue looked back up, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "I do despise it. I hate that you are throwing your life away. But... When you said we should bring Keenan back..."

Her voice cracked. "I was just a child when he was banished. Mother and you scrubbed his name from the kingdom, but he was my older brother too. He used to sneak me glowing anemones from the deep trenches. When you exiled him, you broke our family. The Spires have felt cold ever since."

She hated him yes, but deep down she knew that if Caspian left, she would have no older brother to defend her.

Nimue squared her shoulders, a startling resilience settling over her delicate features.

"If you truly mean to abdicate," Nimue vowed, "and if you leaving means my older brother finally gets to come home... then I will help you. I am in support of Keenan becoming King. I just want my brother back."

Caspian stared at his sister, a profound wave of guilt washing over him. He had been so consumed by his own rule, and then so entirely consumed by his obsession with Roxy, that he had never noticed the quiet grief his sister had been carrying for a century.

He reached out, his large hand gently cupping her shoulder. "Thank you, Nimue."

"Don’t thank me yet," she warned, holding up the glowing cipher-stone. "This will mask your magical signature from Mother’s guards, but only for an hour. You have to take the thermal vents out of the upper castle. Go. Quickly."

Caspian didn’t waste a single microsecond. He took the stone, his massive silver tail propelling him forward. He slipped seamlessly through the service panel, leaving the glittering, oppressive cage of the palace behind him.

The Outer Wastes were a terrifying, dead zone at the very bottom of the abyssal trench.

As Caspian swam further from the Spires, the beautiful, bioluminescent glow of the kingdom completely faded. The water here was freezing, devoid of light, and thick with the massive, skeletal remains of ancient leviathans. The crushing pressure would have instantly pulverized a lesser creature, but Caspian’s royal core sustained him.

He swam for miles into the absolute, suffocating dark, until he reached the edge of a massive, jagged chasm that dropped infinitely downward into the earth’s crust.

"Keenan!" Caspian roared, his Alpha command sending a violent shockwave into the black abyss.

The sound echoed off the dead rocks and faded into nothingness.

Caspian waited, his silver-blue eyes scanning the impenetrable dark. Nothing moved. There was no shift in the current, no sign of life. His brother was either ignoring him, or the Wastes had finally claimed him.

"Keenan, answer me!" Caspian bellowed again, his frustration bleeding into his voice. Still, absolute silence answered him.

Caspian gritted his teeth, his hands curling into fists. He knew exactly how to draw the exiled prince out. He had to show his underbelly. He had to offer the one thing Keenan had always wanted.

"I am stepping down!" Caspian shouted into the void, throwing his pride away completely. "I am relinquishing the crown of the Deep Spires! I am going to the Surface to be with my mate and my child! I came to give you the kingdom!"

For a long, agonizing moment, the water remained perfectly still.

Then, a deep, rumbling, terrifyingly dark chuckle echoed from the shadows of the chasm beneath him.

The water violently displaced. From the absolute pitch-black depths, a pair of glowing, piercing red eyes opened.

A massive figure emerged from the trench. Keenan was horrifyingly magnificent. He was easily as large as Caspian, but where Caspian was a beacon of shining silver, Keenan was forged from the dark.

His dark hair was wild, and his red eyes locked onto Caspian with a mixture of dark amusement.

"The golden boy of the Spires," Keenan rasped, his voice a rough, gravelly purr that grated against the water. "Swimming into my graveyard. I must admit, little brother, when I heard your voice, I thought you had come to finally execute me. But this... this is far more entertaining."

Keenan swam in a slow, predatory circle around Caspian. He analyzed his younger brother from head to fin.

"You have changed, Caspian," Keenan observed, pausing right in front of him. The exiled prince tilted his head, a mocking, knowing smirk curling his scarred lips. "Your aura is completely frayed. The perfect, untouchable King is practically vibrating with desperation. Tell me, is it because of her? Is it because of the feisty little mate you managed to lose?"

Caspian’s spine went rigid. The silver-blue glow of his eyes flared defensively. "Do not mock my bond, Keenan. I came to offer you a throne, not to trade insults."

Keenan let out another dark, rasping laugh, completely unfazed by Caspian’s pressure. "Oh, I am not mocking you, brother. I completely understand. A magnificent creature, truly. I can easily see how she drove you to such pathetic madness."

Caspian frowned, a sudden, cold prickle of unease sliding down his spine. "What are you talking about?"

Keenan’s smirk widened into a terrifying, devastating grin. He floated closer, leaning in so his voice carried only the barest, most intimate whisper into Caspian’s mind.

"I am talking about the fact that I had the distinct pleasure of meeting her," Keenan revealed, his eyes dancing with malicious delight. "Twice, actually. The ocean is vast, Caspian, but the currents talk. When she slipped through your clumsy, overbearing fingers... I was there in the dark. I saved her pretty little life from the leviathans."

Keenan let his words hang in the freezing water, twisting the knife. "She was terrified, exhausted, and incredibly soft. And she was, indeed, a feisty one."

The water around Caspian literally began to boil. The Merman King’s possessive, territorial instincts, violently and explosively flared. The idea of his dangerous, exiled brother being anywhere near his Queen, seeing her vulnerable, sent a blinding, murderous rage straight to his core.

Caspian’s fangs elongated, a feral, chest-rattling snarl tearing from his throat. He lunged forward, grabbing his neck and hauling the larger merman directly into his face.

"You have met Roxy?" Caspian roared, his silver-blue eyes blazing with crazed, uncontrolled jealousy. "And touched her?!"