All Chapters of The Obsidian Covenant #1: The Rejected Mate's Ruin: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

POV: NeomaThe stench of rot coated the back of my throat. I pressed the rubber seal of my respirator tighter against my face, digging the plastic into my skin, but the chemical-sweet reek of decaying Barzil still seeped through.Three years scavenging the Scrap Fields, and my lungs still seized—a sharp, burning rejection—every time I stepped outside the Warrens. I kept my head down. Eyes burned from the sulfur. I scanned the grey shifting dunes of industrial slag.Above, the sky was a bruised purple, choked by clouds that tasted like copper. And higher still, the fragments of the Shattered Moon hung like broken teeth, glowing with that faint, mocking silver light."Hope is for the dead," I whispered into my mask. My voice sounded tinny. Wrong. "The living just need batteries."I adjusted the strap of my canvas satchel. It was light. The lack of weight sat like a stone in my stomach. If I returned to the gang boss with an empty bag, the thirst would start in two days.My mouth went dr

POV: NeomaThe claws stopped an inch from my jugular.They didn't just halt. They froze.My inner ear popped. Pressure dropped. The roar that had been vibrating in Viggo’s chest cut off—not because he stopped making noise, but because the sound waves were deleted.Swallowed. The dust motes floating in the beam of my fallen flashlight hung suspended in mid-air.Gravity lurched. Felt backward. The crushing weight of his massive body, which had been pinning me to the concrete a microsecond ago, suddenly felt hollow. A shell without mass.My hands were pressed flat against his chest. Right over the blackened, weeping wound.I hadn't meant to do it. It was pure, lizard-brain terror. Muscles had locked, throwing my hands up to push him away. But I didn't push.Something inside me pulled.My veins turned to glass. Cold. Absolute zero. It wasn't the warm, electric hum of Barzil radiation I sometimes felt near the machines. This was a vacuum. A hole in the world opening inside my chest.I’m dr

POV: NeomaThe moment Silas's eyes flickered to the door for the third time, my blood stopped.It didn't freeze—it stagnated. Heavy. Cold. A sudden dead weight in my veins.I kept my hand on the Tier 1 shard on the counter. The Barzil core pulsed against my palm—rhythmic, warm, alive. A heartbeat that wasn't mine. The shop—a hovel built inside the ribcage of a crashed transport ship—smelled of ozone and unwashed bodies. But beneath that, a new scent. Sour. Sharp.Sweat.Usually, Silas greeted me with a toothless grin and a lowball offer. He wasn't just a fence; he was the one who had taught me how to tell real Barzil from slag when I was fifteen. He had let me sleep in his storeroom during the Great Freeze. He had slipped me extra credits when the haul was bad.In the Dregs, trust was a weakness. I had given mine to him. It twisted in my gut now—a knot of iron pulling tight.Today, he was shaking. And he hadn't touched the shard."It's a good piece, girl," Silas stammered. He wiped hi

POV: NeomaConsciousness returned in fragments.First, the vibration.It wasn't the jagged, uneven rattle of a Dregs crawler. This was a deep, chest-compressing thrum. Precision engineering. A hum so low it bypassed my ears and settled directly in the fluid of my spine. My teeth ached with it.Second, the heat.The air in the transport bay was sweltering. It shouldn't have been. Sky Anchors were military-grade, climate-controlled. But the heat wasn't coming from the vents. It was radiating from the bodies around me.I forced my eyes open. My eyelids felt like sandpaper. The sedative had turned my blood to sludge, making every movement a monumental effort.I wasn't bound with ropes. I was magnetized.I was strapped into a metal jump seat, my wrists and ankles clamped by heavy iron cuffs that stuck fast to the wall behind me. The gravity-dampeners in the cuffs made my limbs feel impossibly heavy, like I was moving through wet concrete.I blinked, trying to clear the blur from my vision.

POV: NeomaThe red dot on Kaine’s chest was steady.It didn't waver. It didn't tremble. It sat perfectly over his heart. A tiny, glowing eye promising the end of my world.On the screen, Kaine looked around the rusty cage. Wiping blood from his lip. He looked so small. Fragile. Meat and bone waiting to be perforated. He didn't know death was three hundred yards away, holding its breath."Three," Nergal counted softly.The sniper’s finger would be tightening on the trigger. Taking up the slack."Two."I saw Kaine laugh at something—probably a guard. He was always so stupidly brave. He smiled—that crooked grin that used to annoy me when we fought over rations. Now, it looked like the most precious thing in the universe.My chest compressed. Air trapped."One.""Stop!"The scream tore my throat raw. Shredded vocal cords."I’ll do it! Just stop!"Nergal raised a hand. He didn't smile. He didn't gloat. He simply looked... satisfied. Like a scientist who had successfully predicted the outco