Rejected Mate: The SSS-Grade Princess Returns

"Warning. Female vital signs unstable. Gene tearing pain exceeding level eight."

The cold mechanical arm of the Vane Fleet Advanced Medical Pod pierced Lyra's skin, pumping a pale blue nutrient solution into her veins. She gripped the metal side rails of the delivery bed.

A violent contraction ripped through her abdomen, making her stomach cramp and her lungs seize. Cold sweat drenched the thin white sheets beneath her.

"Recommendation," the AI's robotic voice echoed in the empty, sterile room. "Male partner required for pheromone pacification."

Lyra let out a breath that sounded like a dry sob. She forced a pale, trembling smile.

Her legal partner, the S-grade Silver Wolf Commander Kaelen Vane, was not here. He had never been here.

Across the room, the massive holographic screen flickered to life. It was a default setting designed to distract laboring females with entertainment news.

The screen filled with Kaelen's sharp, handsome profile. He stood in a high-end mecha boutique on the Capital Star. Beside him stood a delicate woman with pristine white swan wings folded neatly against her back.

The golden headline flashed across the bottom of the broadcast: Commander Vane Spends Ten Million Star Coins for a Smile! S-Grade Silver Wolf and A-Grade Swan, A Match Made in Heaven!

The woman was Sylvia Nova. Lyra's adopted sister. Sylvia leaned into Kaelen's chest, smiling up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

Another wave of agony hit Lyra. Her vision blurred. It wasn't from tears. The pain felt like a physical blade scraping against her spine, trying to pry her soul out of her flesh.

She bit down hard on her lower lip. The metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth. She swallowed the scream. She refused to show weakness to that man, even through a screen.

The heavy metal doors slid open. Two young nurses walked in, checking the monitors. They glanced up at the holographic broadcast.

"The Commander really spoils Miss Nova," the first nurse whispered, her eyes darting toward Lyra's sweating form. "Unlike the one in here. Pathetic."

The second nurse nudged her. "Keep your voice down. She is still his legal partner. Even if she's just a useless E-grade female, she occupies the seat."

"What partner?" The first nurse scoffed, adjusting Lyra's IV drip with rough hands. "They've been matched for a year, and the Commander hasn't touched her once. If it weren't for the mandatory matching system, how could an E-grade trash ever be worthy of an S-grade Commander?"

The words pierced Lyra's eardrums like physical needles. Her face remained entirely blank. Her eyes, however, grew as cold as a frozen wasteland.

A sharp, frantic movement came from her swollen belly. The half-beast infant inside her sensed its mother's despair and began to thrash.

The pain spiked, pushing Lyra to the edge of consciousness. A memory flashed behind her closed eyelids. A year ago, at the Matching Center. Kaelen looking down at her genetic report.

"An E-grade?" he had sneered, his silver eyes filled with absolute disgust. "The Interstellar Marriage Bureau is truly producing garbage these days."

On the screen, Kaelen gently brushed a nonexistent speck of dust from Sylvia's hair. He had never looked at Lyra with anything but contempt.

Lyra snapped her eyes shut. She blocked out the screen. She blocked out the nurses. She focused every ounce of her remaining mental energy on her abdomen. Don't be afraid, baby, she thought, pushing her weak energy inward to wrap around the struggling life. From now on, we only have each other.

It was a suicidal move. For an E-grade female to drain her mental energy during labor meant certain death. Faint specks of starlight flickered in the depths of Lyra's eyes.

"Warning!" the AI shrieked. "Maternal mental energy dropping rapidly! Vital signs critical!"

The nurses panicked, rushing to the bedside, their hands scrambling over the control panels.

Before they could inject a stimulant, a loud, piercing cry shattered the chaos of the medical pod.

The mechanical arms carefully lifted a tiny infant. The baby girl was covered in fine silver fuzz, with two tiny, wet wolf ears twitching on her head.

Lyra stared at the small life.

Her chest heaved. She had zero strength left.

Her eyes drifted back to the holographic screen. Kaelen was sliding a massive spatial ring onto Sylvia's finger. The crowd in the broadcast cheered.

Lyra's cracked lips slowly curved upward into a freezing, relieved smile.

Enough. It was finally enough.

This ridiculous, one-sided marriage. This pathetic solo performance. She was ending it right now.

She forced her heavy tongue to move, speaking directly to the room's AI. "Connect to... the Interstellar Tribunal. I want to file... an application for the Mandatory Termination of the Matching Contract."

The nurses froze. They stared at the bleeding, exhausted E-grade female in absolute shock.

She was actively dumping the S-grade beast husband that every female in the galaxy dreamed of?

Lyra's eyes held no hesitation. Just a dead, quiet void.

As the darkness pulled her under, her last thought was clear. She was taking her daughter and leaving Kaelen Vane. Forever.

Lyra was in a coma for the entire day due to the pain.

Lyra opened her eyes. The stark white ceiling of the medical pod greeted her. She turned her head slightly. Beside her bed, a temperature-controlled incubator hummed quietly. Inside, baby Nora slept, her tiny silver wolf ears twitching in a dream.

The heavy metal door slid open. The first nurse from yesterday walked in. Her face was tight, her eyes darting away from Lyra's gaze. The open disgust was gone, replaced by a strange, uncomfortable awe. A female who dared to dump an S-grade Commander was no longer just a joke.

"You're awake," the nurse said stiffly. "The Commander is requesting a comms link."

Lyra's face remained blank. She gave a single, slow nod. She had nothing left to say to him, but she needed to finalize the break.

The space beside her bed shimmered. Kaelen's holographic projection materialized. He wore his crisp, black military uniform, standing on the bridge of his flagship.

He looked down at her. His thick brows pulled together in a hard line. His voice was as cold as deep space. "Are you done throwing this tantrum?"

Lyra didn't blink.

"Terminating the contract?" Kaelen let out a harsh breath, his silver eyes flashing with irritation. "Lyra, put away these cheap, hard-to-get tricks. It only makes me look down on you more."

Lyra ignored him. She kept her eyes on the incubator. Nora's small chest rose and fell steadily.

Kaelen's jaw tightened at her silence. "I admit, my absence yesterday was an oversight. But you are an E-grade female. You cannot provide any effective mental pacification for my mental sea. Going there would have been a waste of my time."

He paused. He adjusted his cuffs, his tone shifting into one of arrogant charity. "I had my adjutant transfer one million star coins to your account. Consider it compensation for birthing the cub. Now, go withdraw the termination application."

Lyra finally shifted her gaze. She looked at the hologram. The desperate love that used to burn in her eyes was entirely gone. Only a glacier remained.

She opened her mouth. Her throat was raw, her voice hoarse, but every syllable struck like a hammer. "Kaelen Vane. I am not negotiating with you. The contract will be terminated."

Kaelen froze. His eyes widened slightly. He had never heard this submissive, pathetic female speak to him with such absolute authority.

A second later, his shock morphed into a dark sneer. "Who do you think you are? You are an E-grade. Without my protection, taking that half-beast mutt into the galaxy... do you think you'll survive three days?"

"That is my business," Lyra cut him off. Her heart rate didn't even spike. "Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. The Interstellar Tribunal. I will be there. Whether you show up or not, this contract is dead."

She reached out and hit the red button on the bedside panel. The comms link severed instantly. Kaelen's projection vanished into thin air.

The nurse standing by the door dropped her datapad. It clattered against the metal floor. She stared at Lyra, her mouth hanging open.

Lyra closed her eyes, letting her head sink back into the pillow. Her body ached terribly, but her chest felt lighter than it had in a year. She was free.

At the exact same moment, deep in the lower levels of the medical planet, Chief Geneticist Quentin Starfall stood in his secure lab. His white hair was a mess. He held a small vial of umbilical cord blood extracted from Nora.

It was a routine rejection test. Quentin sighed, rubbing his tired eyes, and slotted the vial into the massive, multi-million-coin genetic analyzer.

He turned his back to log the entry.

Beep.

The machine's steady blue indicator light suddenly flashed a violent, blinding red.

Quentin spun around. The warning sirens mounted on the lab walls began to scream. The energy readouts on the digital display were skyrocketing exponentially.

"Impossible," Quentin gasped. He lunged for the manual override switch.

It was too late. The energy readings smashed through the machine's maximum threshold-the red zone indicating S-grade. The bar shot upward, tearing into a color that hadn't been seen on a monitor in decades.

A blinding, brilliant gold.

Quentin's pupils dilated in sheer terror. He recognized that color. It was a genetic signature recorded only in the most ancient, classified texts of the Royal Academy.

BOOM.

The precision analyzer, built to withstand S-grade energy fluctuations, violently exploded.

A shockwave of golden energy blasted through the room. Every glass beaker and monitor shattered into dust.

Quentin was thrown backward, slamming hard against the metal door. He ignored the sharp pain in his ribs. He scrambled to his hands and knees, his eyes locked on the smoking remains of the main screen.

The final symbol burned brightly through the smoke before the power died.

SSS.

SSS-grade. A mutated pacifier. The only god-tier energy source in the known universe.

Quentin's hands began to shake violently. Not from fear, but from a manic, overwhelming realization. He remembered the lost royal bloodline of the Starfall family. He remembered the unique genetic marker they had been hunting for over twenty years.

He crawled over the broken glass, tearing his palms open, and reached the emergency comms console. His bloody fingers punched in a top-tier encrypted warp-transmission code.

He knew that the second he hit send, the entire political landscape of the galaxy would be ripped apart.

The screen connected. Quentin screamed into the microphone, his voice cracking. "We found her! We found her! Her Highness... Her Highness has returned!"

The command center of the Starfall Royal Academy was a fortress of black steel and glowing data streams. Suddenly, the air inside turned as heavy as lead. Every technician, every general, stopped breathing.

They stared in absolute reverence at the two figures standing before the main warp-comms screen.

Interstellar Empress Eleanor Starfall gripped the edge of the console. Even in her fifties, her beauty was a sharp, terrifying weapon. Right now, she stared at Quentin's bloodied, frantic face on the screen.

Beside her, her husband, Richard Starfall, placed a heavy, steadying hand on her shoulder.

"Repeat that," Eleanor whispered.

Quentin sobbed on the other end of the galaxy. "Yes, Your Majesty! The genetic map is a one-hundred-percent match! It is the Princess! She is alive!"

Eleanor's knees buckled slightly. The cold, untouchable facade she had maintained for twenty years shattered into pieces. Her eyes instantly filled with red, burning tears.

Her daughter. The child she thought had burned to ash in that pirate raid two decades ago. She was alive.

Richard didn't waste a second. He turned his head slightly toward his adjutant. "Lock onto Quentin Starfall's coordinates. The Vane Fleet's medical planet? Hmph. That upstart." The disgust in Richard's voice was palpable.

Eleanor sucked in a jagged breath. "My baby... how is she? Is she safe?"

Quentin's face twisted with a mix of rage and deep humiliation.

"Your Highness... she just gave birth to a female cub. But her partner, the Vane Fleet Commander, was absent. He is currently parading around the Capital Star with another female!"

Quentin slammed his fist against his broken console.

"Furthermore, the Princess was misdiagnosed as an E‑grade. Vane couldn't care less whether she lived or died, and is even using money as bait to stop her from terminating their matching contract!"

The temperature in the command center plummeted below freezing. A terrifying, suffocating mental pressure exploded from Eleanor's body. The male officers in the room instantly felt their knees buckle, their instincts screaming at them to submit to the overwhelming power.

"He. Dares." Eleanor ground out the words. Each syllable was a poisoned blade.

Richard tightened his grip on his wife's shoulder. His eyes were flat, dead pools of black. "Eleanor. Breathe. We need to bring our daughter home first."

He turned fully to his adjutant. His voice was calm, but the words carried the weight of a planetary execution.

"Transmit my orders. Initiate Project Eclipse. The First, Third, and Seventh Star Destroyer Fleets will undergo immediate spatial warp to the target coordinates. Total blockade of the Vane Fleet medical planet and all surrounding shipping lanes."

The adjutant swallowed hard, sweat beading on his forehead. "Your Majesty, that is the equivalent of declaring an interstellar war!"

Richard stared at him. "My daughter is suffering there. This is an interstellar war."

"Activate the highest-grade stealth fields," Eleanor added, her voice shaking with raw fury. "I don't want anyone to know we are coming. I want to see with my own eyes who dares to bully my flesh and blood."

The orders flashed across the network.

Light-years away, on the outer orbit of the Vane medical planet, two patrol ships drifted lazily through the void. Inside the cockpit, a radar operator sipped his synthetic coffee, bored out of his mind.

Suddenly, his primary screen exploded into a mess of white static.

"What the hell? Radar interference?" He tapped the glass.

The co-pilot sat up straight. "Mine too! All comms frequencies just got sliced!"

Before they could run a diagnostic, the dark space outside their viewport began to warp.

It looked like a massive, invisible hand was tearing a hole in the fabric of the universe. Out of the black rift slid a ship. Then another. Then ten. Then a hundred.

Massive, pitch-black Star Destroyers materialized in total silence. Painted on their armored hulls was the golden emblem of a cascading waterfall of stars-the crest of the Starfall Royal Academy. The true titans who controlled the galaxy's mental energy lifelines.

Each destroyer was ten times the size of Vane's flagship. They formed a suffocating, impenetrable net of absolute destruction around the tiny medical planet.

The radar operator dropped his coffee. The hot liquid splashed over his boots, but he couldn't feel it. He couldn't breathe.

At the front of the formation, the Royal Flagship hovered. The heavy particle cannons on its bow glowed with a lethal blue light, locked directly onto the medical facility below. They didn't fire.

They just waited, a silent promise of total annihilation.

Down on the planet, the Vane fleet personnel continued to mock the E-grade female who was about to be discarded. They had no idea that the apocalypse was already floating above their heads.

In his ruined lab, Quentin looked at the encrypted confirmation code on his datapad. He let out a long, shaky breath.

He stood up, ignoring his bleeding hands, and walked toward Lyra's room. The fate of the Princess was about to change.