The air still smelled like death.
Rot, rust, and the distant sting of something chemical the perfume of a world that had bled dry. Selene Reyes pressed a cloth to her mouth, crouched low behind an overturned gurney as the late afternoon sun spilled gold through broken hospital windows. She moved slow, calculated. One noise, one cough, one misstep, and she was dead.
She knew better than anyone: hospitals were graveyards now.
She gripped the handle of her rusted crowbar tighter and stepped over the shattered remains of a medicine cabinet. Her boots crunched on broken glass too loud. She froze, heart thudding. Waited. Nothing.
Then a sound.
A boot scraping across linoleum.
Selene ducked behind a wall, silent as the corpses lining the corridor. Her breath caught. They weren't alone. Someone else was here.
She didn't come to fight. She came for antibiotics anything to save the woman at the shack who'd been coughing blood for two days. A stranger, sure, but still human. Selene still believed in saving people, even when the world had stopped saving her.
A shout rang out sharp, guttural.
Shit.
She ran.
Boots pounded behind her as she burst through the hospital's fire exit. Concrete stairs spiraled downward, slippery with moss and bloodstains. She didn't look back. She just ran, lungs burning, vision blurring from exhaustion. The second she reached the bottom floor, she slammed into something solid unmoving.
A man.
She stumbled back, raising her crowbar, but a gun was already pointed at her head.
"Don't."
His voice was low, hard. He didn't need to yell to sound dangerous.
He wore black tactical gear, dusty and worn but still perfectly fitted, like it hadn't been taken off in days. His face was half-covered with a scarf, but his eyes icy gray, sharp as cut steel were visible. They narrowed on her. Calculating.
He tilted his head. "Scavenger?"
Selene said nothing. Her hands itched to move. To run. But his stance told her it would be suicide.
Another man walked up behind him, panting, sweaty. "Boss. She's fast. Took out two of ours on the fourth floor."
Boss?
Shit.
This wasn't just a raiding party. This was a unit. Organized. Armed. Military-trained. And he was their leader.
"Bring her," the one called 'Boss' said, voice emotionless.
"No," Selene snapped, gripping her crowbar.
The butt of a rifle slammed into her side before she could react.
Pain exploded through her ribs. She collapsed, gasping.
Darkness pulled at the edge of her vision. The last thing she saw was the man crouching beside her, pulling her head up by her hair calm, cold, and devastatingly controlled.
"I don't kill useful things," he said. "Welcome to Fort Thorne."
The next thing she knew.
She woke up in chains.
Metal cuffs around her wrists, thick leather around her ankles, tethered to a hospital bed frame bolted to the ground. Her bag was gone. Her weapons. Her dignity.
The room was dim. Flickering lights overhead. The walls were lined with cabinets, surgical trays, and blood-stained equipment that looked neither clean nor legal.
And he was there.
Cassian Vale.
Now she had a name to go with the eyes.
He stood in front of her like a carved statue, arms crossed, watching her with silent judgment.
"I'm not a prisoner," Selene rasped, voice raw.
"No," he said simply. "You're a medic."
"I didn't agree to that."
"You will."
She laughed harsh, bitter. "What makes you think I'd ever work for a man who chained me to a bed?"
Cassian stepped forward. Close enough for her to smell the smoke on his skin and the leather of his gloves. His presence was suffocating. He didn't speak for a moment, just stared.
"You're not chained because I want you broken," he said softly. "You're chained because I don't trust you not to run. Not until you understand."
"Understand what?"
"That this world doesn't give you choices. Only illusions. Work for me, and you eat. You sleep in a locked room. You get medicine. Safety. Water."
He leaned down.
"Refuse, and I'll leave the door open for the others. Let them decide what they want from you first."
Her stomach twisted.
"You're threatening me."
"I'm giving you options."
She spat in his face.
Cassian didn't flinch.
He straightened, wiped his cheek with the back of his glove, and smiled slow and dangerous. "I like you."
Selene's breath caught. Not because he was handsome though God, he was. Tall, built like sin, with eyes that promised ruin. But because something about him made her blood pulse. Like she was dancing too close to a fire and daring it to catch her.
"You can't break me," she whispered.
"I don't want to break you," Cassian said, walking away.
That night, they gave her a room. No windows. One bed. A sink. A camera in the corner.
She didn't sleep.
Because despite everything the threat, the chains, the danger her body wouldn't stop remembering the way he looked at her. The way he spoke. Calm. Confident. Commanding.
Selene hated herself for it, but her thighs clenched when she replayed the way he'd leaned down and said, I want to burn with you.
She didn't want this.
She didn't want him.
But her body hadn't gotten the memo.