Cassian stared at her like she was a goddamn riddle he was sick of solving. But Selene didn't flinch.
"I'm not walking away," she said again, slower this time. Measured.
It was a promise and a threat.
He didn't reply.
Didn't nod.
Didn't smile.
Just… stared. Then turned and walked out, leaving Mason bloody and shaking in the chair.
Selene followed him, closing the door behind her without a word.
When they reached the hallway, she grabbed his arm. "What the hell was that? Why is Mason here? Why is he being tortured in your basement?"
Cassian didn't answer. Not right away.
Instead, he leaned in, and for one moment, Selene thought he was going to kiss her again.
But his voice was low and dangerous when he said, "Because Mason is a traitor. He sold coordinates to a group that burned one of our safe houses to the ground. Thirty-five people dead. Including three children."
Selene felt the air drain from her lungs.
"No. He wouldn't—"
Cassian's hand slammed the wall beside her face. Not touching her. But close enough that she felt the violence rippling off him.
"He would. And he did. We traced the comm link. His signal. His encryption."
"Why bring me to him, then?" she hissed. "To break me? Test me?"
His gaze darkened. "No. Because you needed to see the truth before you drowned in nostalgia."
He pulled away then. Walked off without waiting for her reply.
That night, Selene couldn't sleep.
She couldn't stop thinking about Mason. Or Cassian. Or the look on both their faces when she stood between them like a piece of a past she no longer trusted.
She sat at the edge of her bed in the dim light, heart pacing a war path. Her body ached with tension she didn't know how to release.
Why did she want Cassian?
Why did her body remember his hands, his mouth, the brutal way he made her feel alive?
It wasn't love.
It was survival-lust. Trauma-glued attraction. The kind that came from too many nights spent staring death in the face and surviving anyway.
The door burst open.
She jumped.
Cassian.
He didn't knock.
He walked in like he owned the air, the silence, the space between her and every thought she tried to smother.
"What do you want?" she said, voice hoarse.
He didn't answer.
He closed the door. Locked it. Walked over.
Selene stood. Chest rising fast. "Say something."
Still, nothing.
He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could smell the blood and ash on his skin. Close enough that her hands twitched with the urge to either slap him or strip him.
"You want me to tell you I regret it?" he asked finally. "That I didn't know it would feel like that when I kissed you? That I haven't been thinking about it every fucking hour since?"
Selene blinked.
"What do you want from me, Cassian?"
"I want you to stop pretending you don't feel it too."
She shook her head, backing away. "This isn't real. It's just trauma and hormones and—"
"You kissed me back."
"I shouldn't have."
"But you did."
He stalked forward. She backed into the wall. Again.
Her back hit the cold surface. He stopped inches away.
Selene stared up at him, heart wild. "This is dangerous."
"So is everything."
Then he kissed her again.
This time, it wasn't rushed.
It was slow. Punishing. Mouths clashing in a war of guilt and longing.
His hands found her hips, lifted her onto the desk, shoved everything aside with a crash. She gasped against his lips. He swallowed the sound, deepened the kiss.
Selene pulled his shirt up, fingers dragging along the scars on his chest proof of battles he never spoke about. He hissed against her neck when her mouth found his jaw, his throat, that spot under his ear that made his breath stutter.
Her head spun.
Not because of fear.
But because for once, in this world of rot and ruin, she felt something.
Anything.
Cassian's hand slipped beneath her shirt. His touch was hot, demanding, not soft. And that was what made her crave it more.
Because softness didn't survive in this world.
But this? This violent kind of intimacy this half-love, half-hate kind of want it could.
"Tell me to stop," he growled against her skin.
She didn't.
She yanked him closer instead.
Clothes hit the floor. Her breath caught as his mouth found places no one had touched in years. Not since before the Collapse. Before she stopped being a person and became a number.
Here, with him, she wasn't Patient 0934.
She was Selene again.
A woman. A fire. A storm.
Cassian touched her like she was both salvation and sin.
And she let him.
After, she lay tangled in sheets she didn't remember grabbing. Her skin buzzed. Her chest rose and fell with a rhythm too calm to belong to someone who just handed her body to a man she might want to kill tomorrow.
Cassian sat at the edge of the bed, shirtless, scars bathed in moonlight.
"I still don't trust you," she whispered.
He looked over his shoulder. "Good."
"Why?"
"Because trust makes you weak. I don't need your trust, Selene. I need your fire."
She stared at his back. At the tattoo carved along his spine like a prayer in a language she didn't know.
"And what do I need from you?" she asked.
He didn't turn.
But his answer was soft.
"Me."