Sleep didn't come.
Selene stared at the ceiling for hours, listening to the hum of the generator through the walls and the occasional distant echo of someone screaming. Not a dream. Not a memory. Real. Sharp. Human.
This place wasn't safe.
Even if it looked it on the surface.
The room they gave her was bare but clean. Cement floor. Metal walls. A cot with a thin mattress. No door just a thick iron gate with vertical bars like a jail cell. They'd made it look nice. But a cage is still a cage, even when the sheets smell like soap.
She sat up as footsteps approached.
Boots. Three sets.
They stopped in front of her door.
A man in a black coat keyed it open and stepped inside. His name, she'd learn later, was Riker one of Cassian's lieutenants. Sharp jaw, sharper temper. He held a tablet in one hand and eyed her like a problem that needed solving.
"Get up," he said.
Selene didn't move.
Riker stepped forward. "You're being summoned. Move, or I move you."
She stood. Not because she was afraid of him—but because she knew better than to pick a fight when she was outnumbered, unarmed, and still healing from that blow to the ribs. Her pride could wait.
They led her through metal corridors, dimly lit and lined with guards. Men with guns. Women with blank stares. The occasional child darting out of sight. It was a city made from bones and scrap metal, held together by fear.
They finally stopped at a wide double-door guarded by two soldiers.
Inside was another world entirely.
Warm light. A fireplace. Leather chairs. Shelves full of books that hadn't burned in the collapse. Maps pinned to walls. And at the center of it all Cassian Vale.
He stood behind a long table, sleeves rolled up to the forearms, arms tense as he studied a weathered map. He didn't look up when they brought her in.
"You can go," he said.
The guards left without a word.
Now they were alone.
Selene didn't speak. She didn't fidget. She didn't give him the satisfaction.
Finally, he looked at her.
No smirk. No threat. Just that unreadable calm that pissed her off more than rage ever could.
"I want to make a deal," he said.
She folded her arms. "Pretty sure I'm still in chains, Commander."
"No. You're not." He nodded at her wrists.
She hadn't even noticed. No cuffs. No marks. Nothing.
"You're free to walk the fortress. No guards. No leash."
"What's the catch?"
"You work for me. In the medical bay. Full clearance. Supplies. A private room real privacy. Lock and key."
Selene narrowed her eyes. "And if I say no?"
He tilted his head. "You won't."
Arrogant bastard.
"I'm not here to be your toy, Cassian," she said coldly.
"Good," he replied smoothly. "Toys are fragile. You're not."
That threw her off. Just for a second.
"I've seen what you've done to others," she muttered. "Don't try to play saint."
"I don't pretend to be anything," he said, stepping around the table. Slowly. Like a lion circling something that interested him. "I've done terrible things. I'll do more. But I don't touch what doesn't want to be touched."
He stopped in front of her. Close. Too close. She felt the heat of him, the tension in the air like an electrical current between them.
"You're not a prisoner, Selene," he said. "But you are mine. And that's not a threat. It's a truth waiting to happen."
Her heart kicked.
He stepped even closer, and now she was backed against the door, his palm flat beside her head. Caging her without touching. His breath brushed her cheek, warm, deliberate.
"I see the way you look at me when you think I'm not watching," he murmured. "You hate me. But you want me. And you hate that more."
Selene didn't answer. Couldn't.
Because he was right.
She hated the way her body reacted. The way her breath caught. The heat between her thighs she couldn't control.
She hated that in a world full of death, he made her feel alive.
Cassian leaned in just slightly more, mouth near her ear.
"When you're ready to stop pretending," he whispered, "come to me."
Then he stepped back and walked away like he hadn't just torn her equilibrium to shreds.
Selene started working in the medical bay that same day.
She treated a man with a shattered arm from a collapsed building. Stitched a child who'd fallen into barbed wire. Cleaned infected wounds that had gone weeks without proper care. She kept her head down, stayed quiet, and watched.
And what she saw chilled her.
Cassian's fortress was clean. Fed. Efficient. But it wasn't safe.
There were rules—but no kindness. Order—but no compassion. Every resource had a price. And women who couldn't pay it…. paid another way.
She started asking questions.
Too many.
And one night, someone slipped a note under her door.
"They're watching you. Stop digging."
She burned it immediately.
But the next day, she found a file on her clinic desk. No name. No explanation. Just bloodstained records from the lower levels. Experiments. Injections. Human trials.
Cassian's signature was on every page.
Her hands shook as she held the last sheet.
Because the patient ID on that one was a number she'd memorized.
Her own.
That night, she went to him.
The guards let her through without a word.
Cassian's door was unlocked.
He sat by the fireplace again, shirt unbuttoned halfway, drink in one hand, book in the other. He looked up when she stepped in.
No smirk this time.
Just silence.
Selene walked straight up to him, threw the file on the table.
He didn't flinch.
"You lied," she said, voice shaking. "You used me. You're still using me."
Cassian stood slowly. No anger. Just something dark in his eyes. Something unspoken.
"I didn't lie," he said.
"You signed off on it!"
"I signed off on a lot of things," he said. "Most of them before I met you."
She didn't believe him.
Not fully.
But she couldn't move either. Couldn't look away.
"I should hate you," she whispered.
"You do."
"Then why—" Her voice broke. "Why does this feel like the only place I can breathe?"
Cassian stepped forward and took the glass from her shaking hands.
"Because," he said, pressing his mouth to her ear, "we're the same kind of broken."
Then he kissed her.
Hard.
Dangerous.
And she kissed him back like the world hadn't already ended.