Chapter 314: Jealous?

“I’m Fucked.” I muttered under my breath.

“Yes. You’ll be,” Cassandra purred, her eyes darkening with an unholy, triumphant glint as she leaned down until her cold breath brushed against my lips.

“Just wait until we get into a room.”

Before a single word of protest could force its way past my throat, she captured my lips.

The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was an absolute, suffocating takeover.

Her lips were shockingly cold at first, like pressing against frozen velvet, before a searing, possessive heat bled through them.

She didn’t give me room to breathe, let alone push her back. Her fingers tangled tightly into the hair at the nape of my neck, tilting my head back at an agonizing angle to deepen the angle, sealing her mouth over mine with an unyielding intensity.

My mind went completely blank.

The physical vessel I inhabited traitorously buckled under the assault. The latent, dormant muscle memory of the original Jin, that pathetic, desperate longing he had buried deep beneath his skin, soared to the surface like a flooded engine igniting.

My pulse hammered violently in my ears, my hands twitching where they gripped her waist, fighting a losing war between pushing her off and pulling her impossibly closer.

This damn body…! I screamed internally, my eyes wide in pure, dazed panic as her tongue slid past my teeth, tasting of winter air, sweet ozone.

She drank in my breathless shock with a quiet, muffled hum of utter satisfaction.

Her hips shifted deliberately on my lap, ensuring I felt every single ounce of her weight pressed flush against my rising heat.

I was completely trapped, sandwiched between the velvet cushions of the carriage and the frigid, beautiful monster of House Raith.

Slowly, torturously, Cassandra pulled back just an inch.

A thin, glistening thread lingered between our parted lips before snapping in the freezing air.

She stared down at me, her cheeks faintly flushed, her stormy grey eyes dark, hooded, and utterly drunk on victory.

Her thumb reached down, wiping the slick wetness from my bottom lip, pressing down just hard enough to make the fresh bite mark on my throat throb.

“Look at you,” Cassandra whispered, her voice a low, husky purr that vibrated straight down my spine.

“Completely helpless under my hands. You belong to me, Jin. Every breath, every beat of your heart… mine.”

Before I could even attempt to reclaim my shattered dignity, the heavy carriage jolted to a sudden, rigid halt.

“Commander Raith!” an escort officer’s muffled voice shouted from outside the armored door, cutting through the thick, suffocating heat inside the cabin.

“We have reached the outer defense gates! The Capital garrison requires sector clearance!”

Cassandra didn’t flinch.

She kept her gaze locked onto my burning face for three agonizing seconds, her lips curving into a slow, wicked smirk, before she smoothly uncurled her legs and slid back onto her own bench, adjusting her commander’s coat as if nothing had happened.

I collapsed back against the leather seat, gasping for air, my heart rattling against my ribs like a trapped bird.

God help me, I thought, staring up at the carriage ceiling in pure, unadulterated dread.

The demons aren’t going to kill me in this war. She is.

The chaos of our arrival at the Capital had dissolved into a blurred whirlwind of reunions.

While Cassandra immediately vanished into the inner administrative spire on high-level military business, I had gone with Emma to the forward residential district.

Reconnecting with my friends, Tessa, my fiancée, and Agnes, felt almost surreal against the backdrop of impending war.

True to my word, I spent the first night with Emma, and the following night with Tessa.

I had fully braced myself for a bloody, catastrophic territorial war between the two, but to my utter shock, Emma had merely leveled a frigid, silent glare at Tessa before stepping aside, a terrifying, quiet truce before an inevitable storm.

After two days of resting, recalibrating my mana, and catching up on the Capital’s defense reports, I made my way to Cassandra’s personal estate.

The grand manor was eerily quiet.

When I asked her head steward for her whereabouts, the old man merely bowed nervously and informed me that Commander Raith hadn’t set foot in her quarters since our arrival two days ago.

I couldn’t help but wonder what political web or secret military purge she was orchestrating in the dark corners of the city.

I pushed open the doors to her massive, dimly lit bedroom, stepping past heavy velvet drapes and dark silver furnishings that smelled faintly of pine and winter frost. Crossing the room, I sank into the plush leather couch near the balcony, closing my eyes and leaning my head back against the frame.

I had come here because there were critical things we needed to discuss, the spatial anomaly from the canyon, the cloaked watcher tracking us, and the shifting frontline troop movements.

A faint click echoed through the quiet room as the heavy mahogany door swung open a few minutes later.

Cassandra stepped inside. She was still clad in her silver-trimmed Vanguard commander’s uniform, but her usual immaculate composure was slightly frayed.

Her long, silver hair was loosely disheveled over her collar, a few stray strands hanging across her forehead, and her chest rose and fell with shallow, slightly heavy breaths.

She froze for a brief fraction of a second when her stormy grey eyes landed on me resting on her couch, her pale eyebrows arching.

“You’re waiting for me?”

I opened my eyes, sitting up slowly and narrowing my gaze as I took in her uncharacteristically disheveled state.

“Where were you for the last two days?”

Cassandra let out a soft, lingering breath, unbuckling her heavy sword belt and letting it drop onto the side table with a dull thud.

A slow, wicked smirk curved her pale lips as she looked down at me, her dark, hooded eyes gleaming with mocking amusement.

“Releasing the stress with someone…”

Cassandra purred softly, taking a slow, deliberate step toward the couch.

“Why? Jealous?”