Chapter 105: Crybaby

Astin’s inner monologue had already accelerated all the way to kissing, sleeping together, and calling each other husband and wife, whereas Bunny was still completely stuck on step one.

"Who on earth said anything about sleeping with you?!"

"Get your clothes back on right now!"

Her outright refusal was clearly no act. Astin froze, staring up at her with an expression of sheer bafflement.

He couldn’t fathom what this woman actually wanted from him.

Yet, she had saved his life.

"Then... what do you want me to do?"

Bunny scanned him from head to toe, suddenly recalling how sharp-tongued this annoying crocodile had been earlier. A mischievous idea sparked in her mind.

Heh, perfect.

"You called me ’Mommy’ so sweetly earlier. Why don’t you give me one more for old times’ sake?"

Astin’s expression shifted instantly as the embarrassing memory rushed back into his head.

"You... Don’t cross the line!"

Bunny stayed perfectly composed, merely holding his gaze.

Two minutes passed. The green-haired youth looked as if he were wrestling with an excruciating decision. Gritting his teeth, he reached into the pile of restraint tools, picked up a collar, and buckled it around his own neck.

He then walked over, dropped to one knee before her, and offered the end of the chain gently into her hand.

His voice was strained and trembling slightly, reminiscent of an innocent young man forced into selling himself.

"You can do whatever you like to me."

Bunny’s brows shot up.

I seriously question whether my brainwaves are even tuned to the same frequency as this world.

She dropped the leash like a hot potato, dropping all desire to tease him any further.

"I have zero interest in doing anything to you, nor do I have that kind of kink. Astin, I won’t force you into anything. I’ll figure out a way to break our bond, as long as you cooperate with me..."

Before she could finish her sentence, Astin cut her off fiercely. "No!"

Even he was startled by his own knee-jerk reaction—his mouth had blurted it out before his brain could even process it.

"I won’t break the bond."

She thought she could just bind with him whenever she pleased and sever it whenever she felt like it? What did she take him for—some casual fling?

He wasn’t some loose slut like his brother.

It was quite ironic, really: San and Astin possessed completely opposite personalities. One was outgoing, playful, and shameless, while the other was reserved, guarded, and stubbornly sharp-tongued.

The elder brother acted more like a younger sibling, whereas the younger brother felt like the older one.

"Are you planning on becoming one of those heartless women who just play with a Sentinel’s feelings? Do you have any idea what severing a bond actually does to a Sentinel? If you didn’t want me, why did you save me in the first place?!"

His three rapid-fire questions left her completely speechless. Truthfully, Bunny had no idea what severing a bond entailed for a Sentinel—she only knew the process was supposed to be rather painful, a fact summarized in a few cold lines in her textbooks.

But Astin knew all too well.

Before his mother committed suicide, she severed her bonds with all her Sentinel husbands to spare them from the fatal backlash.

Yet, severing a bond was an abyss in itself.

Astin’s father had locked himself in his room for seven straight days and nights. Huddled outside the door, young Astin could only hear his father’s fingernails scraping frantically against the walls, accompanied by low, gut-wrenching roars like a wounded beast.

When he finally emerged seven days later, his hair had turned entirely white. He looked like a waterlogged mummy, devoid of a single trace of life.

The only reason his father hadn’t immediately followed her to the grave was his sheer willpower to raise their child to adulthood and fulfill his final duty as a parent.

The year Astin turned sixteen, his father left behind a single note and walked away, never to return.

Scrawled unevenly across the paper was just one sentence:

"Astin, I’m going to accompany your mother now. Don’t look for me."

The young crocodile’s eyes welled with tears in an instant. He missed his mother, but he missed his father even more.

So now, the situation had evolved from little Astin crying earlier to big Astin shedding tears right in front of her.

Bunny had seen men act cute before, but she had never seen a full-grown man weep like a toddler. For a moment, she was completely at a loss.

Seriously? Just mentioning severing the bond made you cry like this?

Who knew behind that venomous tongue lay such a total crybaby?

Heavy teardrops spilled over his lashes one after another, splashing onto the back of Bunny’s hand with startling warmth.

"Alright, alright! Stop crying! We won’t break the bond, okay? We won’t break it!"

She pulled out a handkerchief and began dabbing away his tears—first the left side, then the right, wiping back and forth continuously.

Sheesh. Who was the one calling her a human water fountain earlier?

It turns out he’s the real Dragon King of tears here.

No one knew how long Astin cried while buried in Bunny’s lap, but he eventually drifted off to sleep.

As Bunny unbuckled the collar from his neck, her mind was a tangled mess of conflicting emotions.

It felt like every single day of her life was filled with absurd drama, and she was the main character driving it all.

Managing Liam was already enough of a headache, and now she had a crocodile on her hands.

Both of them possessed stubborn, difficult temperaments—she could already envision how chaotic her future days were going to be.

Her eyes drifted over the crisscrossing scars etched across Astin’s skin. Well, a newly bound Sentinel naturally develops an instinctive attachment to their Guide—that’s completely normal.

Maybe once Astin clears his head, he’ll be the one asking to sever the bond himself.

That was how Bunny rationalized it.

At that exact moment, Liam pushed into the tent with a cheerful grin, holding a drink for her.

The second he stepped inside, he was greeted by the sight of Astin sleeping peacefully in his wife’s lap. That vibrant green head of hair was so glaringly bright, it felt as though a literal green hat had just been slammed onto his head.