Chapter 96: Lost

"Is this fun for you, Cyrus?"

While continuing his earnest "efforts," Cyrus kept his burning gaze fixed on her, low, raspy pants dripping with raw sensuality escaping his throat.

He even made sure not to miss a kiss.

"Are you gonna help me out then?"

Bunny spat out a curse and tried to bolt, only to be pinned right back down.

"Try running again..." He leaned down, whispering a low, soft threat right against her ear, "...and I’ll make you sit on it."

Bunny’s face drained of color in an instant, and she froze completely on the spot, acting like a motionless mummy.

This bastard Cyrus was as trashy as he was insatiable! The more pristine and serious he acted in public, the more utterly unhinged he proved to be in private.

Right now, Bunny felt as utterly helpless and exasperated as a wife dealing with a hypersexual husband.

Though, credit where credit’s due—the bastard’s raspy breathing sounded dangerously hot, practically threatening to melt her ears.

One Eternity Later...

Cyrus pinned her hand down, interlocking their fingers against the polished floorboards.

A glistening bead of sweat dripped from his sharp jawline.

Like a thoroughly sated predator, he buried his face and captured her lips once more.

With his neck strained taut, a trembling groan rolled out alongside the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple.

The isolation cell plunged into a dead silence. Only a suffocatingly thick cloud of Sentinel pheromones and a heavy, decadent atmosphere lingered in the air.

Feeling as though she had just been granted a royal pardon, Bunny scrambled to get up, only to be yanked straight back into his chest.

Embracing her tightly from behind, he pressed his nose affectionately against the nape of her neck, making an utterly shameless demand, "Again..."

Bunny was painfully aware of just how utterly shameless these Sentinels could be. Once they got a taste, they would demand a second time, a third time...

It was a completely bottomless pit.

"Let me up, Cyrus!"

In this entire outpost, no one ever addressed Cyrus directly by his full name except for Xander.

Anyone else only dared to say it in secretive whispers behind his back—usually tacked onto a quiet curse calling him a pretentious phony.

To his face, everyone obediently addressed him as "Captain."

Only Bunny had hurled every filthy insult at him imaginable—beast, bastard, rogue, trashy male...

Cyrus rolled Bunny over, holding her face-to-face in his embrace.

His brain felt remarkably relaxed right now—an unprecedented state of deep pleasure and ease, signaling that he was in a surprisingly good mood.

A furious woman was no different from a panicked little rabbit. Cyrus knew a Guide’s patience had strict limits—especially in Bunny’s case, as she was genuinely capable of biting.

Even though he was far from satisfied.

Burying his face into her neck for another long, lingering kiss, Cyrus finally released her lips with deep satisfaction and carried her out of the isolation block.

Her lips, however, were left thoroughly ravaged beyond recognition—swollen and sensitive.

Perched atop Cyrus’s arm, Bunny quietly stared at the man’s cold side profile.

She was deeply intrigued as to why his mental sea took the form of a literal black hole; it defied all logic.

A Sentinel’s mental domain couldn’t possibly be infinite, as constructing and maintaining a mental landscape required a constant expenditure of psychic power.

The larger the domain, the heavier the psychic toll.

Furthermore, a Sentinel’s core mental landscape was always hidden deep within the edges of their mental sea.

Yet Bunny couldn’t find a single trace of it. Even the Guide threads she had extended ended up completely lost, unable to pick up any spiritual call from his mental realm.

Unless Cyrus didn’t possess a mental landscape at all.

How could anyone lack one? For a Sentinel, the mental landscape was their most vital asset—the origin point of all their abilities.

The more Bunny pondered it, the stranger it felt. Unable to contain her curiosity, she asked. "Cyrus, why is your mental sea a black hole?"

It was pitch-black with zero visibility—no wonder his spiritual companion was entirely coated in dark shadows.

Cyrus cast a brief glance sideways. He had never worried about Guides prying into his secrets, simply because none of them possessed the strength to do so.

Any Guide ambitious enough to plunge into the depths of his mental domain faced only one absolute outcome: getting lost.

Permanently lost.

His gaze swept gently over Bunny in his arms. She was clinging obediently to his neck, staring up at him with a bewildered yet eager expression.

Back then, he had been completely overwhelmed by toxic backlash, lapsing into total unconsciousness.

This naive little fool, fearless in her ignorance, had barged straight into his realm completely unprotected. If Chi hadn’t taken the initiative to guide her wandering mind back to safety, Bunny would have met the exact same fate as the last Guide who tried—braindeath.

Even after he explicitly warned her to leave, this silly woman still stayed. She truly didn’t fear death.

At the mention of those buried memories, Cyrus’s eyes instantly turned frigid and dark, his overall pressure plummeting several notches.

The lingering shadow of being set up and framed washed back over his mind like an inescapable, murky fog.

That suicidal Guide who attempted to subjugate him through dirty tricks, along with the mastermind pulling her strings—the ultimate architect behind his exile to 616—all deserved to rot in hell.

Cyrus wasn’t surprised that Chi had chosen to rescue a lost Bunny.

After all, that troublesome creature threw tantrums inside his mental sea every single day, whining and demanding to be let out so it could go find its "sweet-smelling Guide wife."

However, the fact that Bunny had successfully pacified a raving Chi left Cyrus thoroughly astonished.

Given her current rank, such a feat should have been physically impossible—which was precisely why he had never permitted her to conduct mental alignment on him.

It would have destroyed her.

So, how had she managed it?

Unless she harbored secrets he remained unaware of—secrets capable of instilling unconditional devotion and recognition within Chi.

Cyrus’s deep, searching gaze made Bunny’s scalp prickle, as though a higher-dimensional scan were piercing straight through her body to probe into something far deeper.

That is, until the man suddenly curved his lips into a wicked smirk, his tone every bit as insufferable as before.

"Sleep with me, and I’ll tell you."