Vengeance in His Bed

Jannah twisted her wrists, trying to pry his hands away from her body. Her skin was burning where he touched her, the heat of his palms soaking through her clothes and making her nerve endings spark with an involuntary, maddening thrill.

"Let me go, Dorrent!" she commanded, her voice tight, breathless, and laced with a sharp, final warning. "Stop right now if you actually want to recuperate well. Let go of me. I am already running late, and

none of you are coming along tonight. Not Shadron, and definitely not you. Look at yourself—you’re sick. You can barely sit up without ripping your stitches, yet you’re talking about playing bodyguard in the city square?"

Dorrent didn’t release her. Instead, his grip tightened around her waist, anchoring her hips onto his lap. He leaned his head forward, his jaw brushing against the side of her neck as his eyes darkened with a dangerous shadow.

"Are you actually worried about me, little physician?" Dorrent asked, his deep voice dropping into a rough, low rumble that vibrated against her spine. A smirk touched his lips, though his eyes remained intense. "Or are you just desperate to get out of this house so you can mingle with the crowd? Is that it? You want to stand on that stage, under those bright lights, and let thousands of strange men feast their eyes on your body without my presence to stop them?"

Jannah let out a bitter, sharp laugh, tilting her head back to glare down at him with defiance. Her defensive walls slammed down instantly, her eyes flashing with immediate fire.

"You should not be so concerned, Alpha," she scoffed, her tone dripping with casual disdain and a sudden, biting malice. "You have nothing to worry about. According to you, I’m just a gutter rat from the lower sectors. A filthy peasant. I won’t attract anybody with my filthiness anyway, so your precious pride is perfectly safe."

Dorrent’s expression went utterly rigid. The silver in his eyes flared, burning into hers with a sudden, suffocating intensity that filled the space between them.

"If you had attracted me with your filthiness," Dorrent rasped, his voice dropping into an intense growl, "then there are many other men out there who will also get attracted. Do you think I’m blind, Jannah? Do you think I don’t know what happens when men look at you?" His fingers dug slightly into her hip, his possessive alpha nature completely overtaking him. "I don’t mind that I am hurt. I don’t care if every rib in my body breaks tonight. I will take you to that venue no matter what you say."

For a long, agonizing second, neither of them moved. The static of their mutual stubbornness crackled in the air. Then, slowly, deliberately, Dorrent let his fingers uncurl from her waist. He released her, his arms falling back against the mattress.

Jannah didn’t hesitate. The moment the pressure left her waist, she scrambled off his lap, her breath coming in fast, agitated pants as she stood up and took a sharp step back from the bed. She smoothed down the hem of her shirt, her chest heaving as she tried to stabilize her erratic heartbeat.

Dorrent remained sitting on the edge of the bed, his broad chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow cycles. But the possessive fury in his face suddenly shifted. A strange, heavy quiet fell over him. His silver eyes narrowed, losing their predatory edge and turning deeply troubled. He looked down at his own bandaged torso, then slowly lifted his gaze back to her face.

"Jannah," he asked quietly. "Two days ago... in your grandfather’s house. When you jumped at me with that blade... would you really have stabbed me to death if I hadn’t moved?"

Jannah froze. The memory of that storm-ridden room, the scent of her grandfather Duro’s cold corpse, and the rusted knife in her hand rushed back into her mind. Her eyes hardened into twin stones of venom.

"Of course I would," she delivered ruthlessly, her voice steady and sharp as a razor. She stepped closer, her chin tilting upward in a display of unyielding hatred. "I wanted to drive that steel straight through your arrogant heart. And given the chance, Dorrent... I would still do it. I would do it without blinking."

Dorrent’s jaw clenched so hard a sharp vein pulsed against his temple. He didn’t look angry; he looked hollowed out by her words, his chest expanding with a slow, painful breath.

"Why?" he pushed, his voice turning into a jagged, desperate rasp. "Why can’t you ever tell me why you want me dead that bad? You’ve cultivated poisons with my name on them. You look at me like I am a monster from your worst nightmares. Why won’t you just tell me what I did to earn this kind of resentment?"

Jannah let out a cold, incredulous gasp, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. "Even if you knew, Dorrent, it wouldn’t change anything," she whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of grief and rage. "The past is written in blood. Knowing the reason won’t undo what was done. It won’t fix a single thing."

"Try telling me," Dorrent countered instantly, leaning forward, his silver-rimmed eyes locking onto hers with a desperate, unshakeable sincerity that made her throat tighten. "Just try telling me, Jannah. I might change everything. My wealth, my power, my life—I will use every single thing I possess to alter the outcome if you just give me the truth."

He might change everything.

The words detonated inside Jannah’s brain, unleashing a tidal wave of fury. She looked at the massive, intimidating billionaire sitting before her—the S-tier god who commanded entire sectors with a single word. This was the man. The executioner. The monster who had brutally slaughtered her mother and father, leaving them to rot like dogs in the mud.

A violent urge surged through her veins. She wanted to jump on him. She wanted to use her nails to tear the bandages off his chest, to rip open the wound on his ribs, to claw at his skin until he was covered in the same crimson tide he had spilled nine years ago. She wanted to watch him bleed out on the floorboards.

But as she glared at him, ready to strike, her eyes met his.

Dorrent was staring up at her, defenseless, his broad shoulders slightly slumped, his eyes wide and filled with vulnerability. The dominant, ruthless apex predator had vanished. In his place sat a creature completely subdued by her hatred. He looked like a grand, terrifying lion that had suddenly, inexplicably, become like a helpless, wounded cat.

The realization paralyzed her. Her muscles went entirely weak, the murderous energy draining from her limbs and leaving behind nothing but a hollow, suffocating ache. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t force herself to physically mutilate him while he looked at her like that.

A bitter, trembling breath escaped her lips. "Can you bring the dead back, Dorrent?" she asked, her voice cracking under the weight of nine years of unexpressed agony. She took a step closer, her dark eyes glittering with a dangerous, unstable light. "Tell me. Just incase the reason I hate you... the reason I detest the very ground you walk on... is because of people’s lives being taken by your hands. What exactly would you change? How do you change a corpse back into a living human being?"

Dorrent’s voice completely died in his throat. He went silent, the reality of her words hitting him like a physical blow. The puzzle pieces his mother had handed him a week ago didn’t just fit—they locked together with a horrific, bloody certainty. Jannah was the child from the 3rd Street slums. He was the monster from her nightmares.

He closed his eyes for a brief second, his frame shuddering under the crushing weight of his own monstrous nature. When he opened them, the arrogant billionaire was gone. Only a man begging for a lifeline remained.

"I might not be able to change the past, Jannah," Dorrent whispered into the quiet room, his voice thick with an emotion he had never allowed himself to feel before. He reached out a hand toward her, though he didn’t dare touch her. "I cannot bring them back. But if that is the sin I committed against you... I will spend the rest of my life paying for it. Every single remaining day of my life, I will stay right by your side, asking for your forgiveness. I will lock myself to your suffering, and I will let you punish me however you see fit, if it means you can find peace."

"Forgiveness?"

A stinging tear finally broke free from Jannah’s eye, tracing a wet path down her pale cheek. Then another followed, and another, until her vision was blurred by a torrential downpour of sorrow.

"Do you even know the pain of losing parents, Dorrent?!" she shrieked, her voice shattering into a hysterical, broken sob. She slapped her chest with her palm, right over her pounding heart. "Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a child, standing in the freezing rain, looking at the mutilated bodies of the only people who loved you?! How will your pathetic asking for forgiveness help me?! Will your billions put my mother back in my arms?! Will your corporate power let my father walk me down the aisle?!"