Vengeance in His Bed

Dorrent’s deep, surprisingly soft voice cut through the quiet, coming from right behind her shoulder.

Jannah stiffened instantly. She wiped her eye with a fast flick of her sleeve and rounded on him, her eyes flashing with irritation to hide her vulnerability. "I am perfectly okay!" she snapped sharply. "You should mind why you are here and focus on your investigation, instead of monitoring me!"

"I am here because of you," Dorrent replied smoothly, his eyes completely unbothered by her sharp tongue as he looked down at her flushed cheeks. "And of course I mind you."

Jannah opened her mouth to hurl another curse at him, but the overwhelming emotional exhaustion in her bones caught up with her. She stopped arguing, realizing it was completely useless against his unyielding nature. Turning away, she walked over to the small, worn sofa in the corner of the room, sitting down and pulling her knees tightly to her chest.

"Get out of my house," Jannah muttered, her voice flat and drained. "Go out into the neighborhood and start asking your questions."

Shadron, who had tentatively stepped inside behind Dorrent, immediately shook his head, his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets as he looked out the small window. "There is no way in hell we are doing that on our own, Jannah," Shadron said, his tone laced with disbelief. "Did you see how those people out there were looking at us? Those old ladies near the market stalls looked like they wanted to drag Dorrent out of his suit and tear him apart with their bare hands! And honestly... it seems like you aren’t very much liked in this neighborhood either, Jannah."

Jannah let out a dry, hollow laugh, resting her chin on her knees as she stared blankly at the floor. "I am used to it. Nobody in these alleys talks to me, and I am perfectly fine with it."

Dorrent frowned. The corporate king, who had spent his life surrounded by elite society and endless public attention, turned his head to look down at her. "Why don’t they talk to you?" he asked, a strange, quiet curiosity lacing his deep voice.

Jannah looked up at him, her lips curling into a venomous smile that was dripping with tragic irony. "It seems it is only you, Alpha Grefo, who doesn’t know," she murmured softly. "I am cursed. Everyone in these bogs knows it. Any man who gets close to me, any Alpha who tries to claim me or form a bond... gets into terrible danger. Most of the men who tried are sitting in hospital wards right now, or lying in comas."

She tilted her head, her eyes glittering with a dark, bitter malice as she looked into his symmetrical face. "I honestly can’t wait for you to experience the exact same thing, Dorrent. I can’t wait for the curse to take your life too."

Dorrent’s eyes didn’t flicker with a single drop of fear. "I don’t mind at all," he delivered flatly, his chest expanding with a slow breath. "Besides... I have already experienced the absolute worst with you."

He stood still by the center of the room. But as his eyes tracked her rigid posture, something inside Dorrent’s chest shifted violently.

He stared at the small, nineteen-year-old girl curled up on that battered sofa. He had spent months seeing her as a fierce, stubborn, and lethal enemy—a wild herbalist who cultivated poisons and traded sharp barbs. But for the very first time, he truly looked at her environment. He saw the cold isolation she had lived in. If no one in these slums was willing to speak to her... if the entire neighborhood avoided her because they believed she was a walking plague... then she must have been overwhelmingly lonely.

It was a loneliness even far worse than what he had experienced during his five years of impotence. To be a young girl, isolated by her own people, treated like a toxic outcast for something that wasn’t even her fault...

Dorrent knew the reality that she was completely ignorant of. There was no such thing as a "curse" on her blood. It was her rare, divine genetic architecture—the framework that allowed her lineage to give birth to an Enigma—But Jannah didn’t know that. She had spent her entire youth truly believing she was a broken, cursed monster who brought danger to everyone she touched.

Looking at her fragile shoulders, Dorrent realized how astonishingly strong she must have been to endure such horrific treatment at such a young age. He wondered if a single person in this city had ever understood how lonely she must have felt, standing all alone in the freezing rain of these gutters.

A sudden, sharp pain knotted inside Dorrent’s heart—an intense, agonizing ache of remorse and protective instinct that completely bypassed his arrogant pride. It hurt so profoundly to look at this young girl who had suffered so much, so many traumatic losses, while he had spent days taking advantage of her body and mocking her existence.

Without a word, Dorrent took two strides forward.

Before Jannah could even register his movement, he leaned down, reached out his arms, and pulled her off the sofa, wrapping her tightly against his warm chest in a fierce, desperate embrace.

Jannah’s breath completely caught in her throat. She went rigid in his grip, her eyes widening in shock as his winter-frost scent enveloped her completely. His chest was heaving against her face, his hands anchoring her back with a gentle, yet unbreakable strength.

"Dorrent?!" Jannah gasped out, her hands coming up to press against his shoulders as she tried to pull back. "What are you doing?! Let go of me!"

Dorrent didn’t release her. He tightened his arms around her tiny frame, burying his face into the soft, fragrant curve of her neck, his voice trembling with an emotion he could no longer hide.

"Please," Dorrent whispered roughly into her skin, his voice cracking with vulnerability. "Please... just let me hold you like this for a while."