Vengeance in His Bed

She took a step back, her frame shaking as the tears rolled down her cheeks, soaking into the fabric of her shirt.

"Asking for forgiveness won’t help me," she wept, her dark eyes flashing with a sudden, lethal venom. "It will never be enough. I will just ensure I end your life like you ended my parents’ lives. The only way you can pay for that sin... the only way I will ever be satisfied... is by letting me kill you. That is the only price I accept."

Dorrent stared at her, a profound sense of surprise and tragic realization washing over his handsome features. He watched the tears stream down her face, his heart wrenching in a way that completely mutilated his pride.

"So it’s true..." Dorrent murmured, his voice cracking slightly. He pushed himself up from the edge of the bed, his height towering over her, though he kept his posture completely unthreatening. "You finally admitted it. I had tried asking you so many times, Jannah... but you never told me. I knew... deep down, after my mother spoke to me, I knew this was the source of your resentment. I just... I needed you to let it out. I needed to hear it from your own lips."

He took a step toward her, his chest heaving , ignoring the sharp, tearing pain in his ribs. "Jannah... I am so sorry. I am so deeply, profoundly sorry if that is the reason you have been suffering under my roof."

"Don’t you dare apologize to me!" she hissed, wiping her face aggressively with her sleeve, though the tears kept coming.

"Listen to me," Dorrent begged, his voice dropping into a low, frantic frequency as he stepped closer into her space. "I am sorry... but I swear to you, I myself don’t even know if it’s true. I am so confused, Jannah. My mind... those three days nine years ago are a total blackout. I don’t have a single memory of what happened in those gutters."

Jannah let out a cold, sharp laugh that sounded completely unhinged. She pointed a trembling finger at his chest. "So you remember! You do know about what you did, and you’ve just been feigning ignorance this entire time! You’ve been playing the clueless, arrogant billionaire while knowing exactly whose blood is on your hands!"

"No, Jannah, that’s not—"

"How can you not be sure?!" she screamed, her voice cutting through his denial like a scalpel. "How can you stand there and tell me you don’t know when I saw your face?! I was there, Dorrent! I saw your face very clearly that day in the gutters! I saw those silver, monstrous eyes covered in my parents’ blood! You can’t tell me otherwise! You can’t lie your way out of this!"

Dorrent’s breath caught in his chest. Hearing her confirm that she had looked into his eyes while he was in that primal state sent a cold dread flooding through his veins. He stepped closer, his hand rising instinctively, his fingers trembling as he attempted to gently touch her tear-stained face, to wipe away the agony he had caused.

"Don’t touch me!" Jannah shrieked, brushing his hand away with a harsh, sweeping strike. She took a step back, her dark eyes wide and wild with a terrifying hatred. "Get your filthy, murderous hands off me! I swear to God, Dorrent, I will kill you so bad that you will regret ever being born. I will make you regret ever knowing my name!"

Instead of flinching or pulling back, something inside Dorrent snapped. A look of desperate determination stabilized his features. He turned his head, his

eyes landing on the small wooden side table next to the bed. Rested beside a bowl of fresh fruits was a paring knife.

Without a word, Dorrent reached out and grabbed the knife by the handle.

He lunged forward, his frame completely eclipsing her space. Before Jannah could even register his movement, he grabbed her right hand with staggering force. He pried her fingers open, forcefully slammed the handle of the knife into her palm, and wrapped his own fingers tightly over hers, locking her grip around the weapon.

"Listen to me!" Dorrent commanded, his voice a powerful, lethal vibration that echoed off the walls, forcing her to look at him. He held her hand trapped within his, preventing her from pulling away. "Listen to me before you stab me to death, Jannah! I am not trying to run from you! If you want my life, it is yours! But you need to know the truth!"

"Let go of me, you monster!" she yelled, twisting her wrist, but his grip was an unyielding vice.

"I don’t know what overcame me that day!" Dorrent confessed, the words ripping out of his throat as he laid his entire soul bare before her. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and very serious. "I want to find out the truth just as badly as you do! I want to know what triggered that black cycle rut nine years ago, because it wasn’t a natural cycle! I might be a ruthless bastard, Jannah. I might be a dominant, arrogant corporate tyrant—but I am not a mindless killer! I would never, ever intentionally take innocent lives!"

Jannah’s breath hitched, her heart hammering violently against her ribs as she stared into the honesty of his face.

"If you saw my face that day," Dorrent rushed out, his breath hot against her forehead as he leaned down, his voice laced with a desperate weight, "then you are the only witness I have! You might be the only person alive who can help me investigate the truth of what really happened! All I remember from that night... the very last thing I saw before the darkness took me... was being at Bellero Boren’s place. I was there, and then I was completely overtaken by the cycle. Everything I did while experiencing it—every single drop of blood I spilled—I had just been told about by my father handlers after I woke up in a cell! I never knew about it myself! I never wanted it!"

Before Jannah could process the name Bellero Boren, Dorrent tightened his grip around her hand. With a sudden, terrifying exertion of strength, he hauled her hand forward, pointing the sharp silver blade directly at his own chest.

"Dorrent, what are you doing—"

"If you don’t believe me," Dorrent whispered, his voice vibrating with a terrifyingly quiet authority as he pulled her arm, forcing the point of the knife straight against his sternum, "then stab me. Do it right now, Jannah. Cut through the lies. If you think I am just a cold-blooded monster who slaughtered your family for fun, drive the steel straight through my heart."

Jannah gasped, her eyes widening in horror as she tried to pull her hand back. But Dorrent was completely unyielding. He pulled her closer, his chest expanding as he deliberately pressed his weight into the weapon.

The sharp tip of the knife pierced through the outer layer of the clean white linen bandages covering his chest. Jannah watched, completely paralyzed, as the steel dug deeper, cutting into his feverish skin. A tiny, dark crimson trail of blood immediately began to form, seeping through the white fabric and staining the linen around the blade.

Dorrent didn’t even flinch. His jaw remained locked, his eyes staring down into hers with an intense, unblinking hunger for her judgment. He pulled her hand again, digging the knife a millimeter deeper into his own flesh.

He isn’t stopping.

A sudden, blinding wave of panic crashed through Jannah’s anger, shattering her resolve. She looked at the blood spreading on his chest, then up at the fierce, desperate sincerity burning in his eyes. A terrifying realization slammed into her mind, freezing the volatile warmth in her gut.

What if he was telling the truth? What if he had been manipulated, poisoned, or triggered into that horrific primal madness by someone else? What if he was innocent of the intent? If she drove the blade home right now... if she let him commit suicide by her hand... she wouldn’t be getting justice. She would be executing a puppet while the real monster remained free in the shadows. She would have killed an innocent man.

"Stop!" Jannah shrieked, her voice breaking into a desperate scream as she used every ounce of her remaining strength to fight against his iron grip, trying to pull the blade out of his bleeding chest. "Dorrent, stop it right now!"