The heavy, suffocating atmosphere of the master suite finally broke when Dorrent turned his back on the scene, his naked shoulders tense and rigid as he disappeared into the sanctuary the bathroom. The sound of the pressurized shower head roaring to life echoed like a waterfall, a desperate attempt to wash away the phantom sensation of the "sludge" his father had applied and the even more haunting scent of the omega who had dared to trick him.

Guron lingered for only a moment, his golden eyes resting on Jannah with a look that was half-warning, half-admiration. Without a word, he too retreated, the heavy walnut doors clicking shut and leaving Jannah alone in the center of the vast, opulent room.

The silence was deafening.

Jannah didn’t wait. She clutched the silk sheet around her shivering frame and bolted for the connecting door. Her legs felt like lead, and the lingering sting of Dorrent’s fingers on her throat was a pulsing reminder of how close she had come to the abyss. She reached her own room—the suite that was too large, too soft, and far too expensive for a girl from 3rd Street—and threw herself onto the charcoal silk bed. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

She lay there for a long time, staring at the high, vaulted ceiling, her breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches.

Her heart was still drumming against her ribs with a frantic, terrifying rhythm. She had acted with a courage she didn’t know she possessed, standing up to the monster who had haunted her nightmares for years. But now that the adrenaline was fading, the reality of her own treachery began to seep in.

When she had told Dorrent that he had "killed" her in that bed, she hadn’t just been lying. For a split second, as the dark bruises she’d faked mirrored the darkness in his eyes, she had envisioned it. She had seen him—not as a cold, distant CEO, but as a primal, unstoppable force of nature, pinning her wrists against the silk, his heavy weight crushing her into the mattress as he took what her.

She let out a soft, tortured moan, burying her face in the pillows.

"Why is he so handsome?" she whispered into the fabric, her voice trembling.

She hated him. She loathed every fiber of his arrogant, S-tier being. He was the murderer of her peace, the architect of her grief. And yet, the memory of his hands on her skin—even in violence—was making her blood boil. She could still feel the heat radiating from his chest when he had slammed her against the wall, the way his scent had filled her lungs until she couldn’t think.

She wished the marks were real.

The thought was a betrayal to her parents’ memory, a knife to her own soul, but her body was no longer listening to her mind. The intense proximity, the raw, masculine power he emanated, had awakened something in her omega biology that she couldn’t suppress. Her skin felt electric, hypersensitive, as if it were still waiting for the touch he had denied her with such disgust.

Jannah rolled onto her back, her eyes glazed with a dangerous, intoxicating heat. Her wild imagination took over, weaving a scene where the hatred between them turned into a different kind of violence. She imagined him storming into this room, tearing the silk sheet away, and silencing her defiance with his mouth. She imagined the weight of his muscular body, the friction of his skin against hers, the way he would look at her with that same intense loathing right before he claimed her.

She was heating up. A thick, sweet moisture began to gather between her thighs, a physical manifestation of the fantasy she was weaving with her enemy.

"I hate you," she whimpered, even as her hand strayed downward, sliding beneath the waistband of her thin pants. "I hate you so much."

Her fingers reached the soft, swollen folds of her womanly junction, finding it already slick and boiling. She let out a jagged breath as she began to rub slowly, the friction sending jolts of raw, forbidden pleasure straight to her core. She closed her eyes, picturing Dorrent’s face, his jaw clenched in that same agonizing desire he’d shown in the tub, his dark eyes fixed on her as he drove himself into her.

She was lost in it. The shame was there, a cold weight in her stomach, but it was being drowned out by the rising tide of her own arousal. She spread her legs wider on the silk, her hips arching off the bed as her movements became more frantic, more desperate. She was chasing the ghost of the man who wanted her dead.

Suddenly, the heavy double doors of her suite swung open.

There was no knock. There was no warning.

Jannah’s eyes snapped open, her breath hitching in a strangled gasp.

Dorrent stood in the doorway. He was dressed in a fresh, white silk shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and dark trousers. In his hand, he held the ragged, dirty dress she had arrived in—the one she had left in his room—gripping it between two fingers as if it were a piece of rotting offal. He had clearly come to return her "filth" and deliver one final insult.

But he froze.

The scene before him was one he could never have prepared for. Jannah was splayed across the bed, her pants pushed down to her mid-thighs, her small, pale hand buried between her spread legs. Her face was flushed a deep, feverish red, her eyes wide and dark with a mixture of terror and lingering lust. The scent in the room was unmistakable—the heavy, cloying, and incredibly sweet aroma of an omega in the throits of a self-induced heat.

Dorrent’s gaze dropped. He saw the way her fingers were still curled against her wet, glistening center. He saw the sheer, unadulterated evidence of her fantasy.

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. The loathing in Dorrent’s eyes didn’t vanish, but it was suddenly joined by a dark, predatory flicker of realization. He stepped into the room, the heavy doors swinging shut behind him with an ominous click.

He looked at her spread legs, then back at her face, a slow, cruel smirk spreading across his handsome features.

"I knew it," Dorrent whispered, his voice a low, vibrating growl that made the air shiver. "I knew your intentions were wild from the moment you stepped into my car."