The air in the room became stagnant, heavy with the cloying, sweet scent of Jannah’s betrayal. Dorrent stepped fully into the room, the click of the latch behind him sounding like the cocking of a weapon. He didn’t drop the dress. He held it like a trophy of her shame, his eyes raking over her splayed form on the silk sheets with a look of such concentrated, dangerous disgust that it felt like a physical weight pressing down on her chest.

Jannah’s hand jerked away from her core as if the skin there had turned to white-hot embers. She scrambled back, pulling her legs together and trying to tug her pants up, but the silk of the bed provided no traction, and she felt exposed, raw, and utterly transparent. Her face was no longer just flushed; it was a deep, burning crimson that made her eyes sting. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Is that so?" Dorrent’s voice was a low rasp, vibrating with a dark, predatory edge. He began to pace toward the bed, his movements fluid and menacing. "The little herbalist who acts so holy, so full of righteous fury, is lying in my father’s house, in a bed of silk, slick with her own desire? Tell me, Jannah... are you wet because of me?"

The question was a lash. Jannah’s breath hitched, her throat tight with a shame that threatened to swallow her whole. She couldn’t let him know. She couldn’t let the man who destroyed her family know that his ghost was the one haunting her climax.

"No," she wheezed, her voice thin and desperate as she looked anywhere but at his piercing eyes. "I... I was watching something. On the tablet. I watched a video... porn. It’s not you."

Dorrent stopped at the edge of the bed. He loomed over her, the scent of his fresh shower—cool water and expensive soap—warring with the thick, floral musk of her arousal. He let out a short, dry laugh that carried no humor, only a chilling, arrogant certainty.

"A video?" he mocked, leaning down until his shadow completely engulfed her. "I doubt it. I have spent years as the apex, Jannah. I am a master at making women wet—powerful women, beautiful women, women who would kill just to have me look at them. You are no different. You are an omega, and I am an S-tier alpha. Your biology doesn’t care about your petty excuses. You are wet because you can still feel my hands on your neck. You are wet because you are craving a taste of the power you’ll never have."

The sheer arrogance of his words sparked a flash of fire in Jannah’s gut, burning through the layers of her shame. She looked up at him, her dark eyes flashing with a sudden, lethal defiance. If he wanted to use his status to crush her, she would use his greatest failure to cut him back.

"And what if I was?" she spat, her voice growing stronger. "What does it matter? You speak of being a master, of making women wet, of your ’power.’ But look at you now, Dorrent. You’re a hollow king. It’s useless getting someone wet when you can’t even take them. It’s pathetic to brag about arousal when you’re a man who can’t even rise to the occasion."

The silence that followed was tectonic.

The air seemed to shatter. Dorrent’s face transformed, the smugness evaporating into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. His jaw clenched with such force the bone looked ready to snap. To have his deepest, most humiliating secret thrown in his face by the "filthy" girl from the slums was a transgression he could not allow.

He moved faster than her eyes could track.

His hand shot out, clamping around her throat and pinning her back against the headboard. He leaned his entire, massive weight into her, his chest crushing her breasts, his thighs pinning her legs. The heat of his body was a furnace, suffocating and overwhelming.

"You should be very careful, Jannah," he hissed, his face inches from hers, his hot breath smelling of mint and malice. "You shouldn’t talk to me like that if you have any desire to keep breathing. My father might want you here, but accidents happen in this estate every day."

His eyes began to travel over her body with a clinical, insulting slowness. Jannah felt every nerve ending in her body ignite, her skin crawling under his gaze. He observed the rise and fall of her breasts as she struggled for air, the pale, porcelain stretch of her stomach, and the slender lines of her legs.

"You’re unlucky," he murmured, his voice dropping into a dark, dismissive rumble. "If this were five years ago, maybe your little fantasy would have come true. But I’ve grown refined in my years of... ’affliction.’ I no longer have a taste for the slim and the pale. You look like a half-starved ghost."

He leaned in closer, his lips grazing the shell of her ear, sending a shudder of pure, conflicted terror through her frame.

"I like them big," he whispered, "curvaceous, with skin bronzed by the sun. And more importantly, Jannah... I like them clean. I like women who don’t carry the stench of the ghetto in their pores. You are unkempt. You are a mess of tangled hair and common dirt."

With a grunt of disgust, he pulled back, letting go of her neck so abruptly she slumped forward, coughing. He shook out the dress he had been holding—the ragged, cheap fabric she’d worn from 3rd Street—and threw it over her head, covering her nakedness as if he couldn’t bear to look at her for another second.

"Dress yourself," he commanded, already turning toward the door, his silhouette tall and imposing against the light of the hallway. "And stay in this room. If I catch you touching yourself to my name again, I’ll make sure you never feel pleasure again."

He slammed the door shut, leaving Jannah shivering and breathing hard.