The luxury hover-transport sliced through the neon-drenched night like a ghost, its headlights killed, trailing the battered taxi at a calculated distance. Dorrent’s eyes were narrowed into lethal slits, tracking the crimson taillights of the cab as it navigated away from the bustling town square, weaving deep into the high-end residential towers of the upper sector.

His chest heaved, a cold, violent jealousy churning in his stomach. My boyfriend’s place. The phrase was a toxic loop in his mind. He couldn’t shake the image of Jannah’s porcelain skin, her fragile waist, and the haunting melody she had sung being offered to some common, faceless entity in the dark. His instincts screamed at the thought of another man laying hands on the filthy omega.

The taxi finally slowed, pulling into the private, cobblestone driveway of a towering, ultra-modern penthouse complex. Dorrent brought his vehicle to a silent halt under the shadow of a sprawling oak tree across the street. He watched through the darkened windshield as Jannah stepped out of the cab, pulling her dark trench coat tightly around her frame, before disappearing through the glass double doors of the lobby.

Dorrent bypassed the security matrix using his personal executive override, stepping into the private elevator lines. He watched the digital floor indicator climb rapidly, his pulse throbbing in his neck. When the lift chimed and the doors slid open on the topmost floor, he stepped onto the plush, acoustic-dampening carpet, his eyes scanning the corridor to see which door she would enter.

She stood at the end of the hall, entering a sleek, matte-black door with a biometric silver handle.

Dorrent froze in the middle of the hallway, the breath completely leaving his lungs. A cold shockwave ripped straight through his nervous system. He knew that door. He knew that biometric signature. It was the private penthouse of Shadron Valerius—his most trusted best friend.

Shadron? Dorrent’s mind reeled, his thoughts colliding in a chaotic mess of disbelief and betrayal. She was talking about Shadron? My best friend is the one she’s running to? The one who was just bidding for her in the plaza?

Driven by a raw, unhinged fury, Dorrent strode down the corridor, his boots sinking into the carpet. As he drew closer to the door, a sudden, heavy sound cut through the reinforced wood.

Loud, uninhibited moans were echoing from inside the apartment.

Dorrent stopped, his hand hovering over the biometric sensor. The sounds were unmistakable—the wet, rhythmic slaps of flesh against skin, the desperate, heavy gasping of two people locked in a gruesome, passionately violent encounter. A woman’s voice was moaning out loud, a high, breathless pitch of pure pleasure that vibrated through the frame of the door.

The sound was a knife to Dorrent’s S-tier pride. The thought of his best friend claiming the girl from the slums, breaking through her untouchable facade while he stood outside, biologically dead, was a humiliation too great to bear. He didn’t lock-pick; he didn’t wait. He slammed his palm against the emergency bypass, forcing the heavy matte-black door to swing wide open without a knock.

He burst into the penthouse, his Alpha energy flaring aggressively, ready to tear the room apart.

But the scene in the living room completely paralyzed him.

Jannah was standing near the floor-to-ceiling windows, entirely separate from the noise. She was holding a thick white towel, casually drying her damp, dark hair. She was dressed only in an oversized, crisp white man’s dress shirt that hung loosely off her slender shoulders, the hem barely reaching the mid-thighs of her long, pale legs. It was undeniably Shadron’s shirt. She looked up at Dorrent’s sudden, explosive entrance, her expression completely devoid of fear, her dark eyes reflecting his shock with a cold, mocking calm.

And yet, the sounds hadn’t stopped.

From the master bedroom down the short hallway, the wet, frantic slaps against skin and the loud, echoing moans of the woman continued to blare through the apartment, filling the space with a suffocating, hyper-sexual atmosphere. Jannah was standing right here, completely unbothered, while the passionate encounter was clearly happening elsewhere.

Dorrent stood in the center of the foyer, his mind fracturing under the sheer confusion of the situation. He looked at Jannah’s dry, composed face, then toward the hallway where the moans were still echoing, his chest heaving as his brain scrambled to find logic in the madness.

"What—" Dorrent began, his voice a rough, jagged friction in his throat.

Before he could finish the question, the door of the master bedroom clicked open. The moment the latch broke, the loud, passionate moans and the wet slapping sounds vanished instantly, cut off as if by the flip of a switch.

Shadron stepped out into the living room. He was fully dressed in a loose black shirt, holding a high-end digital audio-mixer in his left hand, a broad, sheepish grin stretching across his silver-haired features. Right behind him walked a beautiful, voluptuous omega woman with bronzed skin and disheveled blonde hair, adjusting the strap of her tight dress. She cast a brief, nervous glance at Dorrent’s terrifying, glowing eyes before quickly scurrying past him, slipping through the open front door and into the night.

The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the hum of the penthouse city-view vents.

Jannah calmly threw her towel onto the back of the sofa, crossing her arms over the white fabric of the oversized shirt, looking between the two Alphas with a silent, expectant smirk.

Dorrent stood completely rigid, his eyes darting from the digital mixer in his best friend’s hand, to the bare legs of the girl from the slums, and finally to Shadron’s face. The sheer absurdity, the intensity, and the hidden layers of the trap he had just walked into left him entirely exposed.

He locked his gaze onto his oldest friend, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly dangerous vibration that made the air hum with static.

"Shadron... what the hell is going on here?"