The night had settled heavily over the 3rd Street ghetto, wrapping the narrow, suffocating alleyways in a dense shroud of cold industrial smog and the bitter stench of burning refuse from the lower market.

Jannah sat alone on the warped wooden bench directly outside the one-room apartment she shared with her grandfather. The rotting timber of the doorstep was just inches away, the door still hanging crookedly on its rusted hinges, completely locked. She hadn’t even found the strength to turn the key.

After escaping the suffocating wealth of the Grefo estate, she had fled back to the only dirt she knew, her mind still reeling from the explosive confrontation in the foyer. She had successfully avoided answering Dorrent’s terrifying question by throwing up a wall of calculated coldness. She had told him fiercely that she simply despised his character, that he was a depraved pervert, and that she possessed a boyfriend in the slums whom she loved with every fiber of her being—a man to whom she was entirely, physically committed.

But sitting here in the freezing dark, the absolute lie of her defense mechanism tasted like ash on her tongue.

She stared down at her small, trembling hands, which were tightly tucked into the deep sleeves of her unwashed, foul-smelling linen smock. She wished with everything she had that the boyfriend truly existed. She wished there was a real, protective man waiting behind that warped door to pull her into his arms, to shield her from the S-tier monster who was currently dismantling her sanity. But the brutal reality of her lineage made that a total impossibility. She recalled the tragic faces of the last six Alphas who had tried to claim her—she always did. The Firstborn Female Blight was real. Her very pheromones were a toxic death sentence to any normal man who tried to bond with her. She could never risk harming an innocent person just to escape her solitude.

Wrapped in the freezing, damp wind, her body began to shiver violently. To keep the crushing loneliness from consuming her, she leaned her head against the cold brick wall and began to softly hum a melody, her voice a thin, beautiful friction against the quiet of the alley. She began to sing the heavy words her grandfather had taught her:

"The winter frost clings to the stone,

A golden crown upon a throne of bone.

The hearth is bright, the halls are wide,

But there is a phantom crawling deep inside..."

Before the next line could leave her lips, a sudden, heavy warmth was gently draped over her trembling, shivering shoulders.

Jannah gasped, her song instantly cutting off as she jolted backward against the bench. She snapped her head up, expecting to see the terrifying eyes of the CEO looming over her in the dark. Instead, she met a remarkably handsome, calm face looking down at her under the dim orange glow of the alley’s flickering streetlamp.

Doctor Damian Boren stood before her. He was dressed in a heavy, dark wool overcoat, which he had just removed to wrap around her freezing frame. His expression was steady, his eyes holding a quiet, deep focus as he looked at her unkempt hair and the stained linen smock she wore.

"What exactly are you doing sitting out here all alone in the freezing wind, Jannah?" Damian asked softly, his voice direct, clear, and entirely devoid of any hidden meaning. He stepped closer, the soft soles of his shoes making no sound against the grime of the cobblestones. "You have a beautiful voice, but the middle of a polluted night is a terrible time to perform."

Jannah stared at him in complete surprise, her fingers instinctively clutching the lapels of his warm coat. She knew Damian well. He was the brilliant Alpha doctor who worked up at the elite Upper District Hospital, yet he maintained a small, humble house right here in the third sector, running a free medical clinic for the poor. For the past year, despite being a constant presence in the neighborhood, he had rarely spoken to her. In fact, he had deliberately avoided her most of the time, crossing the street whenever their paths crossed in the market, as if he too was terrified of the curse attached to her name. She couldn’t understand why he was suddenly standing on her doorstep tonight.

"I am just enjoying the midnight breeze, Doctor Boren," Jannah replied defensively, pulling the coat tighter around her chest to hide the shivering of her limbs.

Damian let out a low, quiet sigh and walked over to the bench. Without asking for permission, he sat down directly beside her, his frame radiating a calm, steady warmth that immediately began to fight the chill in her bones.

"You can’t possibly be enjoying the breeze, Jannah, when you are freezing like a block of ice," Damian said simply, turning his face to look at her profile. "Your teeth are clicking, and you haven’t even opened your door to go inside. It isn’t safe for an omega to sit on the street like this."

Before Jannah could form an excuse to push him away, a sudden, violent sound shattered the quiet of the ghetto lane.

The high-pitched, aggressive screech of high-performance tires echoed from the main sector junction. A second later, the massive, sleek silhouette of Dorrent’s armored luxury sports transport rounded the corner, its dark crimson running lights cutting through the industrial smog. The vehicle tore through the narrow alleyway and halted with a violent, rocking stop directly in front of her house, the powerful engine humming a loud, predatory vibration that shook the very cobblestones beneath their feet.

Jannah’s heart violently leaped into her throat. She knew he would follow her. She knew his pathological, S-tier madness would never allow her to escape his sight for a single night, especially after she had weaponized the lie of a lower-district lover. He had come to hunt her down, to drag her back to his bed, and to destroy whatever boundary she had left.

If Dorrent saw her sitting here alone, he would immediately realize that the boyfriend was nothing but a pathetic fiction. He would know she had lied, and he would forcefully carry her back to the estate, treating her like absolute property. She had to make the lie real in a single micro-second. She had to create an unassailable barrier that his pride could not cross.

Turning her face sharply toward Damian, her dark eyes wide with absolute desperation, Jannah grabbed the sleeves of his coat.

"Doctor Damian... please," Jannah whispered frantically, her breath hitching as the gull-wing door of the luxury transport began to slide open with a heavy mechanical hiss. "Don’t move. Just hold me and pretend you’re kissing me right now!"