The runway stretched into an infinite expanse of blinding white light, surrounded by a roaring, faceless sea of upper-district elites. Dorrent stood at the very edge of the stage, his tailored suit immaculate, his expression a mask of cold superiority. He was watching the headliner approach.
It was Jannah.
She was walking with a slow, hypnotic grace that held the entire room hostage. But she wasn’t dressed in the haute couture of BeautyPass. She was draped in the tattered, torn rags of the 3rd Street slums, the fabric stained with grease and common earth. Dirt was smudged across her pale collarbones and along the slender, elegant curves of her waist. Her skin was pale—deathly pale—and her untad hair flew wild around her face like a dark halo. She looked completely filthy, a creature crawled out from the gutter.
Dorrent’s stomach turned. A thick, suffocating wave of disgust rose in his throat, and he expected the crowd to erupt in jeers, to throw her out of the gallery.
But they didn’t.
The crowd went wild. The faceless aristocracy stood on their chairs, applauding frantically, their voices chanting in a deafening, unified rhythm: "Beautiful... beautiful... look at her..." Dorrent’s chest heaved with a violent, possessive rage. He was the only one who saw the truth. He was the only one who saw that she was unkempt, primitive, and completely wrong for this world. Why were they worshiping a phantom? Why were they blind to the filth?
Jannah reached the end of the runway, stopping re inches from where Dorrent stood. The roaring of the crowd suddenly vanished into a dead, terrifying silence. She didn’t look at them; she looked only at him, her dark, soul-searching eyes locking onto his with a gaze that stripped his armor away piece by piece.
She leaned forward, her translucent skin radiating that intense, floral oga musk, her lips grazing the shell of his ear.
"You don’t hate , Dorrent," she whispered, her voice a velvet blade that sliced through his mind. "You don’t find disgusting. You’re just afraid. You’re terrified because you know that even if you managed to get into your bed, you couldn’t satisfy . You’re a king who can’t claim his throne."
Dorrent’s breath hitched, his throat locking as he tried to roar back at her, to wrap his hands around her neck and silence the lie. He opened his mouth to speak—
---
Dorrent snapped awake.
He bounced up on the mattress, his chest heaving as he gasped for air, his body drenched in a cold, viscous sweat. The heavy silk sheets of his master suite were tangled around his legs, and his hands were shaking so violently he had to fist them into the blankets to make them stop. The darkness of the evening had fully engulfed the room, the pale moonlight offering no comfort against the residual horror of the nightmare.
"You’re just afraid... you can’t satisfy in bed..."
The words didn’t vanish with the dream. They echoed off the high, vaulted walls of his bedroom, repeating in his mind like a rhythmic, mocking chant. The theater of his mind had just stripped away every layer of his arrogance, exposing the raw, bleeding core of his greatest vulnerability.
The dream hadn’t lied. It had revealed his ultimate nightmare: the terrifying reality that he was a predator without teeth. For five long years, he had built a fortress of pride, using his wealth, his technology, and his ruthless public persona to hide the fact that he was biologically dead. He had avoided intimacy not out of choice, but out of absolute, paralyzing terror.
He thought of Joanne. He recalled the past three years of his life, the agonizing dance of smoke and mirrors he had perford to keep her from finding out the truth. He liked her—she was the exact definition of what a high-tier alpha should desire: bronzed, voluptuous, and refined. They had shared stolen monts, deep, breathless kisses in the back of luxury transports or on private balconies, but the mont her hands wandered toward his waist, the mont her scent turned thick with invitation, Dorrent had always pulled back. He had manufactured corporate ergencies, feigned cold indifference, and walked away, leaving her confused and longing. He had done it all to protect his secret. He had done it because he knew that if he ever let a woman into his bed, the illusion would shatter, and he would be exposed as a pathetic, useless failure.
Now, a nineteen-year-old girl from the slums was inside his fortress, holding the keys to his undoing.
As he sat there, his pulse throbbing in his ears, a soft click broke the silence of the suite.
The heavy walnut doors swung open.
Dorrent’s head snapped toward the entrance, his heart doing a violent, erratic skip. Jannah stood in the doorway, frad by the dim light of the corridor. She was no longer wearing the wet, translucent flannel from the pool; she had changed into a clean, simple tunic that hung loosely on her fra. In her hands, she carried a small silver tray holding a collection of dark ceramic jars and a steaming cup of infused liquid.
It was the beginning of the evening. It was ti for the strict, two-hours-a-day treatnt his father had mandated.
Dorrent stared at her, his vision blurring for a fraction of a second. In the shadows of the room, his hyper-aroused mind confused her with the ghost from his nightmare. For a terrifying beat, he expected her to open her mouth and repeat the venomous words that were still ringing in his ears.
Jannah stopped at the edge of the bed, her dark eyes scanning his flushed face, his bare, sweating chest, and the slight tremor in his hands. She didn’t look afraid anymore. The vulnerability from the bathroom and the pool had been locked away behind a cold, professional wall. She was here as his physician.
She set the tray down on the nightstand with a soft, deliberate tallic clink, her gaze locking onto his.
"Ti for treatnt, Mr. Grefo."
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