The dining table in the main living pavilion had been converted into a tactical command terminal. Multiple holographic projection fields hovered in the air, casting a cold, flickering blue luminescence across Dorrent’s stark features.
"...the logistical deploynt in the lower-district sector is currently running three hours behind the projection, Alpha Grefo," a trembling voice echoed from the central speaker array. On the primary projection screen, the digital avatar of a senior vice president from Gammar Tech’s distribution division was visibly sweating, his shoulders rigid. "We encountered an unexpected regulatory checkpoint near the border wall, and—"
"Vance."
Dorrent didn’t raise his voice. He simply uttered the executive’s na with a flat, sub-zero precision that seed to instantly freeze the digital transmission. The sheer, predatory weight behind that single syllable made the three other corporate directors on the call stiffen, their faces turning completely pale through the pixels.
"I am not interested in the regulatory habits of border guards," Dorrent continued, his eyes tracking a shifting data graph with complete, terrifying indifference. His voice carried the exact sa loathing he had used exclusively on Jannah for the past month before his S-tier neural pathways had locked onto her frequency. It was the tone of an apex predator looking down at an incompetent insect. "If the sector assets are not cleared through the grid within thirty minutes, your administrative credentials will be permanently erased from the corporate network. Do not speak to again until the tric is green."
He swiped his hand through the air, summarily severing the connection and plunging the pavilion into a suffocating silence.
Standing by the shadow of the kitchen threshold, Jannah adjusted the coarse fabric of her long dress. She had already changed out of her waterlogged wilderness clothes, but she had deliberately bypassed the fresh, silk garnts provided in her wardrobe. Instead, she had dug deep into the bottom of her old slum satchel to retrieve an ancient, unwashed linen smock—a garnt caked in the stale, pungent oils of fernted roots and damp cellar mold. It was loose, completely shapeless, and completely covered her body from her collarbones to her ankles. It was dirty, filthy, and entirely untidy—the exact aesthetic profile she knew the immaculate, perfectionist CEO despised. If she couldn’t fight his physical strength, she would use his intense aversion to filth to disgust him, forcing him to keep his distance.
In her hands, she held a steaming porcelain cup containing the dark, thick slurry of the crushed Somnus Root. The parasitic herb had been perfectly diluted, its lethal, cognitive-dampening properties masked beneath a sharp, bitter aroma.
Seeing that the call was finished, Jannah took a slow breath and stepped out of the shadows. The squelch of her old, stained slippers echoed against the marble as she approached the long table. She didn’t hesitate; she marched straight up to his position and placed the steaming cup directly onto the immaculate wood, right next to his active digital tablet, before sliding her body onto the leather chair imdiately adjacent to him.
"You shouldn’t be so cold and ruthless to your employees, Alpha Grefo," Jannah murmured, forcing a calm, casual friction into her voice as she adjusted her sleeves. "They are human beings, not machines. A little patience might actually improve their productivity."
Dorrent didn’t move a muscle. He slowly tilted his head toward her, his eyes narrowing as the ambient heat of his body collided with her presence. "Patience is a luxury for the unproductive, Jannah. And you have not seen my dark side yet." He leaned slightly closer, his tone dropping into a low, gravelly vibration that sent a sudden, instinctive chill racing down her spine. "The coldness I show my directors is a courtesy. The way I treat those who harbor ill intentions towards ... those who attempt to subvert my empire or my bloodline... is entirely different. I dismantle them until there is nothing left of them."
Jannah’s heart coiled in sudden, hidden terror. Behind her neutral expression, her heart hamred frantically against her ribs. She recalled her true mission—the dark, calculated plan to use her herbalist knowledge to slowly erode his brilliant mind, turning him into an incompetent fool before his board. If he ever discovered the true nature of her treatnt, if he ever realized that the girl sitting next to him was actively executing a script to destroy his legacy to avenge her slaughtered parents, his wrath would be absolute. He would tear her apart.
Before she could lose her nerve, she watched his nostrils flare.
The heavy, foul stench of the fernted linen dress was finally reaching his hyper-developed S-tier senses. The sharp odor of stale cellar mold and unwashed earth began to compete with his premium pheromones, filling the imdiate radius around the chair with a distinctly unpleasant, gritty aroma.
Dorrent’s jaw clenched, his handso features twisting into a sharp grimace of pure disgust as his gaze traveled down the shapeless, stained fabric covering her entirely. He looked at her as if she were a plague vector that had just crawled out of a sewer.
"Are you doing this on purpose to irritate , Jannah?" Dorrent demanded, his voice laced with a deep, dangerous annoyance as he pulled his chest back from her proximity. "You sll like a rotting apothecary basent. This house has ten functional washing units."
"No, Alpha," Jannah lied smoothly, her dark eyes wide with a perfectly executed look of tired, innocent exhaustion. She even let out a small, heavy sigh for effect. "It’s just that I’ve been so consud with your mandatory dical treatnts and searching the forest that I simply haven’t found the ti to wash my dirty clothes yet. This is all I had left."
Dorrent’s upper lip curled slightly. The pristine, orderly environnt of his high-district sanctuary was being completely violated by her untidy display. "Move," he commanded sharply, gesturing with a rough flick of his hand toward the opposite end of the table. "Get away from . Sit down there. I will not have that stench clogging my respiratory system while I review these files."
A secret, victorious thrill shot through Jannah’s chest. The strategy was working perfectly. She imdiately rose from the chair, making sure to drag her long, dirty hem across the polished floorboards as she moved three ters away, settling into a distant seat far out of his physical reach.
Dorrent turned his attention back to the table, his sharp eyes settling onto the porcelain cup she had left behind. The dark, thick liquid inside was gently swirling, releasing a pungent, unfamiliar vapor that slled intensely bitter, cutting through the stale scent of her dress.
"What exactly is this?" Dorrent asked, his eyes flashing with a deep, instinctual suspicion as he looked across the distance at her.
"It is the next phase of your treatnt, Alpha," Jannah answered clinically, keeping her voice completely devoid of emotion. "I spent hours extracting this compound. It is designed to target your S-tier dampening. It will help with increasing the internal heat in your baseline biology, ensuring that your system isn’t always cold or unresponsive to a female’s touch."
Dorrent stared at the dark slurry, his fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic pattern against the edge of his tablet.
Throughout the entire month she had spent at the estate, he had never taken a single herb, tincture, or tea she had offered him. Every ti she had brought a dicinal cup to his quarters during his previous fits of rage, he had violently knocked it from her hands, spilling the contents across the floorboards. He knew the biological reality—according to the imnse hatred and loathing he had directed at her before his body had broken her boundaries, he knew she had every reason in the world to want him dead. He did not trust her. He had never trusted the low-born oga from the slums.
Slowly, Dorrent reached out, his fingers wrapping around the handle of the porcelain cup. He lifted it, but instead of bringing it to his own lips, he slid the vessel across the table, sending it gliding three ters through the light until it clicked to a halt directly in front of Jannah’s hands.
His eyes locked onto hers, burning with a cold, absolute corporate dominance that stripped away all her illusions of control as he delivered his ultimatum.
"If it is completely harmless, and if it is truly ant for my heat... then you won’t mind drinking it," Dorrent purred, his voice dropping into a flat, terrifying command that made the blood in her veins run completely cold. "Have a taste, Jannah."
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