Jannah tensed, every muscle in her spine locking into rigid alignment at the word cursed.

The single syllable echoed through the chambers of her mind, dragging up the buried weight of a memory. She could still hear her grandfather Duro’s raspy, trembling voice whispering about the lineage—the Firstborn Female Blight. She remembered the cold, clinical text she had unearthed in the library. It was a literal death sentence to any man who tried to bond with her. She had lived her entire life in a solitary vacuum because of that bloodline anomaly, watching men go mad or rot in comas just for attempting to claim her.

But looking up at the arrogant, towering figure of the man who had destroyed her family, Jannah forcefully pushed the rising panic back down into the dark. She could not let him see her flinch. She could not let him realize he had stumbled onto a biological truth.

"Don’t flatter yourself, Dorrent," Jannah said, her voice dropping into a sharp, freezing horizontal line as she tilted her chin up to meet his intense glare. "There is no curse. If your pathetic body is throwing an administrative tantrum, it is simply because my biology has been saturated with highly concentrated, raw herbs since my childhood. My baseline frequency is completely different from the fragile high-district omegas you are used to. And more importantly... it reacts because you are nothing but a depraved, opportunistic pervert who takes what doesn’t belong to him."

Dorrent let out a low, dark chuckle, the sound vibrating deep within his chest. He didn’t pull back; instead, he stepped closer, his frame completely cutting off the ambient light from the foyer chandelier, trapping her against the shadow of the staircase.

"A pervert?" Dorrent purred, his eyes flashing with a wicked, dangerous amusement. "I am only a pervert with a person who possesses the unique capacity to get me hard, Jannah. My S-tier nexus doesn’t waste its energy on anything else." He leaned down slightly, his gaze dropping to the rough, dirty linen of her long dress, though his expression remained utterly unyielding. "But consider the corporate reality for a moment. If my father ever discovers that you are the sole biological catalyst capable of awakening my system... if he realizes that your hands can achieve the structural results that no medical specialist in the city could touch... he might completely rewrite his strategic playbook."

Jannah’s breath caught in her throat. "What are you talking about?"

"Guron Grefo is an uncompromising pragmatist," Dorrent continued, his voice dropping into a flat, business-like monotone that carried a terrifying undercurrent of absolute possession. "He cares about the continuation of the Grefo bloodline above all else. If he finds out you hold the key to my physical potency, he might entirely change his mind about the high-district merger. He would expect me to marry you instead of Joanne."

He paused, letting the weight of the statement settle into the suffocating air between them. A dark, predatory smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "And to be completely frank with you, little physician... I wouldn’t mind having you as my wife at all. It would make our administrative arrangement permanent. I wouldn’t care about your lower-district origins, as long as I get to erect and fuck your body every single day under my roof."

The word marry hit Jannah’s consciousness like an explosive, shattering blow.

Her stomach turned in a wave of violent, physical revulsion. Marrying the enemy. Becoming the legal, permanent property of the monstrous tech dynasty that had slaughtered her parents and turned her life into a living hell. The mere thought of standing before an altar with Dorrent, of having his name permanently bound to her identity, made her blood boil with an unyielding, murderous fury. She would rather rip her own throat out before she ever allowed this family to fully own her.

"You are daydreaming, Alpha Grefo," Jannah spat, her voice shaking with the raw, volatile force of her hatred as she glared into his handsome face. "You are completely out of your mind if you think that will ever happen. A marriage requires more than your disgusting, primitive urges. It is only good and proper that you marry someone within your own social strata—someone like Joanne, whom you actually love and respect. Not a girl like me. Not someone you constantly find filthy, dirty, and repulsive. And let me make one thing absolutely clear to your pride: I do not love you. I do not like you. I despise the very ground you walk on."

Dorrent’s eyes narrowed, the possessive warmth in him instantly hardening into a cold, clinical arrogance. He didn’t deny her evaluation of her current state; his gaze swept down the stained, unwashed fabric of her ancient smock once more, the pungent smell still radiating off her skin.

"I completely agree that you are filthy and dirty, Jannah," Dorrent said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly rasp. "You look completely unkempt, and your clothes belong in a waste incinerator. But the biological reality is that my dick does not care about your filthiness. It doesn’t see the dirt. It only senses the raw, intoxicating frequency underneath the fabric."

He took another slow step forward, his chest nearly brushing against her shoulder, forcing her to lean back against the wooden banister of the stairs. "And as for love... you are speaking like a naive child from the slums. I have never planned on marrying for love. Love is a chemical weakness—a temporary cognitive defect that compromises sound judgment."

Jannah let out a cold, bitter laugh, her dark eyes flashing with defiance. "Is that so? Then tell me the truth, Dorrent. Do you love Joanne? The perfect, immaculate lady your father has chosen for you?"

"I don’t love her," Dorrent replied instantly, his voice completely flat, devoid of a single shred of emotional hesitation. "I have never loved her. I simply like her corporate profile. She is an appropriate asset for the family’s high-district expansion. I do not love, and I never think of loving, any woman in this world. Women are meant to be managed, utilized, and consumed for the lineage. Nothing more."

Jannah felt a profound, chilling disgust wash over her tongue as she listened to his cold philosophy. He was a machine wrapped in S-tier muscle—a creature completely incapable of human empathy, viewing the entire world through the lens of executive dominance. It only solidified her resolve to see him destroyed by her.

"Then we have absolutely nothing more to discuss," Jannah said sharply, her voice turning into a wall of solid ice as she adjusted the sleeve of her dress. "You can keep your corporate coldness for your high-district boardrooms. I am not a piece of property, and I am not your asset. Unlike you, I actually have someone I care about. I have a boyfriend waiting for me in the lower sectors—a man I truly love with all my heart—and I must go to him tonight. I will not spend another second under your roof."

She made a sudden, aggressive move to push past his shoulder, her mind entirely focused on reaching her bedroom upstairs to pack her satchel and escape his suffocating presence before the lock down completely sealed the perimeter.

But Dorrent didn’t move an inch. He shifted his frame, completely blocking her path with the absolute weight of his physical authority. His eyes locked onto her face, burning with a sudden, dark, and deeply insulted fury. The mention of her lower-district boyfriend seemed to ignite a volatile, toxic jealousy within his bloodline—a absolute refusal to let another man touch the frequency that had awakened his five-year dead system.

He looked down at her with a suffocating intensity, his jaw clenched.

"Look at me, Jannah," Dorrent commanded, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly husky timber that vibrated with pure, unadulterated arrogance. "I am the CEO of Gammar Tech. I possess the highest S-tier biology in this entire district. I am handsome, wealthy, and powerful beyond measure. There are thousands of beautiful, high-born women in the upper echelons who would gladly crawl on their knees just to receive a single invitation to my bed."

He stepped closer, his hot breath brushing against her cheek, his hand slowly rising to hover just inches above her waist, his winter-frost pheromones completely pinning her to the spot.

"So why is it," Dorrent whispered, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, dark question that hung in the quiet foyer like a loaded weapon, "that you, a common gutter-rat from the slums, are standing here refusing my offer... when your own treacherous body is always yearning and weeping for my touch?"