The silence hanging over the grand dining room was shattered by the echoing sound of the front doors opening.

Guron stepped into the room. The staff and family members seated around the long table stood or greeted him almost in unison, their voices low and tense. "Welcome back, Master Guron."

But sitting at the head of the table, Himelda did not say a single word. She kept her chin tilted up, her eyes icy as she stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge her husband’s arrival by even a fraction of a second.

Guron’s eyes swept across the dining table, and surprise flashed across his features. Sitting right there in the middle of his dining room, positioned next to the fragile, pale form of Jannah, was Doctor Damian Boren. On Jannah’s other side sat Dorrent, his frame radiating a dark heat. Guron had not expected the son of the notorious underground mafia leader, Bellero Boren, to be sitting comfortably inside his family home, eating dinner with his family.

The air in the room was filled with tension that it was difficult to breathe. Guron took a slow, deep breath, his senses immediately picking up the unspoken war raging across the table. He turned his gaze toward Jannah, noting her weak posture and the fresh bandages visible beneath her collar. Relief washed through his chest. She was alive and well. This fragile, small girl from the gutters was the ultimate biological prize—the only woman who could give him an Enigma grandchild to strengthen his bloodline.

But as he looked at the attentive way Damian was leaning toward the girl, a question struck Guron’s mind. Does he know? He wondered whether the notorious Bellero Boren’s son also possessed the secret that Jannah could produce an Enigma child. If the Boren family knew about her genetic framework, it meant an all-out war was brewing. Guron knew with certainty that if Damian shared his father’s dark ambitions, he could not allow the young doctor to remain under this roof for another single night. He would have to find a definitive way to get the boy out of his house immediately. But Guron was a courteous and proud man; he couldn’t just brutally kick the boy out without a valid reason, especially since he knew Damian had spent his life running charity clinics and was entirely different from his monstrous father.

Across the table, Himelda slowly turned her face toward her husband, her eyes locking onto his with a detached glare. She looked at him as if he were a complete stranger. Her mind was spinning with shock and fury as she stared at his wrists. She wondered how on earth he had managed to break through the handcuffs and overcome the power-suppressing perfume she had left him in back in GeeVee country. The fact that he was standing here meant her time was running out.

Jannah sat perfectly rigid between the two massive Alphas, her fingers trembling against her lap. She felt uncomfortable and small in their presence. Every time she accidentally looked up, she met Himelda’s gaze, which was filled with a deep, burning detest and hatred that made her skin crawl.

Damian, completely ignoring the dark looks from the family, kept his movements soft and gentle. Because Jannah’s right hand was still locked inside a plaster cast, he slowly picked up a small silver fork, carefully lifting a piece of tender meat to her lips, helping with feeding her as if she were the most precious glass doll in the world. "Eat slowly, Jannah. Your body needs the nutrition to fight the remaining weakness," Damian murmured softly.

Right on her left side, Dorrent was completely losing his mind. His knuckles were bone-white as he gripped the fork in his hand so hard the metal began to subtly bend under his palm. His breathing was heavy, his eyes flashing with a dangerous crimson light as he watched another man’s hand move so close to Jannah’s mouth. He was restless, his chest heaving as his dominant pheromones began to leak into the room, threatening to choke the air.

Seated a few chairs down, the elite beauty queen Joanne sat perfectly still, her eyes tracking every single movement at the table. She was no fool; she noticed the madness burning in her fiancé’s eyes, and her own face began to harden with anger.

Shadron, sitting directly across from Dorrent, saw the catastrophic look on his friend’s face. He knew Dorrent was right on the verge of jumping across the table to rip Damian’s throat out in front of everyone. Seeking to prevent a total bloodbath, Shadron reached his arm under the table, his hand gripping Dorrent’s thigh with a crushing force to snap him back to reality.

A second later, Shadron pushed his chair back, his voice smooth and polite as he broke the silence. "Kindly excuse me for a moment. I need to use the washroom." He stood up and walked out of the room with a steady pace.

Dorrent sat there for two more minutes, watching Damian wipe a stray drop of water from Jannah’s chin. He couldn’t take it for another second. With a sudden movement, Dorrent slammed his chair back against the floorboards, his face dark as he muttered a rough excuse and followed Shadron’s path straight toward the washroom down the corridor.

The moment the door of the washroom clicked shut behind Dorrent, Shadron turned around, his face filled with seriousness. He grabbed Dorrent’s shirt collar, pinning his frame against the wall.

"You need to compose your goddamn self right now, Dorrent!" Shadron hissed in a furious, quiet whisper. "Are you completely crazy?! You cannot behave like a wild beast when Joanne and Damian Boren are sitting right there at the same table! You are exposing your entire weakness to the enemy!"

"I can’t do it, Shadron! I completely can’t!" Dorrent roared back in a low undertone, his hands gripping Shadron’s wrists to push him away. He paced across the floor, his eyes wild with an uncontrollable frustration. "It is exactly like what you told me back in my room—that little herbalist has cursed my entire system! She has! I swear to you, I cannot stand the sight of another man showing affection to her! Seeing his hands touch her skin makes my blood boil until I want to burn this whole house to the ground!"

"You need to listen to me and play along with this dinner, brother!" Shadron urged fiercely, stepping into his friend’s path. "Let the dinner end in peace first, although there’s none. You need to watch out and ensure you do not heart and humiliate the beauty queen. She is an elite lady, she is not a fool, and she is noticing every single thing you are doing! Your reckless behavior is only making a lot of people hate Jannah more and more by the second! First, you attacked your own mother for her, and now Joanne is going to want her dead. Tell me, Dorrent, how is a fragile, weak gutter girl even going to survive under the hatred of those two women inside this house?!"

Dorrent stopped his pacing, his chest heaving as a resolve settled over his face. He looked at the washroom door, his eyes flashing with heat.

"Then I will simply have to pack her bags, move out of this house, and lock her up safely inside my property back in Gwenreen City," Dorrent delivered ruthlessly, his voice shaking. "I didn’t even want to live under my parents’ roof in the first place, Shadron. The only reason I am here is because my father constantly worries that my energy might experience that horrific black cycle rut again when I am alone, causing me to lose my mind and harm myself."

Shadron let out a long breath, reaching out to pat Dorrent’s shoulder to force his energy to settle down. "Calm your mind down first, Dorrent. We need to handle this strategically. Let’s walk back out there, finish the evening, and then we will go together to talk to your father first about what you had decided on earlier. Maybe the old man will actually help you find a way to protect her from your mother’s schemes, he’s the one that hired her to treat you in the first place."

Dorrent stood still for a long moment, forcing the wild crimson light to fade from his pupils as he fought to regain his composure.

"Fine... let’s go find out whose side my father is on tonight."