Vengeance in His Bed novel Chapter 11

Chapter 11: The Cruel Confirmation

The atmosphere in the master suite was a tomb of suffocating silence. The drapes, thick with the scent of expensive perfume, acted as a barrier against the world, trapping the two of them in a microcosm of loathing. Moonlight, sharp and silver as a blade, sliced through the gaps in the fabric, illuminating the dust motes dancing like tiny ghosts over the wreckage of the scene.

Dorrent’s consciousness detonated.

The chemical fog in his brain felt like a physical weight, a sludge he had to wade through just to open his eyes. When he finally did, the world was a blurred smear of deep burgundies and cold stones. His throat was a parched desert, each breath rasping against his windpipe like sandpaper. But it was the tactile reality that shattered the last of his lethargy. The silk sheets, usually a luxury he barely noted, felt agonizingly cold against his bare skin. He was unanchored, exposed, and—most terrifyingly—utterly out of control.

His eyes tracked the room, landing on the high-backed armchair.

Jannah sat there, framed by the moonlight like a dark saint of the gutters. She was no longer the shivering, broken thing he had insulted and discarded. Her posture was regal, her spine a straight line of defiance that mocked his own weakness. In the dim light, the black lace of her bra looked like wrought iron against her skin.

But it was the carnage of the flesh that stopped his heart.

The marks were everywhere—blossoming across her collarbone, swirling around the swell of her breasts, and peeking from the shadows of her inner thighs. They were fresh, vibrant shades of plum and crimson—the undeniable calligraphy of a beastly claim.

A primal, jagged roar built in Dorrent’s chest. He tore the sheets away, his eyes scanning his own body. He looked at his hands, his thighs, the heavy ache in his loins that whispered of a satisfaction his mind refused to acknowledge. The realization was a physical blow, more potent than any drug. He felt a surge of nausea so profound he thought he might retch. He, the pinnacle of the Gammar lineage, the man who had spent a lifetime scrubbing the "filth" of the lower sectors from his vision, had supposedly wallowed in it.

"What... what is this?"

The words were a broken rasp. He wasn’t just angry; he was unravelling. The cognitive dissonance was a lightning strike. He looked at her—this girl from the slums, this nothing—and then at the marks of probably his own teeth and lips on her skin.

"Answer me!" he screamed, the sound echoing off the vaulted ceilings.

He launched himself from the bed. His massive frame, honed by years of disciplined training and superior genetics, moved with a lethal, desperate grace. He didn’t feel the cold of the floor; he only felt the heat of his own rage.

His hand collided with the soft skin of her throat, his fingers wrapping around her neck with the precision of a predator. The impact against the stone wall was a dull thud that vibrated through his arm. He pinned her there, his face so close to hers that he could see the tiny flecks of gold in her dark, triumphant eyes. His crimson eyes glowed, fueled by a cocktail of adrenaline and the lingering, treacherous embers of the herbs.

"What did you do to me?" he hissed, his thumb pressing into the hollow of her throat, cutting off the very air she needed to answer. "You drugged me. You staged this. You painted these marks on yourself to humiliate me! Speak, you wretched, manipulative bitch! Why am I naked? Why are you marked like a common whore?"

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