Vengeance in His Bed novel Chapter 44

Chapter 44: I Enslaved Him to Me

Morning came, Jannah’s eyelids fluttered open, a sharp, ragged gasp catching in her throat as consciousness rushed back into her mind with the crushing weight of a physical blow. Her fingers immediately flew to her face, then to her throat, tracing the delicate, frantic pulse humming beneath her pale skin.

She was completely alone.

The heavy, suffocating weight of Dorrent’s physique was gone, leaving nothing but an empty, crumpled indentation on the mattress beside her. The vanity lamp from the night before was still flickering weakly under the bright daylight, its silver wire humming a quiet, mechanical drone. Jannah pushed herself up onto her elbows, a sharp groan escaping her lips as a wave of deep, systemic soreness rippled through her lower abdomen and thighs. Her vagina felt swollen and hot, a lingering, throbbing pulse serving as a brutal reminder of the previous night’s intense escalation before she had forced her own neural override.

I survived, she thought, her eyes tracking the floorboards. The short white linen towel lay discarded in the corner like a shed skin, but the digital tablet and the black drive card were entirely gone.

A sudden, terrifying confusion gripped her chest. She looked down at her own pale hands, her mind racing through the mathematical formulas and precise measurements of the ghost-thistle extract she had slipped into his breakfast tea the morning prior. The herb was an absolute neural dampener. It was a fundamental law of her grandfather’s lore—no Alpha, regardless of their tier, should have been capable of achieving an erection under its influence. Yet, the moment Dorrent had pressed his naked, sweating torso against her, the moment his lips had brushed her neck, his manhood had awakened with a terrifying, monstrous velocity that had completely defied the toxin.

Why? she thought, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip as a cold sweat broke out along her collarbone. How could his biology bypass the ghost-thistle? What kind of a monster am I dealing with?

She couldn’t stay in this room. The suffocating pheromones of the Alpha still hung thick in the air, sticking to the fabric of the curtains, threatening to choke her remaining logic. She needed answers. She needed to understand the failure of her medicine before Dorrent returned from his corporate headquarters to claim her again.

Moving with a frantic, silent urgency, Jannah slid out of the bed. She ignored the dull ache between her legs as she threw on a simple, loose-fitting charcoal sweater and a dark, heavy skirt that completely concealed the purple fingerprints pressed into her body. She didn’t use the grand staircase. Utilizing the architectural knowledge she had gathered during her weeks as the estate’s herbalist, she slipped through the narrow, hidden servant stairwells in the eastern pantry, navigating the shadows until she reached the rear glass perimeter.

The security guards were currently rotating cycles at the main northern gates. With a swift, ghost-like fluidity, Jannah slipped past the biometric sensors, darting through the perimeter shrubbery and vanishing into the crowded, bustling transit sectors of the Upper City.

---

The public vehicle arrived at the Silver Heights district within forty minutes, its pneumatic brakes letting out a sharp, clean hiss as Jannah stepped out onto the pristine, elevated walkways.

Jannah’s heart hammered a heavy, irregular rhythm against her ribs as she approached the sprawling, gold-accented facade of the premium neurological recovery facility where Guron Grefo had sequestered her grandfather, Duro. The acoustic-dampening floors of the grand lobby swallowed the frantic sound of her footsteps as she glided past the glowing holographic reception terminals. Because Guron’s personal security detail had already white-listed her biometric profile weeks ago, the automated glass barriers slid open without a single administrative alert.

She took the elevator to the fourth floor, her fingers tightly interlaced, her knuckles turning stark white as the digital numbers ticked upward.

Room 402.

Jannah pushed the door open with a trembling hand, her breath catching in her throat. She desperately prayed that the advanced, multi-million-dollar neural therapies funded by the Grefo family had managed to anchor her grandfather’s fracturing memory today. She needed his mind; she needed the ancient, unadulterated wisdom of the old guilds to explain the biological anomaly taking place within her flesh.

The suite was bathed in a soft, ambient gold light. Duro was sitting exactly where she had left him during her last visit, his frail, statuesque frame wrapped in a rich, quilted emerald blanket by the massive panoramic window overlooking the city’s wealthy skyline. His white hair was neatly combed, his weathered, calloused hands resting flat against his knees.

"Grandpa?" Jannah whispered, her voice a thin, fractured thread as she stepped into the space, closing the door behind her to seal out the clinical hum of the corridor.

The old man’s head turned slowly. For a terrifying, breathless beat, his eyes remained flat, milky, and completely glazed over—lost in the deep, shifting fog of the advanced amnesia that had slowly eaten his cognitive pathways over the last year. Jannah’s heart plummeted into a cold vacuum.

"Grandpa, it’s me," she cried softly, rushing to his side. She dropped heavily onto her knees beside his armchair, her hands reaching out to clutch his fingers. They were warm, but his grip remained loose, empty, and entirely unyielding. "It’s Jannah. Little bird. Please... I need you today. I need you to hear me."

Duro blinked, a slow, hollow wheeze escaping his dry lips as his focus flicked across her face, wandering toward the white walls behind her as if searching for a ghost. "The rain..." he muttered, his voice a raspy, disconnected murmur. "The rain on the tin roof... it’s too quiet here. Jannah... where is the blue-leaf ginger?"

"Grandpa, listen to me," Jannah interrupted desperately, her voice trembling with an acute, rising panic as she squeezed his hands tighter, trying to force his eyes to lock onto hers. "I encountered a patient... an Alpha in the lower sectors. I administered the ghost-thistle extract. A maximum, concentrated dosage, Grandpa. The kind meant to completely flatten the neural pathways of a dominant predator for twelve hours. But... but it failed."

Duro’s head tilted slightly, a faint, mechanical twitch occurring in his jaw at the mention of the herb, but the fog in his eyes refused to part. He simply stared through her.

"The patient...," Jannah pressed on, her tears finally spilling over her lashes, hot and bitter against her cold cheeks. "Grandpa, please! Look at me! Why would an Alpha’s biology completely bypass the ghost-thistle?"

Duro let out a low, dry chuckle—a hollow, empty sound that carried absolutely no recognition of her explanations or her plight. His fingers idly scratched at the edge of the quilted blanket, his mind completely slipping away into the gray abyss of his disease.

Duro rasped, his eyes turning back toward the massive window, his voice fading into a distant, automatic recitation. "I don’t remember, little bird. The words are gone. The memory is rotting in the mud."

"Grandpa, please!" Jannah sobbed, her forehead dropping onto his knee as her shoulders shook with absolute exhaustion and terror. "Try to remember! I’m in trouble! I need to know how to stop it!"

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