“What are you gonna do with that, huh?” one of them mocked.
“Stab us?
Fucking brat.”
“I… I’ll do it,” Johanna warned, her eyes darting between their throats and eyes.
A graze to the eye could mean blindness; a deep enough thrust to the neck could sever an artery.
She tightened her grip, steeling herself to do whatever it took.
“Hey!
Hold that bitch down!” the injured man bellowed, staggering toward them while trying to stanch the bleeding from his arm.
“I was going to sell her off nicely, but now… you’re dead meat!”
“What are you gonna do to her?” one of his cronies asked.
“What do you think?”
“Don’t be an idiot.
You’ll ruin the merchandise over a little scratch.”
“She bit my fucking arm!
I’m not just gonna let that go!”
As they argued, they turned their backs on her, completely dismissing the threat she posed.
Their carelessness was her only chance.
Johanna lunged at the closest man.
He wasn’t looking.
She swung the broken bottle with every ounce of her strength.
“Aaargh!”
The angle was awkward, and she only managed to slash his eye, but the scream was enough.
In the ensuing chaos, she dodged the remaining men and bolted for the alley’s entrance.
But something was wrong.
The ordinary hired carriage was gone.
In its place stood a massive, jet-black coach, blocking her escape.
Just as she neared it, the door swung open, and a man stepped out.
He was dressed entirely in black, as if returning from a funeral.
He was tall, with a solid, powerful build.
His hair was as black as a crow’s feather, and his eyes were the color of dark whiskey—not amber or brown, but something deeper, like the heart of a sunset.
Twilight dwelled in those eyes.
Johanna skidded to a halt before him, panting for breath as the thugs’ shouts echoed behind her.
His unfathomable gaze swept over her, slow and deliberate.
“Omega?” he asked abruptly.
His voice was so rich, so melodious, it was startling.
Johanna blinked, her mind struggling to catch up.
“No, I’m…”
“Ah, a Beta?”
“Yes…”
“I thought so,” he murmured.
“I can’t sense a scent.”
By scent, he meant pheromones.
Like so many others, he had mistaken her for an Omega.
“You’re so beautiful, I assumed you were one.”
She had heard it a thousand times.
Johanna said nothing.
The man’s eyes traced the lines of her face, a slow, meticulous appraisal that felt almost physical.
A faint smile touched his lips as he pulled a pair of black leather gloves from his pocket and slid them on.
“And them?” he asked, nodding toward the commotion behind her.
“They’re thugs,” she gasped.
“They capture people… to sell them.”
“Hmm.”
The men were closing in.
Johanna trembled, glancing over her shoulder.
Three pairs of menacing eyes fixed on her like daggers.
“What the… a nobleman?” one of them muttered, his face twisting into a frown as he took in the man in black.
The other two—one clutching his bleeding eye, the other with his arm wrapped in a crude bandage—flanked him, their expressions souring.
Who the hell is this guy?
was written all over their faces.
“I didn’t realize human traffickers were still running rampant in the capital,” the stranger mused, clenching and unclenching his gloved fists.
Johanna felt a surge of relief that he believed her, but a strange unease prickled at her.
From the moment he had appeared, he had not shown a flicker of surprise or fear.
“Human traffickers?
What are you talking about, haha…” one of the thugs stammered, exchanging a nervous glance with his partners.
They had sensed it, too—this man’s extraordinary presence.
The one who was a Recessive Alpha had gone deathly pale.
“Give that to me,” the stranger said, ignoring them and extending a hand to Johanna.
She flinched as he closed the distance between them.
His large hand wrapped around her wrist, his grip firm but not painful, and she froze.
“You’ll cut yourself holding this,” he said, his voice low.
“Besides, it’s filthy.”
He gently pried the broken bottle from her fingers.
As the weight vanished, she realized she had been clutching it the entire time.
He tossed it aside, and it shattered against the cobblestones.
Johanna jumped at the sound, and he took her by the wrist again, pulling her gently behind him.
Now, all she could see was the broad expanse of his obsidian-colored coat.
He cracked his neck, a slow, deliberate motion, and spoke in a near whisper.
“What to do with these imbeciles?
To kill them would be barbaric, not in an age of transcontinental trains and airships.
Don’t you agree?
Still, I suppose I could beat them half to death.”
Somehow, she could vividly picture the savage smile spreading across his face.
Her vision swam.
Sight, sound, even touch—every sense was assaulted by the atrocity unfolding before her.
The man was unhinged.
He was beating the traffickers to a pulp with a brutal efficiency that was terrifying to behold, so ruthlessly she feared one of them might actually die.
Not that she felt a shred of sympathy for them, but she had never witnessed such brutality.
A primal, instinctual fear seized her.
“Ugh!
Hngh!
H-help… Aaargh!”
“Agh…”
Even with two of them injured, there were three men against his one.
Yet he handled them with terrifying ease.
No, he was toying with them.
Johanna remembered the moment just before the violence erupted—a suffocating pressure had radiated from him, so potent that even she, a Beta, had felt it.
It had not been aimed at her, so she had only trembled.
But the traffickers…
They had frozen like prey before a predator, their legs giving out from under them.
The Recessive Alpha’s reaction had been the most severe; his face had turned a ghastly blue as he choked, gasping for air.
…Is it his pheromones?
She had heard that some Alphas and Omegas could wield their pheromones like a weapon, their influence extending even to Betas.
While it would not cause sexual attraction, it could induce a feeling of pressure, of being mesmerized.
But only a rare few could command their pheromones with such skill, and it required special conditions.
One, she knew, was that they had to be a Mana Responder—an Alpha or Omega who possessed magic.
A fusion of mana and pheromones…
That had to be what she was witnessing.
The power that only an Alpha who was a Mana Responder could wield: Intimidation.
For an Omega, she recalled, it was called Seduction.
“S-save me, please…”
“Argh…”
The men were now prostrated before him, begging.
Their faces were grotesque masks of blood, tears, and dirt.
The one with the injured arm lay unconscious, a crumpled heap on the ground.
“Whew…”
The stranger stopped his relentless assault, letting out a long breath.
He pulled a cigarette from his coat, lighting it with a silver lighter.
He took a long drag, then exhaled slowly, the hazy smoke curling into the dark sky.
“My mood always turns to shit when I see human traffickers,” he said conversationally.
“Agh…”
“We pour taxes into public security every year, yet these bastards keep running wild.
Makes me regret paying them.” He nudged the ribs of a man crawling on the ground with the toe of his polished shoe, then flicked his cigarette onto the man’s back and crushed it under his heel.
With a sharp kick, he flipped the man over and stared down into his bloodied face.
“You’re from Arberg, aren’t you?
All of you.”
At the sharp accusation, the man’s eyes widened.
He trembled, unable to answer.
A shallow, derisive laugh escaped the stranger.
“Sons of bitches.
I knew it.”
The next instant, he kicked the man’s head with sickening force.
There was a dull thud, and the man’s head slumped to the side, his consciousness extinguished.
“Ack…”
The last conscious man met the same fate.
Surely he didn’t kill them.
Johanna leaned against the carriage, blinking.
Her brain felt overloaded, unable to process the intense, brutal efficiency of it all.
The man turned and walked slowly toward her, a shadow melting into the deeper darkness of the alley.
The raw excitement of violence still burned in his whiskey-dark eyes, hot as the setting sun.
They were eyes that could devour anything they touched, leaving nothing but ash.
“Your Lordship.”
The voice, appearing suddenly beside her, made Johanna jump.
A tall, slender figure had emerged silently from the carriage and was approaching the man, ignoring Johanna completely.
It was a person of androgynous beauty, with long blonde hair tied back in a single tail.
“The guards?” the Marquis asked.
“They will arrive shortly.
Shall I have the head butler prepare for you to bathe upon your return to the mansion?”
“No need.
I’ll tell him myself.
Don’t waste the expensive communication device.”
Tossing aside his blood-soaked gloves, the Marquis patted the blonde’s shoulder with a bare hand.
The aide bowed their head.
The Marquis walked past them, stopping directly in front of Johanna, his aide trailing behind him like a shadow.
The entire exchange was fluid, practiced.
“The guards will be here soon,” he told her.
“Yes…” Johanna replied meekly, unable to meet his gaze.
Was it the formidable aura that poured off him in waves?
Or was it those eyes, which held a glint of something that could only be called madness?
Even then, she’d found it impossible to meet his gaze.