Chapter 17: A Male Is Not Secured by Begging

"Grandmother and I have finalized our choices. Attend to your own prey."

Clara locked the velvet script with a decisive snap, sliding it across the polished surface toward Dominic. Watching his commanding features darken gave her a sharp spike of primitive satisfaction.

Hmph. Had his supreme pride not just challenged her intellect?

The slap to his royal ego must have stung beautifully!

She could not map out, however, that the true catalyst fueling the Alpha King’s black fury was not her effortless mastery of the French dialect; it was the reality that the moment her melodic voice filled the hall, several dominant males from the neighboring tables aggressively shifted their focus toward her coordinates.

A few lesser wolves were already pulsing with intent, visibly preparing to breach her perimeter and challenge his claim, only to be violently driven back by the murderous, crimson flare of Dominic’s possessive glare!

Midway through the banquet, Clara deployed the excuse of retiring to the vanity room to covertly track her path back to the registry desk, intending to exhaust her own vault resources to settle the ledger. Instead, she harvested a distinctly bewildered look from the attendant.

"Forgive the disruption, Madam. You are running with Alpha King Dominic tonight, correct?"

Clara offered a sharp nod. "Indeed. Is there a complication with my accounts?"

"Not at all, Madam. The Alpha King utilizes our elite obsidian lineage card, which operates on an annual upfront tribute system. Every consumption within these territory lines is automatically ledgered to his estate; it is impossible for an outer entity to buy the feast."

"..." A cold line of deadpan irritation crossed her face. Left with no leverage, she could only murmur a polite phrase before executing a hurried retreat.

Standing before the chiseled vanity mirror inside the chamber, she could not suppress a silent, breathy sigh.

The material luxury of the supreme lineage lords was truly beyond her wild calculations.

"Tell me, rogue female, how did your cheap scent manage to compromise the Alpha King?"

Suddenly, a hostile female silhouette intercepted her path, tilting her chin up to project a thoroughly disrespectful aura.

"Who exactly are you supposed to be?"

Clara took a deliberate step backward, instantly maximizing the distance between their forms.

Throughout her cycles, her instincts fiercely rejected colliding with unhinged, feral vixens.

"Cease masking your trail; your eyes locked onto my coordinates at the perimeter gates only an hour ago." The female’s voice grew sharp with panic, her chiseled features twisting into a bitter sneer as her narrow, plucked brows arched maliciously. "Mark my warning: do not let your weak pride dream of claiming the Alpha King. Evaluate your cycles, you ancient hag!"

Ah. The second the insult cleaved the air, Clara’s intellect mapped her lineage.

She was the mute background tool who had been standing directly beside Anna, the low-ranking corporate trainee they had intercepted outside.

At that hour, the bitch hadn't possessed the nerve to release a single drop of aura, keeping her head low like a submissive omega.

Yet the moment she isolated Clara's scent in a private chamber, she attempted to switch from a cowering servant to an aggressive predator.

"Oh. I comprehend now."

Clara’s posture relaxed into pure, mocking indifference. "My spirit harbors zero desire to claim his arrogant orbit. Why are you lower-tier creatures vibrating with such panic? Has your own lack of genetic leverage left you so utterly defenseless? Though, looking at your face, I cannot entirely blame your anxiety. That chiseled chin looks sharp enough to impale a forest crow. I maintain connections with several elite human cosmetic surgeons in the outer realms; shall I transmit their runic codes to your enclave?"

Chloe’s fingers instinctively flew to mask her lower jaw, her amber eyes burning with a murderous, humiliated fire as she leveled a venomous glare at Clara. "I simply refuse to tolerate an old rogue slinking out of exile to steal a supreme male. You shameless, unbonded slut."

Clara let out a soft, melodic laugh. "Little vixen, a supreme male is not secured by begging or fighting the herd. Let it go. When I was first initiating my hunting campaigns in the deep relics, your form was still rolling in the dirt."

"You... how dare you insult my standing?!"

Casting a final, pitying glance at the young female who was currently stomping her feet in a violent fit of rage, Clara brushed past her form and strode out into the main corridor.

During the seasons when she first initiated her relic tracking in the foreign territories, her striking visual traits had frequently driven rival merchants to deploy vile, underhanded traps against her position, while high-ranking pack masters consistently whispered that her elite contracts were purchased with her flesh and scent.

She had survived those dark, treacherous battlegrounds, refining her spirit into cold steel; the petty jealousy of these corporate omegas carried zero weight within her mind.

Yet, the exact hour Clara navigated her way back to the grand table, she recognized that her calculations had been dangerously naive.

The central velvet seat directly adjacent to Matriarch Evelyn—the exact space she had occupied.

Was now aggressively claimed by a young female with cascading, chestnut waves.

It was none other than Dominic’s precious corporate trainee!