Prologue

“You said with your own mouth that you were a breeder.”

A neat face. The face that would normally wear a gentle smile now showed no expression, to the point of being chilling.

It was only when Karina faced his unfamiliar expression that she realized. The man standing before her, Dominic Winchester, was quite… no, in fact, very angry.

“What are you doing here?”

She couldn’t let her fear show. Karina asked, firmly planting her feet on the ground. What on earth was he doing here?

“What am I doing? I came to find you, Karina Crawford.”

“But why did you…”

No. This wasn’t the time for such words. There was something more important. Karina glanced at the clock and said to Dominic.

“You should go back now. The ball with Olivia…”

Just as she was about to say “Don’t you need to attend?”, an angry shout rang in her ears.

“Damn it. Can you stop talking about Olivia for once!”

Karina was startled into silence.

As if the solid mask from earlier had been a mirage, Dominic’s eyes now gleamed with an intense anger that could be called madness. So much so that Karina unconsciously took a step back.

“Why.”

“W-what?”

“Do you not need me anymore? Or are you bored? But I think it’s too early for you to be bored with me.”

Running his hand through his hair, Dominic approached Karina one step at a time. Before she knew it, Karina had retreated one step, two steps, until her back hit the wall. With nowhere left to run, Karina tried to stop Dominic with an urgent voice.

“What are you… Wait, Dominic.”

“Karina Crawford.”

An ominous voice. With the light behind him, his unusually dark face showed only his eyes, shining quietly but dangerously.

“Even if I was a puppy you were raising with the intention of giving away to others, this isn’t right.”

His low voice, almost like a growl, pressured her. Dominic stared intently at Karina’s lips as she looked up at him, swallowing hard.

Unlike his rough gaze, the touch of his thumb tracing her lips was gentle.

“If you agreed to train me properly, you should see it through to the end, Breeder. Wasn’t that our contract?”

At Dominic’s sudden return to formal speech, Karina tried to make some kind of excuse.

That his demands were unreasonable and that was the one thing she absolutely couldn’t agree to.

That she had no choice but to run away from someone who would say such nonsense in the first place.

But Karina couldn’t bring herself to protest. As the larger Dominic enveloped the wall to prevent her escape, a shadow fell over her head as if a roof had suddenly appeared.

Before she could grasp the situation, something touched her lips. It was a familiar sensation.