Chapter 110: What Mark?

Zero went dead rigid, his large hands clamping tight over his combat gloves as his knuckles turned stark white.

Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, his piercing emerald eyes darted toward me. At first, I thought he was trying to gauge my reaction, but I quickly realized that wasn’t it at all.

This guy...

He knew. He knew he had left staggering amounts of his wild pine scent clinging to my hair, my skin, and my rumpled clothes back in that locked equipment shed.

If I was someone acquainted to Edgar, and by chance I had met him right after that moment, then it was only natural that Edgar had picked up those stray, lingering traces off me—even if it had been faint and diluted.

Edgar’s wolf brain must’ve somehow retained the underlying signature, registering it as the scent of a phantom rival who had dared to touch what he considered his. Ahem. Those aren’t my lines.

I quietly took a full step back, leaning my hip lightly against the edge of the weapon rack to observe the standoff. My mind operated on strict logic, so I couldn’t quite grasp the chaotic mechanics of Alpha territoriality.

Why was Edgar so genuinely infuriated over a scent that was now nothing more than a lingering memory? Even I, the victim, am not that vexed.

The air was already heavy as it was.

Still, I wasn’t worried about being crushed by the pressure. Alpha aura relied heavily on psychological submission to break a target, and my mental walls were far too thick for that, as we all know.

Besides, Zero was an exceptionally capable Alpha in his own right; whatever clash their inflated Alpha egos cooked up, I knew they could handle it themselves. They should just be careful not to trash my new training ground.

"That’s strange..." Edgar repeated, his deep voice turning rough, gravelly, and laced with a dangerously quiet frequency. "This scent of yours... it makes me so mad. Truly, why is your scent provoking me? Have we truly never crossed paths?"

"We have not, Alpha Edgar," Zero answered firmly, his voice steady despite the sheer weight pressing down on his shoulders.

Zero took a slow, heavy breath, his chest expanding as he stood his ground with the unyielding pride of an Alpha.

"But," Zero continued, "dare I confirm one last time... what is your relationship with Miss Wells?"

The air somewhat shattered. Literally.

Edgar’s golden eyes flashed with a terrifying, spectral light.

The air above his head rippled violently as his spectral wolf manifested—a massive, shadow-draped grey wolf with glowing golden eyes looming in the dim light of the training dome. It didn’t roar, but its sheer presence compressed the atmosphere enough to make the metal catwalks groan.

Zero didn’t summon his own spectral wolf, nor did he cower. He stood tall, his emerald eyes burning straight through the pressure, refusing to bow despite his lower political standing and personal circumstances.

"Does that have anything to do with your scent provoking me?" Edgar asked, his spectral wolf lowering its massive head in a silent, lethal snarl.

"Yes," Zero stated calmly, his voice ringing crisp across the silent hall. "Because I fear I may have marked Miss Wells in a moment where I was out of my mind."

I paused.

Edgar paused.

Even the spectral wolf above his head went completely still as the entire hall plunged into a dead, suffocating silence.

What in the world...? What mark?! Why is he making stuff up now?!

Edgar, visibly taken aback for a rare second, tilted his head slightly. The golden light in his eyes flickered as his dark gaze slowly shifted away from Zero towards me.

"You... marked my little cat?" Edgar asked, his voice dropping into a dangerously low pitch.

I don’t know what came over me, but a sudden, unwanted wave of panic swept through my chest as his eyes locked onto mine. My hands flew up, and I was instantly shaking my head side to side in rapid denial.

"That definitely didn’t happen!" I was quick to defend myself, my flat deadpan completely breaking. "I don’t have any mark!"

"May," Zero repeated, emphasizing the crucial word with absolute, stone-faced seriousness. "I am not certain because I was out of my mind at the time. But I believe that may be the reason why you feel so heavily provoked by my scent. That is, of course, if your relationship is as you say it is... and you are actively pursuing her."

"It is as I said it was," Edgar claimed without a single second of hesitation, his dark smile returning, sharper and far more dangerous than before.

My head felt like it was genuinely about to explode.

What the hell are these two even talking about?!

One was claiming he might have accidentally claimed me during a rut fever, and the other was standing there doubling down on his fake suitor story while unleashing a giant ghost wolf into my training room.

It was all suddenly starting to sound like absolute, high-born gibberish to me.

Seriously... someone get me out of here. I’d rather be in the kitchen watching dishes with Valerie.

There was a standoff.

Or should I just call it what it actually was? A glorified, high-tier Alpha glare-off.

The instructor—who, just minutes ago, had been getting flustered, pursing his lips, and gulping every time I spoke, laughed, or touched his arm—now had a bone-chilling, icy look in his emerald eyes.

He stood there, completely unbothered by the giant grey spectral wolf hovering in the air above us, tossing out wild, landmine-level claims about ’marking’ me with a straight face.

He wasn’t as innocent as I thought he was.

That was a point for Zero Nightingale. For an Omega like me who used to pride herself on reading every micro-expression as an elite assassin, he had actually managed to fool me with that stoic, honorable-instructor act. Good one.

And then, on the other hand, there was Edgar Morningstar—master of the house, owner of the casino, and an Alpha looking like he wanted to tear a man limb from limb over a scent memory.

He was acting so aggressively territorial, playing his self-appointed role as my ’suitor’ with such seamless, lethal commitment, that it was honestly starting to creep me out.

One point for Edgar, too. The man managed to keep his true motives so thoroughly buried beneath polished smiles and dark calculations that I couldn’t crack his shell.

Edgar, I am definitely going to dig into that head of yours one of these days.

"I’m going upstairs," I announced loudly, breaking the suffocating silence as I grabbed my towel. "You two can stay down here and discuss phantom marks all night if you want," I said as I wrapped the towel firmly around my neck. "Just don’t ruin the place."