The Contract Wife Tries to Leave - Chapter 27
“What are you gonna do with that? Hit me? Stab me? You tiny thing, acting tough.”
“I… I really will swing it.”
Johanna warned, aiming at the men’s eyes and necks. Even a slight graze from the sharp glass could cause blindness, and a stab to the neck’s artery could lead to fatal bleeding.
She gripped the bottle with genuine intent to harm.
“Hey! Damn… Keep that girl under control! We were going to sell her nicely… You’re dead.”
At that moment, the man with the injured arm, who had been staunching his wound nearby, shouted loudly. He staggered toward Johanna, glaring menacingly.
“What are you gonna do when you catch her?”
“What do you think. Don’t you know?”
“You’re making a fuss over a little bite. Don’t you know her value will drop if we don’t sell her smoothly?”
“Damn it, but she bit my arm, should I just let her be?”
The men began arguing with each other, completely ignoring Johanna. They underestimated her as a powerless sixteen-year-old girl.
Naturally, their complacency created a critical opening. It was a golden opportunity for Johanna. She targeted the closest man first. Taking advantage of him not looking her way, she swung the glass bottle with all her might.
“Argh!”
Due to the angle, she could only attack one of the man’s eyes, but it was enough to cause a distraction and make her escape. Johanna ran towards the alley entrance, evading the men trying to grab her.
But something was off. The ordinary hired carriage she had seen earlier had disappeared, and a pitch-black carriage was now blocking the entrance.
Just before Johanna reached the carriage, its door opened, and someone stepped out. The person was dressed entirely in black, as if they had just come from a funeral, and had a solid build with a very tall stature.
The person’s hair was as black as a raven’s feather, and their eyes were a deep whiskey color. It wasn’t the usual reddish-brown or amber hue. The man’s eyes held a twilight depth.
Johanna, panting, stopped in front of him. She could hear the thugs’ shouts behind her. The man’s inscrutable eyes slowly scanned her from head to toe.
The man abruptly asked,
“Omega?”
His voice was disconcertingly sweet. Johanna blinked in confusion before answering a few beats late.
“No, I am…”
“Ah, a beta?”
“Yes…”
“I see. I don’t smell a scent.”
He must have meant pheromones by ‘scent.’ Like others who saw Johanna for the first time, this man had mistaken her for an omega.
“You’re so pretty, I thought you were an omega.”
“……”
It was something she had heard countless times. Johanna chose to remain silent instead of replying. The man carefully examined her face as if licking it, then smiled faintly and took gloves out of his pocket, putting them on.
“Who are those behind you?”
“They’re thugs… They seem to be trying to capture and sell people somewhere.”
“Hmm.”
The presence of the men felt dangerously close now. Johanna turned around, trembling. Three pairs of menacing eyes stabbed at her like knives.
“What’s this… A noble?”
One of the men muttered, frowning as he saw the man in black. Behind him, another man with blood flowing from one eye and another with a makeshift bandage on his arm approached stealthily.
They glared at Johanna, then scowled upon noticing the man. Their faces clearly showed their thoughts: Who’s this guy?
“I didn’t know there were still human traffickers operating in the capital.”
The man murmured, clenching and unclenching his gloved hands. They were sleek, black leather gloves. Johanna felt relieved that he believed her story, yet she also felt an odd sense of dissonance at his unshaken and unafraid demeanor from the start.
“Human traffickers, you say? What nonsense, haha…”
The men exchanged glances, mumbling uncertainly. They, too, sensed the unusual presence of the man in black. Among them, a man identified as a recessive alpha looked particularly pale.
“Give that to me.”
Ignoring the men’s words, the man in black extended his hand toward Johanna. Reflexively flinching at the sudden proximity, Johanna stiffened as his large hand gently but firmly grasped her wrist.
“You’ll get hurt holding something like this barehanded. It’s dirty, too.”
He took something from her hand. Only then did Johanna realize she had been clutching the broken bottle all this time.
The man in black threw the bottle far away. The loud crash of the bottle shattering on the ground startled Johanna, making her shoulders tremble. The man gently pulled her by the wrist and positioned her behind his broad back.
Now, Johanna’s view was filled only with the wide back of the man in the obsidian-colored coat. He cracked his neck a few times as if loosening up and muttered.
“What should I do with these fools… I can’t kill them. In an era where trains cross the continent and airships fly, living like a barbarian and committing murder is quite unacceptable. No? But I suppose I could leave them half-dead.”
For some reason, Johanna could vividly imagine the man’s face twisting into a savage smile.
With her vision blurring, violent images swirled in her mind. Sight, sound, maybe even touch. Every sense sharply perceived the impending horror.
The man seemed insane.
