Knotting His Rejected Breeder

The courtyard had not settled.

Guards moved between the royal corridors while elders stood in tight groups, speaking in low voices. The King’s order to seal the eastern forest had spread through the gathering quickly, and the easy atmosphere from earlier was gone. Dane watched two guards hurry past with their hands resting on their swords before turning to Henrik.

"We’re going with them."

Henrik looked at him. "You heard the King. The area is being sealed."

"Exactly."

"The area is being sealed because something happened there."

Dane kept his voice low. "The market attacker disappeared in that direction. Now we have blood, several sets of tracks, and a forest the royal guards are suddenly desperate to keep everyone away from. I want to know whether they’re connected."

Henrik studied him for a moment. "This is Silvercrest territory."

"I know."

"We’re guests."

Dane looked toward the eastern corridor. "I’m not going there to interfere with their investigation. I want to see what they found."

Henrik sighed, but there was a familiar amusement in his eyes. "You’ve been Alpha for four days and you’re already making my job difficult."

"You knew what you signed up for."

"I was your brother before I was your Beta. I knew exactly what I was signing up for."

Dane almost smiled.

Henrik nodded toward the King. "Go ask for permission before you get yourself thrown out of the royal palace."

They approached the Lycan King before the guards could leave. Dane waited until the King finished speaking with one of his advisers before stepping forward.

"Your Majesty."

The King looked at him. "Alpha Dane."

"I would like permission to inspect the eastern boundary."

The King’s expression tightened. "Why?"

Dane lowered his voice. "The attack at the market. The man who fired the arrow escaped toward the eastern side of Silvercrest. We followed the direction as far as we could before losing him."

Aurora, standing a short distance away, turned her head.

Dane continued. "I don’t know if the incidents are connected, but I don’t think we should assume they aren’t."

The King was silent for a moment.

"That information was not brought to me."

Dane caught the surprise in his voice. That bothered him more than he expected. Someone in Silvercrest had known about the attack and failed to tell the King, or the information had been lost somewhere between the guards and the royal court.

"I’m not accusing anyone," Dane said. "I only want to follow the trail while it’s still fresh."

The King looked toward Henrik and the warriors waiting behind them.

"How many?"

"Five," Dane answered.

The King finally nodded. "Take them. Stay along the boundary."

"We will."

The King’s expression hardened. "You do not enter the old forest without my permission."

Dane inclined his head. "Understood."

As he turned, Aurora spoke.

"Alpha Dane."

He stopped.

She was watching him carefully. "Be careful."

There was something in her voice that caught his attention. It was not the polite concern expected from a princess speaking to a visiting Alpha. It sounded personal, almost reluctant.

Dane nodded once. "We will."

He walked away with Henrik beside him.

"She knows something," Henrik said.

"You noticed it too."

"She looked like she wanted to say more."

Dane mounted his horse. "Let’s see what we find first."

They rode out with five Silvercrest warriors.

The further they moved from the palace, the quieter the land became. The sounds of the gathering disappeared behind them, replaced by the steady rhythm of hooves and the occasional rustle of leaves. The road narrowed as they approached the eastern boundary, where thick trees crowded the path and the last signs of the royal grounds disappeared.

One of the warriors suddenly raised his hand.

"There."

Dane dismounted.

A broken branch hung low over the path, and dark stains marked the pale bark. He stepped closer and touched one finger to the blood.

It was still damp.

"Recent," he said.

Henrik crouched near the ground and brushed aside a layer of leaves. "There are tracks."

Dane joined him.

Several sets of footprints crossed the soft earth. Some belonged to boots, deep and clear in the mud, while others were smaller and uneven.

Henrik pointed toward them. "These ones are different."

Dane studied the marks. The smaller prints were not as deep, and the spacing between them was inconsistent. Whoever had made them had not been walking calmly. One print dragged slightly through the dirt before disappearing beneath the leaves.

"Someone was running," Dane said.

"Looks like it."

They followed the trail.

The evidence became clearer the further they went. A patch of earth had been disturbed near the roots of a tree. A branch had snapped at shoulder height, and there was another smear of blood farther ahead.

Dane crouched beside it.

There was no body.

No weapon.

No sign that anyone had stopped long enough to treat the wound.

"Whoever it was kept moving," Henrik said.

Dane looked at the blood.

"And they were hurt badly enough to leave a trail."

He stood and scanned the trees.

The forest was silent.

Too silent.

They followed the blood for another distance before Dane realized something important.

The trail was not leading toward Silvercrest.

It was leading away from it.

He stopped.

Henrik noticed immediately. "What?"

Dane looked toward the direction of the trail.

"Aurora was right."

"About what?"

"They weren’t trying to get in."

Henrik’s expression hardened.

"They were trying to get out."

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

The market attacker had disappeared in this direction, and now someone else had been bleeding along the same route. Dane could not prove the two incidents were connected, but the coincidence was becoming harder to ignore.

Near a cluster of roots, something pale caught his attention beneath the leaves.

Dane crouched and brushed them aside.

A small wooden wolf lay in the dirt.

He picked it up carefully.

The carving was simple but deliberate, the shape of the wolf worked into the wood with a steady hand. A strange mark had been carved into its back.

Henrik took it from him and turned it over.

"Have you seen this before?" Dane asked one of the Silvercrest warriors.

The man froze.

It lasted only a second, but Dane saw it.

His face tightened before he quickly shook his head.

"No."

Dane held his gaze.

The warrior looked away.

Henrik noticed it too.

Dane did not question him in front of the others. Whatever the symbol meant, the reaction had told him enough to know it was not meaningless.

"Keep it," Dane said to Henrik.

They continued searching until the light began to fade between the trees. They found no body and no clear sign of where the injured person had gone. Eventually, Dane called them back.

The ride toward the palace was quiet.

Dane kept thinking about the smaller footprints.

Whoever had made them had been running without proper shoes, and whoever they had been running from had either followed them or stopped before reaching the boundary.

The wooden wolf bothered him most.

He could not explain why.

By the time they returned, darkness had settled over the royal grounds.

Aurora was waiting near the eastern corridor.

Dane dismounted and handed his reins to a stable hand. Aurora’s gaze moved from him to Henrik.

"What did you find?"

"Blood," Dane answered. "Several sets of tracks. Someone was injured."

"Did you find them?"

"No."

Her eyes shifted toward the direction of the forest.

"Did you find anything else?"

Dane noticed the question.

"You already know there was something else."

Aurora looked back at him.

"What do you mean?"

"You asked before I mentioned anything."

For a moment, her composure slipped. Her fingers tightened around the fabric of her gown before she released it.

"The old forest has been closed for years."

"Why?"

"There are ruins there."

"That doesn’t explain why everyone becomes uncomfortable when it’s mentioned."

Aurora looked toward the eastern corridor.

"Some places are closed because people are better off leaving them alone."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It is the only one I can give you."

Before Dane could push further, a royal servant approached.

"Your Highness, the King is asking for you."

Aurora nodded.

She turned to leave, then stopped.

"Alpha Dane."

He looked at her.

"Don’t go into the old forest."

She left before he could respond.

Henrik came to stand beside him.

"You don’t trust her."

"I don’t know her well enough to trust her."

Henrik gave a quiet laugh. "That’s probably the most sensible thing you’ve said since we arrived."

Dane looked at him. "You’re enjoying this."

"A little."

"You’re supposed to be my Beta."

"I am. That’s why I’m allowed to enjoy watching you discover that being Alpha doesn’t mean you get all the answers."

Dane shook his head. "Go find out what the guards know."

Henrik’s expression became serious again. "Already on it."

Later that evening, a guard report reached them with one additional detail. Someone had reportedly been seen on the road leading away from the eastern forest toward the farming territories. There was no clear description, only the direction and the fact that the person appeared to be moving quickly.

Dane filed it away with the rest.

That night, he returned to his rooms and placed the wooden wolf on the table. He turned it over again beneath the lamp and noticed a second, fainter carving beneath the first mark.

He had not seen it in the forest.

He traced it with his thumb, trying to understand what it meant.

Nothing came to him.

A knock sounded at the door.

Henrik entered without ceremony and closed it behind him.

One look at his face made Dane straighten.

"What?"

Henrik placed a small piece of torn fabric on the table beside the carving.

"We found this near the smaller tracks."

Dane picked it up.

The cloth was dark and rough. It carried the faint smell of earth and smoke, but there was nothing else he could identify.

"What did you find out?"

Henrik hesitated.

"We don’t know who the smaller footprints belonged to."

Dane waited.

"But whoever made them was smaller than the others. The stride was short, and they were moving unevenly."

"Could be a child."

"Possible."

"A young woman."

"Also possible."

Henrik looked at him. "We can’t say for certain."

Dane nodded. He preferred an honest uncertainty to a convenient answer.

"Where did the trail lead?"

Henrik’s expression changed slightly. "It eventually reaches the road toward the farming territories."

Dane looked up. "The same road?"

Henrik nodded. "The road the farmer’s daughter took when she left Silvercrest."

The room went very quiet.

Dane looked from the torn fabric to the carved wolf and felt the separate threads of the last few days pull into one line he still could not fully see.

A hooded man at the market.

Blood in the eastern forest.

A girl running.

And a road that led back toward the same direction as the farmer’s daughter who had collided with him, dropped her jars, and refused to apologize.

He still did not know her name.

He was beginning to understand that he needed to.

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