Knotting His Rejected Breeder

The cart, travel-stained, rumbled over the wooden bridge just as the gas lamps along the riverbank were being lit.

Below, the dark, sluggish waters reflected the city’s amber glow.

Bloodmoon bore no resemblance to the encampments of the Northern mountains, with their log walls and turf roofs. It was a city built on ancient civilisation, solid stone, and river silt: narrow cobblestone alleys, wrought-iron balconies, and tall brick townhouses, where the scents of roasted meat, river mud, and woodsmoke hung in the damp evening air.

Humans walked these streets. They ran the shops and unloaded cargo on the docks. But the city belonged to the packs.

Every guard stationed beneath a streetlamp, every merchant watching from a doorway’s shadow, exuded that heavy, silent stillness peculiar to wolves.

Marcus sat at the back of the cart, his hands resting across his knees, watching the passing iron gates and crowded alleys. Beside him, Destiny’s mother kept her hands tucked into her shawl, her face pale in the lamplight.

Dane rode near the cart’s wheel, his hands relaxed on the reins. He had washed the dried blood from his face down by the river, but his knuckles were still split, and his eye bore the dark mark of the violent punch Garron had landed.

He glanced at Destiny. She was sitting on a sack of dry grain, wrapped in a wool cloak Henrik had taken from his saddlebags.

Her hair was damp and clung to her neck, yet the exhaustion of the cairn ordeal had left no mark on her face. In the glow of the streetlamps, with the river breeze sweeping a few stray locks from her forehead, she was strikingly beautiful. Her simple peasant tunic could not hide the curve of her shoulders or the stubborn set of her chin.

Destiny caught his gaze. She didn’t look away. Her dark eyes met his, tracing the bruise on his jaw before dropping to his chest and she realised that it wasn’t just protection she craved out of fear; it was him she wanted.

Dane shifted his gaze back to the road, his throat tight.

Marcus cleared his throat, breaking the silence. He studied Dane’s profile.

"Your mother’s going to have a fit when she sees us coming through that gate, young Alpha," Marcus said. The animosity he had shown on the dirt track two days earlier had vanished, blunted by the memory of Dane’s elbow shattering Garron’s jaw against the altar slab.

"I know," Dane replied neutrally. "She doesn’t own my life."

"She owns the house, though," Marcus retorted, leaning forward. He paused, his jaw tight, before continuing: "But hey you fought like a man out there—not like an Alpha sitting on a cushion."

Destiny’s mother placed her hand on her husband’s knee and gave Dane a subtle nod from beneath her hood. It wasn’t a truce—not really. But something between them had cracked, revealing an opening.

They left the main road running along the river and entered the city’s most prestigious district; here, the streets widened and the brick houses rose taller, framed by ivy and wrought-iron arches. Ahead of them, on a rocky promontory overlooking the water, stood Bloodmoon Hall: a massive three-story mansion of black river stone and white columns, enclosed by a high iron fence and guarded by four men in dark gray coats.

Dane stopped the cart fifty yards short of the main gates, where a side alley split off toward the lower river docks. He turned his horse around to face Marcus and his family.

"I have two places for you," Dane said, dropping his voice so the guards on the street wouldn’t hear. "There’s a cottage three streets down, behind the copper smithy. Quiet, plain, out of the way. Nobody from court goes down there. You’d have peace."

He looked at Destiny now, his eyes hard under the brim of his hat.

"Or you come through those gates with me," Dane went on, his voice heavier. "You take a wing in the main hall. You eat at the table. You stand under the lamps, and everyone in this city learns you’re under my protection."

Marcus didn’t hesitate. He spat over the side of the cart onto the wet cobbles. "Give us the cottage, boy. I’ve had enough of lordly halls and fine stone to last me a lifetime. I want a door that locks and a fire that doesn’t come with politics."

Dane nodded, taking the answer. But when he looked at Destiny, he saw the disappointment sitting plain on her face.

Her fingers tightened on the edge of her cloak. She looked past Dane, up the stone steps of Bloodmoon Hall, at the lit windows, the banners on the iron balconies, the sheer weight of the place. She didn’t want to be tucked away in a smithy’s shadow like a secret, or like cargo too fragile to show. She wanted to walk up those steps beside him. She wanted Sonia to see her. She wanted Vance’s scouts to know where she slept. Most of all, she wanted to be in the house where Dane laid his head.

Destiny leaned forward, her eyes locked on Dane’s, and something in her pulse jumped when he met them.

"The cottage is for my father," Destiny said, her voice clear, cutting straight over Marcus’s grumbling. "What about me, Alpha?"

Marcus’s head whipped around. "Destiny—"

"I asked Dane," she said, still not looking away from him. Her gaze warmed. "If I stay in that cottage, I’m just a farm girl hiding from the rain. Is that why you bled for me on that rock? To hide me?"

Henrik let out a low whistle behind his hand. Hannah hid a smirk against her horse’s neck.

Dane felt something dark and warm move through his chest. He reined his horse a half-step closer to the cart and leaned down so only she could hear the rasp in his voice.

"You won’t be hidden," Dane said, low and rough enough that Destiny’s breath caught. "Your family gets the cottage tonight so your father can sleep without guards at his door. But tomorrow morning, you walk through those gates. You take your seat at my table, and if my mother has a problem with it, she can take it up with me."

Destiny’s lips parted, and something fierce and satisfied showed in her eyes. She didn’t blush. She didn’t look down. She simply tipped her head, taking his terms, a challenge written across her face.

"Tomorrow morning, then," she said.

Marcus grunted, looking between them with a mix of exhaustion and plain fatherly dread. He knew he couldn’t stop the pull his daughter felt toward the young wolf, not after everything that had happened on the mountain.

"Just get us to the cottage, boy," Marcus muttered, though there was no real fight left in his voice. "Before I bleed all over your clean cart."

Dane turned his horse toward the river alley and led them down into the shadows of the lower quarter, a small, dangerous smile finally touching the corner of his mouth. The fight at the cairn was over. But looking back at the black stone face of Bloodmoon Hall, he knew the real fight for his house was just starting.

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