Knotting His Rejected Breeder

Sonia’s POV

The first accident happened on a quiet morning.

I was walking the short path between the main hall and the nursery wing when one of the heavy flower pots on the upper balcony shifted and fell. It shattered only a few steps behind me, spraying soil and broken clay across the stones. The sound cracked through the courtyard loud enough to make several warriors turn.

I stood still, one hand on my stomach, staring at the pieces.

A young maid appeared at the balcony rail a moment later, pale and flustered.

"My lady, I’m so sorry. The stand must have been uneven. I didn’t see—"

"It’s all right," I said, though my heart was still beating too fast. "Just clean it up."

She nodded quickly and disappeared.

I continued toward the nursery, telling myself it was nothing. Old stands. Careless hands. The house was large, and people were still adjusting to new routines. These things happened.

By midday, I almost believed it.

The second accident came in the afternoon.

I had gone to the small sitting room near the east corridor to rest my feet. The pregnancy made my back ache more than usual, and the quiet room had become a place I used when I needed a few uninterrupted minutes. I lowered myself onto the cushioned bench and reached for the cup of tea already waiting on the side table.

The scent reached me first.

Something sharp sat beneath the familiar herbal smell. Not strong enough to name, but wrong enough to make me pause with the cup halfway to my mouth.

I frowned and set it down.

When Lydia entered a moment later with a folded blanket over her arm, she stopped short at the look on my face.

"What is it?"

"The tea," I said. "It smells off."

She crossed the room at once, took the cup, and sniffed it carefully. Her expression tightened.

"Don’t drink this."

"I wasn’t going to."

Lydia carried the cup to the window and poured it out into the garden soil below. Then she wiped the rim with a clean cloth and set the empty cup aside like it had offended her.

"I’ll make you another myself," she said. "From now on, no one else touches your drinks."

I watched her carefully.

"You think someone meant to hurt me?"

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she straightened the blanket over the back of the chair, her movements neat and controlled.

"I think something is wrong," she said at last. "And I don’t like how quiet it’s being about it."

That night, I told Ramon.

We were in our chambers, the lamps turned low. He had been reviewing border reports at the table near the window, but the moment I mentioned the falling pot and the tea, he set the papers aside.

"Why didn’t you tell me earlier?"

"Because I wasn’t sure it was anything."

"You’re sure enough now."

I sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded over my stomach. Our son shifted under my palms, a slow roll that grounded me more than I expected.

"Lydia thinks someone might be targeting me."

Ramon’s jaw flexed.

"Then we treat it as if someone is."

He stood and crossed the room. When he stopped in front of me, he rested both hands on my shoulders, firm and warm.

"You don’t walk the open corridors alone for now. You don’t eat or drink anything that doesn’t come through Lydia or me. If something feels wrong, you say so immediately."

"Ramon—"

"I’m not asking."

The protectiveness in his voice was not loud, but it left no room for argument.

I nodded once.

His hands eased, and he pressed a kiss to the top of my head before returning to the table, he didn’t pick the reports back up. He only sat there, staring at the dark window like he could force answers out of the night.

The next morning, Ivy came to the nursery.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it for a moment before speaking.

"Lydia told me about the tea."

"Of course she did."

"She’s not wrong to worry." Ivy walked closer, lowering her voice. "Two accidents close together is not nothing. Especially not with you this far along."

I adjusted the small blanket I had been folding and set it on the shelf.

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to look around," she said. "Quietly. If someone new has settled into the servant halls, I want to know who they answer to and where they sleep."

"You think it’s someone inside?"

"I think harm rarely walks through the front gate announcing itself."

Her words stayed with me long after she left.

That afternoon, another small thing happened.

I found my favorite shawl on the floor near the balcony doors, though I was certain I had left it folded on the chair. One of the window latches was also undone. Alone, it would have meant nothing. Together with everything else, it made the skin along my arms tighten.

Lydia noticed the shawl the same moment I did.

She picked it up slowly.

"I’ll speak to the other maids," she said. "Someone has been in here who shouldn’t have been."

"Be careful."

She looked at me then, steady and unsmiling.

"You be careful first."

Ramon increased the patrols near our private wing by evening. I saw the change immediately. Familiar warriors stood at corners that used to stay empty. Doors that had always remained open were now closed and watched. The house felt tighter, as if it had drawn a breath and refused to let it go.

I hated the feeling.

I hated even more that it was necessary.

After dinner, Ramon walked me back to our chambers himself. His hand stayed at the small of my back the entire way. When we reached the door, he paused and looked down the corridor once more before following me inside.

"I’ll be in the next room reviewing the night reports," he said. "If you need me, call."

"I will."

He hesitated, then cupped my face with one hand.

"Nothing is going to happen to you."

I wanted to believe him without effort. I almost did.

"I know," I said.

After he left, the room felt too quiet. I sat near the window with a book I didn’t read, listening to the distant sounds of the house settling for the night. Our son moved again, stronger this time, and I rubbed slow circles over the place where his foot pressed outward.

"You’re safe," I whispered. "Both of us are."

I hoped saying it aloud would make it truer.

Elsewhere in the house, Lydia continued her own quiet work.

She had always paid attention to the servant halls. Who arrived late. Who avoided certain corridors. Who asked too many questions about rooms they had no reason to enter. Since the tea incident, that attention had sharpened into something closer to hunting.

Near the end of her evening rounds, she noticed a door at the far end of the secondary servant wing that should have been empty.

A thin line of light showed beneath it.

Lydia stopped.

Most of the rooms in that section were used for storage or temporary workers who came and went with the seasons. No one had been assigned there this week. She was certain of that. She had checked the lists herself that morning.

She stepped closer and listened.

Nothing.

Only the soft creak of the house and the faint smell of cold ash from a hearth that had not been properly cleaned.

Lydia glanced once down the empty corridor, then reached for the handle.

The door opened under her hand.

Inside, the room was sparsely furnished. A narrow bed. A small table. A cloak hanging from a peg on the wall. On the table sat a wooden comb, a dull knife for eating, and a folded strip of cloth that looked as if it had been used to bind hair close to the scalp.

Lydia’s gaze moved slowly across the space.

Near the foot of the bed, half-hidden beneath the edge of the mattress, was a small dark bottle. She crouched and picked it up. The liquid inside clung to the glass when she tilted it. The smell that rose from the open neck was sharp and bitter—the same wrong note she had caught earlier in Sonia’s tea.

Her fingers tightened around the bottle.

Someone was living in this room who should not have been.

And whoever they were, they had already come close enough to touch Sonia’s life.

Lydia stood and looked once more around the narrow space, her pulse steady but cold.

Then she turned toward the door, already calculating how fast she could reach Ivy and Ramon without causing a panic.

The snake was inside the house.

And now, at last, they had found its nest.