Knotting His Rejected Breeder

The silence in the courtyard clearing was worse than the morning frigid cold.

King Vance stood up slowly from the wooden dias. He didn’t look so regal anymore. He was just stiff and furious. His eyes swept over the injured and dead men groaning in the dirt, then settled on Dane.

Vance had given his word in front of nineteen pack leaders. To go back on it now would make him look weak, and Silvercrest couldn’t afford to be weak.

"Clear the floor," Vance said, his voice flat. He didn’t even bother to look Dane in the eye. "Bloodmoon is dismissed. Your trading charters stand. Your victory in that ring settled the insult. Take your filth, take your miserable lives, and get off my land before noon."

He jerked his chin toward the guards near him and ordered that Destiny’s parents be released. A minute later, two enforcers hauled Marcus up the stone steps.

Destiny’s father looked like a complete mess, his coat torn, his jaw purple and swollen out of shape. But he stayed on his feet. Her mother wasn’t looking so good either. Together they scanned, eyes sweeping the yard until they found their daughter.

Destiny didn’t wait for anyone to tell her it was okay to go to them. She crossed the yard in three strides and got under her father’s shoulder before his knees gave out. Marcus laid a hand over her arm, gripping hard she felt a slight hurt but didn’t bitch about it.

"We’re leaving," Ramon said. He didn’t look up at Vance’s balcony. He just turned his back and walked toward the gate. "Now."

The ride south was dead quiet.

Ramon took the lead, his hands knotted in his horse’s reins and his jaw locked tight. Sonia rode beside him, staring straight between her horse’s ears, refusing to look back at the towers fading into the mountain fog.

Behind them came the supply wagon. Henrik drove the team while Marcus rested against a pile of grain sacks in the back. Hannah kept her horse on the flank, her hands resting near her belt knives. Dane walked in the mud next to Destiny, his dark cloak pulled tight, his knuckles black and raw from the fight.

Sonia broke first.

"Fifty years," she said. She didn’t turn around to look at her son. Her voice was thin, but it cut through the sound of the horses’ hooves. "Fifty years of timber rights and secured borders. Handed to us. And you threw it away because you were angry."

Ramon rubbed a hand over his face.

"Sonia. Not here."

"No, Ramon!" She pulled her horse around to face Dane. Her eyes were red, her mouth pinched tight. "He threw our bloodline in the dirt! You need Aurora’s name to hold those mountain packs back, Dane. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to us?"

Dane kept walking. His boots sank an inch into the mud with every step.

"Aurora didn’t want it either, Mother," he said. "Vance wasn’t offering an alliance. He was buying a leash. If I took her hand, Bloodmoon would be answering to Silvercrest by spring."

"It was safety!" Sonia spat. "Now we go home with nothing. Nineteen packs saw you spit on their King. How does pride feed our people when the trade routes freeze?"

"We feed ourselves," Dane said, looking her in the eye. "We always have."

Sonia let out a bitter breath, turned her horse back around, and kicked it into a trot toward the front of the line.

A few yards back, Hannah slowed her mount until she was riding next to Destiny. She leaned over her saddle horn, studying the small cuts on the farm girl’s face and the blood dried under her fingernails.

"I’ve seen border guards move slower than you did out there," Hannah said. Her voice lacked its usual bite. "You took three grown men off their feet before Dane even turned around. Where’d an Omega learn to fight like that?"

Destiny kept walking, keeping one hand on the side of the wagon so her father didn’t get tossed around over the ruts. She tilted her head toward the back of the cart.

Marcus was propped up on the grain sacks, watching them with one swollen eye.

"My dad was a scout for twelve years," Destiny said. "He told me if a wolf comes for your throat, you don’t ask why. You take their eyes out."

Hannah looked at Marcus, then back at Destiny. She didn’t make a joke. She just gave a short nod and pulled her horse back into line.

The trail narrowed as they hit the Broken Pass, running down a deep stone cut where the mountain shadows blocked out the daylight.

Ramon’s horse suddenly reared back, snorting loudly.

"Hold!" Ramon called out, grabbing his sword hilt as he pulled the reins tight.

Ahead, where the rocks cleared into a small ridge, people were coming out of the mist.

They didn’t wear Silvercrest colors or civilized wool. They wore ragged leathers smeared with soot and old blood, their faces hard as flint. Heavy bows were drawn tight, aimed right at the center of the road. Above them, boots scraped on the granite ledges as more fighters stepped into the open, closing off the pass behind them.

Dane shoved Destiny behind his back, his arm locking like a wooden bar across her chest. Ramon and Henrik pulled their blades at the same time, the steel ringing out against the stone walls.

"Stand clear!" Ramon barked. "We’re Bloodmoon! We have summit rights!"

A tall woman with a deep scar across her cheek stepped down from the ridge. She wasn’t carrying a sword, but nobody moved until she did. She didn’t look at Ramon. She didn’t look at Dane’s drawn steel or the guards backing into a circle.

She looked right past them, her eyes locking onto Destiny.

The woman lifted a horn from her belt and blew a short, low blast that vibrated through the shale under their feet.

"We don’t care about Bloodmoon," the woman said. "And we don’t care about Vance. We came for the girl."