Chapter Text
The A1 up from London had been a blur of motorway service stations, spilled apple juice, and Ben and Lachlan arguing over whose turn it was to hold the iPad. By the time the SUV crossed the border into Scotland, the "tidy nest egg" settlement from Harry’s betrayal felt less like a victory and more like a heavy weight.
Sansa gripped the steering wheel of her Range Rover, her PR-honed instincts already cataloguing the move as a "rebranding exercise." The 2.3-acre sanctuary in Abernethy was supposed to be her fortress.
Then, she turned into the driveway.
The "breathtaking views" were currently obscured by a thick, rhythmic wall of AC/DC’s "Thunderstruck" blaring from the neighbouring property at a volume that rattled her rearview mirror. The peaceful Highland silence she’d paid for had been replaced by a violent clang-wait-clang of a hammer meeting metal.
"Mum, look! Cows!" Lachlan shouted, pressing his face to the window.
Sansa’s heart plummeted. The "exceptional paddock" was currently being put to use, but not by her. Two Jersey cows were methodically "mowing" her front lawn, their long tongues wrapping around her prize-winning David Austin roses. A small army of chickens pecked at the gravel, and a rooster was perched on her stone gatepost, crowing with a frantic, ear-piercing ego.
"Lady, stay," Sansa commanded as the German Shepherd let out a low, confused woof from the trunk.
Sansa stepped out of the car, her feet hitting the ground in a pair of bespoke, cream-colored suede loafers—the kind of shoes meant for Mayfair sidewalks, not Perthshire mud.
Squelch.
She froze. A warm, green-brown slurry oozed over the top of her right loafer.
"Oh, for God’s sake! F—!" the word ripped out of her, sharp and jagged, as she looked at the steaming pile of horse manure she’d just ruined a four-figure outfit in.
"Language, Princess. The kids’ll pick that up faster than the goats’ll pick your garden clean."
The voice was a low, gravelly rasp that somehow cut right through Brian Johnson’s screaming vocals. Sansa snapped her head up.
Standing by the dry-stone dyke was a man who looked like he’d been forged in the same fire she could see glowing in the shadows of the massive barn next door. He was covered in a fine layer of soot and grease, a heavy leather apron tied over a sweat-stained t-shirt that stretched over a pair of shoulders that definitely didn't belong to a "hobby farmer." At his heel stood a white beast that looked more like a prehistoric wolf than a dog, watching her with eerie, pale eyes.
Jon Dayne didn't wait for her to reply. He reached over to a ruggedised speaker sitting on a fence post and twisted the dial. Instead of turning it down, the opening chords of "Back in Black" exploded across the driveway, twice as loud as before.
"You’re on my land!" Sansa yelled, gesturing wildly at the Jersey cows and the goats currently treating her laundry line like a buffet. "Your animals are destroying my property, Mr... whoever you are!"
Jon wiped a smudge of coal dust from his forehead with a grease-blackened thumb, his grey eyes tracking the expensive cut of her coat with blatant unimpressiveness. He looked at her ruined shoe, then back at her face, which was flushed a deep, Northumberland red.
"Name’s Jon," he called back, his tone flat and military-clipped. "And technically, the cows are just helping you out. Your grass was getting long."
"I have a service for the grass! I don't need livestock!"
"The goats don't take direction well," Jon shrugged, turning back toward his forge without a hint of an apology. "Welcome to the neighbourhood, Princess. Watch where you step."
He disappeared back into the orange glow of the barn, the hammer beginning its rhythmic assault again, leaving Sansa standing in a pile of manure in the shadow of her five-bedroom dream home, wondering if Harry Hardyng’s cheating had actually been the easy part of her year.
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Sansa’s breath hitched in a ragged, PR-refined huff as she marched back to the Range Rover, each step a squelching reminder of her spectacular failure to launch. She shook her right foot with a violent flick, watching a glob of Jon’s "agricultural assistance" fly off her suede loafer and pelt a nearby chicken.
"I am going to sue him," she hissed under her breath, her mind already drafting the cease-and-desist. "I’m going to sue him, then I’m going to fence him in with ten feet of reinforced steel."
But as she reached the car, her jaw actually dropped.
"Mum! Look! They’re explorers!" Lachlan squealed, his face pressed so hard against the glass he was leaving a nose-print.
The two goats—one a shaggy brown-and-white thing with a malevolent glint in its eye, the other a smaller, sleeker creature—had made themselves at home. One was perched precariously on the bonnet, its cloven hooves clicking rhythmically against the expensive paintwork as it adjusted its footing. The other had scaled the roof, standing dead-center on the panoramic sunroof, peering down at the terrified German Shepherd inside with an expression of supreme, rectangular-pupiled boredom.
"Off!" Sansa shrieked, waving her arms like a frantic windmill. "Get. Off. My. Car!"
The goat on the roof didn't budge. It simply let out a loud, dry bleat that sounded remarkably like a sarcastic laugh, before leaning down to nibble on the rubber seal of the roof rack.
From the glowing maw of the barn, the rhythmic clang of the hammer stopped for a second. The music didn't.
Jon leaned against the doorframe, silhouetted by the orange heat of the forge, the massive white wolf-dog sitting perfectly still at his side. He didn't move to help. He just watched her struggle with the poise of a man watching a very expensive comedy.
"They like the height," Jon called out over the screaming guitar solo of Back in Black. "Better vantage point for the perimeter."
"It’s a lease, you overbearing wanker!" Sansa screamed back, her professional mask finally cracking in the damp Scottish air.
Jon’s eyes crinkled—not a smile, but a definite spark of something that looked like begrudging amusement. He whistled, a sharp, piercing military trill that cut through the music.
Ghost, the white beast, didn't bark. He simply took two slow, deliberate steps forward into the light. The goats, sensing a shift in the hierarchy, immediately leaped from the car with a chaotic scramble of hooves, landing in the gravel and trotting back toward the 21-acre "fortress" next door.
Jon caught Sansa’s gaze for a heartbeat—long enough for her to see the soot-streaked sweat on his neck and the quiet, solid weight of his presence—before he turned his back on her again.
"Welcome to Perth, Princess," he muttered, just loud enough for the wind to carry it. "Try not to let the car sink into the mud."
The move-in process was rapidly descending from a fresh start into an agrarian hostage situation.
With the help of Ben and Lachlan—who treated the goat-herding as a high-stakes adventure—Sansa managed to shoo the "demon-goats" and the chickens back across the invisible boundary of the stone dyke. She was breathless, her hair escaping its perfect knot, and her ruined loafers were now abandoned on the porch in favor of a pair of bright red wellies she’d bought at a service station "just in case."
"Right," she panted, wiping her brow. "Inside. Now. Before the cows decide to come into the foyer."
But the universe, or perhaps Jon Dayne’s lack of perimeter maintenance, had other plans.
Sansa was in the kitchen, trying to find the box with the kettle, when the sunlight was suddenly blotted out. She turned around, expecting a cloud, only to find the massive, feathered head of a Clydesdale filling the entire frame of her open casement window.
The horse let out a long, wet snort that sprayed a fine mist of equine moisture across her marble countertops.
"AH!" Sansa shrieked, clutching her chest and stumbling back against the kitchen island.
"Whoa! Cool!" Ben yelled, sliding across the hardwood floor.
"Big pony!" Lachlan cheered.
Before Sansa could regain her breath to scream, her sons were already at the window. Ben was confidently stroking the horse’s velvety nose, while Lachlan was trying to offer it a stray Lego brick. The horse, a gentle giant with eyes the size of tea saucers, didn't seem interested in the plastic; it was clearly holding out for the carrots Sansa had tucked into a grocery bag on the counter.
"Ben, get back! It’s... it’s a monster!" Sansa gasped, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"He's nice, Mom! He wants a snack," Ben insisted, already reaching for the bag of Chantenay carrots.
Sansa leaned over the sink, looking out into her backyard. It wasn't just the one horse. Two more—heavy, powerful Shires—were currently treating her manicured lawn like an all-you-can-eat buffet. And standing right in the middle of her patio, looking particularly disgruntled, was a massive, curled-horn Ram.
The ram was currently staring down a terracotta pot of lavender that had been knocked over in the chaos.
"This is it," Sansa muttered, her PR-trained brain finally snapping. "I am going to end him. I am going to end the Wanker Next Door."
She stomped out the back door, intent on marching over to the forge and demanding Jon Dayne come and collect his zoo. As she reached the patio, her eyes fell on the ruined lavender pot. It was a gift from her mother—a bit of York home-soil she’d wanted to preserve.
In a moment of maternal instinct for her plants, Sansa forgot the first rule of farm safety: Never turn your back on a ram.
She groaned, bending over at the waist to gather the broken shards and the spilled soil, her red wellies firmly planted in the grass.
She didn't hear the ram’s hooves scuff the stone. She didn't see the animal lower its head, locking its sights on the bright red target of her backside.
THUD.
The impact wasn't enough to cause injury, but it was perfectly timed and expertly aimed. Sansa let out a undignified yipe as she was launched forward, landing hands-first in the damp Scottish mud.
From the other side of the fence, the AC/DC track finally cut out, replaced by a silence so heavy it felt like a physical weight. Then, a low, slow whistle.
Sansa pushed herself up, her face streaked with dirt, her hair now completely undone. Jon Dayne was leaning against the stone wall, a lead rope in one hand and a smirk—an actual, honest-to-god smirk—tugging at the corner of his mouth. Ghost stood beside him, looking remarkably smug for a dog.
"That's Boris," Jon said, his voice echoing in the sudden quiet. "He’s got a thing for red. Usually, I'd warn people, but you seemed like you were on a mission, Princess."
Sansa wiped a glob of mud off her cheek and glared at him with the fire of a thousand Northumberland winters. "Your. Animals. Just. Assaulted. Me."
"Technically," Jon countered, stepping over the wall with the effortless grace of an athlete, "you were trespassing in his personal space. But if it makes you feel better, I'll tell him you're the neighbor, not a rival ram."
He whistled again, and the horses—including the one currently being hand-fed carrots by her children through the window—immediately pricked their ears.
"Lachie! Ben! Inside!" Sansa commanded, though she knew she’d already lost the battle for authority the moment the horse licked Ben's hand.
Jon walked past her, the smell of coal, horses, and something dangerously masculine trailing in his wake. As he grabbed the ram by the horns to lead it away, he glanced back at her mud-covered frame.
"Nice wellies, by the way. Very... visible."
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The following evening air in Perthshire was finally cool and still, but inside the five-bedroom "sanctuary," the atmosphere was nuclear. Sansa sat at the kitchen island, her damp hair wrapped in a towel and her skin still tingling from the scalding shower she’d used to scrub off the "essence of Dayne."
Her laptop screen was a gallery of Stark faces, a digital patchwork of home that felt a thousand miles away.
"I am telling you, he is a menace! A soot-covered, heavy-metal-blaring, agricultural terrorist!" Sansa’s voice rose an octave, her hands flying as she described the suede-loafer tragedy.
On the top left of the screen, Arya—clad in her desert camouflage in Cyprus—was doubled over, her face disappearing from the frame as she howled with laughter. "The ram, Sansa! Tell me again about the ram! Did he actually launch you, or was it more of a tactical nudge?"
"It was an assault, Arya! And Jon just stood there! He didn't help; he just gave me his ‘military Provost’ stare and told me I was in the ram’s personal space!"
"Now, darling," Catelyn’s soft voice tried to bridge the gap from York. "I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding of boundaries. Moving is stressful for everyone, including the livestock."
"Misunderstanding?" Sansa shrieked. "He turned the music up, Mom! He looked me in the eye and cranked AC/DC while goats where on the bonnet of my Range Rover!"
Rickon’s camera was a close-up of his face as he crunched loudly on a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, his eyes wide with pure, unadulterated glee. "This is better than Netflix," he mitted through a mouthful of potato. "Does he have pigs, too? I heard pigs can be really territorial."
"Don’t give him ideas!" Sansa snapped.
Ned cleared his throat, sharing a look with Robb that Sansa knew all too well—the 'men-of-the-north' silent code. "Look, Sansa," Ned said gently, though his eyes were dancing. "When Robb and I went up to survey the boundary, Jon was perfectly civil. He gave us a tour of the forge. He’s a veteran, sweetheart. Fourteen years in the Blues and Royals. You won't find a more disciplined man."
"Disciplined?" Sansa echoed, her voice dropping to a dangerous, low hiss. "He’s an uphimself wanker, Dad. He calls me 'Princess' like it’s a slur. He’s got twenty-one acres of land and he’s decided to conduct the 1800s industrial revolution right outside my bedroom window at three in the morning!"
Robb bit his lip, his face turning a suspicious shade of red as he tried to stifle a laugh. "Sansa, come on. The cows 'mowing' the lawn? That’s just efficient land management. Saves you a fortune on a gardener."
"He. Is. Insufferable!" Sansa yelled, slamming her hand on the marble counter. "He has this... this wolf that just watches me. I feel like I’ve moved into a medieval fortress with a landlord who hates me!"
In the corner of the screen, Bran adjusted his glasses, looking up from a textbook in his London flat. "Statistically, the proximity of a working forge should actually increase your property’s artisanal value, Sansa. Though the noise pollution at 3 AM is a breach of local council ordinances. You could file a—"
"I don't want artisanal value, Bran! I want to sleep!"
Suddenly, the silence of the Perthshire night was shattered. From just beyond the kitchen window, a high-pitched, jagged sound ripped through the air.
ERR-ERR-ERR-ERRRRRR!
The rooster was back. And he sounded like he’d been taking vocal lessons from the lead singer of AC/DC.
Sansa’s head snapped toward the window, her eyes bugging out. On the screen, Arya lost it completely, her laughter turning into a silent, wheezing shake. Even Ned couldn't hide the grin anymore, and Robb was openly chuckling into his hand.
"That’s it," Sansa hissed, her finger hovering over the 'End Call' button. "I’m going to buy a crossbow. Goodnight!"
The screen went black, leaving her in the kitchen with the echoing crow of the rooster and the distant, rhythmic clink-clink-clink of a hammer that told her Jon Dayne was already back at work.
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The peace and quiet didn't even last four hours.
Sansa was jolted from a deep, dreamless sleep by a sound that didn't belong in a five-bedroom country home: the thunderous, floor-shaking rhythmic strike of heavy hooves on hardwood. It was followed by a crash of shattering glass and a high-pitched, war-like scream that sounded less like a horse and more like a prehistoric monster.
"What on earth..." Sansa gasped, throwing on her robe and racing to the gallery railing.
Below her, the ground floor was a scene of absolute carnage. A man in a dark hoodie, clutching a bulging sack of her grandmother’s silver, was scrambling across the foyer floor like a panicked beetle. Hot on his heels—skidding across the polished oak and knocking over a heavy mahogany console table—was a ton of muscle, fur, and fury.
It was the Clydesdale stallion.
The horse’s eyes were rolled back, showing a terrifying ring of white, and his nostrils were flared wide enough to swallow the air in the room. He wasn't just chasing the intruder; he was hunting him. As the thief lunged for the kitchen, the stallion delivered a powerful, instinctive kick with his hind legs. The man narrowly dodged a strike that would have folded his ribcage like a soda can, instead losing the bag of silver as it burst across the floor.
The stallion didn't stop. He didn't care about the silver. With a terrifying clatter of hooves, the beast charged, crashing through the French doors in a rain of splinters and glass to pursue the man into the garden.
Sansa watched from the window, frozen in horror. The burglar scrambled over the dry-stone dyke, but the Clydesdale didn't bother with the gate. He leaped. In mid-air, the horse snapped his massive jaws, catching a literal chunk of the thief’s trousers and the flesh beneath. With a violent shake of his head, the stallion swung the man around like a ragdoll before tossing him headfirst into Sansa’s ruined rose bushes.
The thief scrambled up, sobbing, his trousers now entirely shredded and gone. Between the adrenaline, the terror, and the biting Perthshire night air, the "shrinkage" was undeniable as he sprinted across the lawn in his threadbare boxers, his pale legs pumping for dear life.
The blue lights of the local Constabulary pulled into the lane just in time to witness the grand finale. Three officers climbed out of their van, only to stop dead as a half-naked, bleeding man screamed for mercy while a three-thousand-pound horse reared up behind him, hooves striking the air like hammers.
"Help! For the love of God, kill it!" the burglar shrieked, making a desperate, undignified leap for the nearest oak tree. He scrambled up the trunk, clinging to a branch as the stallion paced beneath, baring his teeth and kicking the bark with enough force to make the tree shudder.
The senior officer, a burly Scotsman named Miller, watched with a slow, amused grin. He didn't reach for his baton; he just looked over at the boundary line.
"Aye, Jon," Miller called out as a shadow emerged from the forge. "Your lad’s a bit touchy tonight, isn't he?"
Jon Dayne stepped into the light of the police cruisers. He was shirtless, his chest glistening with sweat and soot, a heavy lead rope over one shoulder. He didn't look at the thief, or the police, or even the damage to Sansa’s house. He looked at the horse.
Jon let out a sharp, two-tone whistle—low then high.
The stallion froze. The "murder" in his eyes vanished instantly, replaced by a calm, soldierly stillness. He let out a long, huffing breath, gave the tree one last defiant snort, and trotted back to Jon’s side like a well-behaved dog.
"He doesn't like intruders, Sergeant," Jon said, his voice level and entirely unapologetic. He finally looked up at the balcony, where Sansa stood clutching her robe, her face white as a sheet. "And he really doesn't like people touching things that don't belong to them."
He gave the horse a firm pat on the neck and turned to lead him away, leaving Sansa to explain to the grinning police officers why a half-naked man was currently vibrating with terror in her oak tree.
Sansa stood in the wreckage of her foyer, the freezing Perthshire wind whistling through the jagged gap where her bespoke French doors used to be. Shattered glass crunched under her slippers like frozen snow.
She looked up at the landing. There, standing at the top of the stairs, was Lady. The "faithful guardian" stretched, let out a long, luxurious yawn that showcased her impressive teeth, and then flopped onto her side with an indifferent thud, scratching a persistent itch behind her ear.
"Some guard dog you are," Sansa muttered, her voice trembling with a mix of leftover adrenaline and pure disbelief. "A literal monster just galloped through our living room, and you didn't even lift a paw."
Lady let out a soft, dismissive huff—a canine "not my problem"—and tucked her nose back under her tail, drifting back into a deep, snoring slumber.
"I’d be better off with a cat," Sansa hissed at the dog. "You’re a German Shepherd! You have 'Guardian' in your DNA! That horse is a better security system than you are."
"Mum?"
Sansa jumped, spinning around to see Ben and Lachlan standing at the edge of the hallway, rubbing their eyes. Ben was staring at the pile of shattered wood and the trail of massive, muddy hoofprints that led from the kitchen straight through the ruins of the doors.
"What happened?" Ben asked, his voice wide with awe. "It looks like a freight train went through the house."
"A very angry, very large freight train," Sansa sighed, rubbing her temples.
"Was it the big horse?" Lachlan asked, his eyes lighting up. "The one from next door? Did he fight the bad man?"
"He didn't just fight him, Lachie. He hunted him," Sansa said, looking out into the dark garden where the blue lights of the police van were finally fading.
She could see a silhouette across the property line—Jon Dayne, his back to her, leading the massive stallion back toward the stable. The man didn't look back. He didn't check to see if she was okay. He just moved with that infuriating, quiet efficiency, his "wolf" pacing silently at his side.
Sansa looked back at her ruined home, then at her useless, snoring dog, and finally at the "Wanker Next Door." For the first time since she’d arrived in Scotland, the anger felt less like a sharp sting and more like a confusing, heavy heat in her chest.
"Go back to bed, boys," she whispered. "The... freight train is finished for the night."
As she started the grim task of sweeping up the glass, the distant sound of a single, low whistle drifted over the fence, followed by the quiet, rhythmic clink of a forge being banked for the night. Jon Dayne was still awake. And despite herself, Sansa knew she’d never felt safer—or more annoyed—in her entire life.
Sansa stood in the middle of her trashed living room, a dustpan in one hand and a ruined silver gravy boat in the other. She looked at the trail of destruction—the smashed console table, the splintered doorframe, and a pile of "organic fertilizer" left right on her designer rug—and felt a hysterical giggle bubbling up in her throat.
"A carrot," she whispered to the empty, drafty room. "I owe a literal war horse a bag of organic carrots for saving the family silver while simultaneously turning my home into a demolition site."
She could already see the video call in her mind. Arya wouldn’t just laugh; she would probably fall off her bunk in Cyprus. Her sister would have the story memorialized, probably naming the stallion the honorary "Lord of the Manor" while mocking Sansa for having a German Shepherd that slept through an equine home invasion.
"Invest in a Yale alarm, they said," Sansa muttered, tossing a shard of glass into the bin. "It’ll be peaceful, they said. Nobody mentioned the security system next door came with four hooves and a grudge."
The sheer absurdity of it was starting to outweigh the horror. She had moved to Perth for "quiet," yet in less than forty-eight hours, she’d been assaulted by a ram, mocked by goats, and saved by a draft horse that looked like it belonged on a medieval battlefield.
She looked out the gaping hole where her French doors used to be. The Scottish mist was rolling in, cold and damp, settling over her ruined roses. Across the dyke, the orange glow of Jon Dayne's forge had finally dimmed to a low, smoldering amber.
He was still an overbearing, music-blaring wanker. He was still the man who called her "Princess" with a sneer. But as she watched the silent white shadow of his dog pace the perimeter of the 21 acres, Sansa realized something that made her stomach do a strange, uncomfortable flip.
The "Wanker Next Door" wasn't just a nuisance. He was the reason that burglar was currently being picked out of a tree by the police instead of standing over her bed.
"Don't get used to it, Lady," Sansa said, glancing at the dog who was now twitching in her sleep, probably dreaming of squirrels. "Tomorrow, I'm buying the biggest, sturdiest fence in Scotland. And a very, very large bag of carrots."
She sighed, pulling her robe tighter against the chill. She had a house to fix, a family to entertain with her latest disaster, and a neighbor who—despite her best efforts to hate him—had just become the most interesting, infuriating, and terrifyingly reliable part of her new life.
The thought of the insurance claim made Sansa’s head throb. She could see the "Reason for Claim" box on the digital form now. Home invasion? Yes. Theft? Attempted. Cause of property damage? A three-thousand-pound Clydesdale stallion with a vendetta and a taste for vengeance.
They would think she’d been hitting the Highlands’ finest single malt.
"They’ll think I’m delusional," she whispered, looking at a hoof print on the hardwood that was roughly the size of a dinner plate. "Or worse, they’ll think I’m trying to commit insurance fraud via livestock."
It was exactly the kind of "Benny Hill" chaos she had fled London to escape. If this hit the Perthshire Advertiser—"LOCAL SOCIALITE’S HOME REMODELED BY NEIGHBOR’S WAR HORSE"—it would be a PR nightmare. Harry’s lawyers would have a field day. They’d paint her as a woman who had lost her grip on reality, dragging his sons into a dangerous, rural madhouse where animals roamed through the hallways like houseguests.
She could hear Harry’s smug, polished voice in the courtroom: "My client is deeply concerned that the children are living in a barn, Your Honor. Quite literally."
A cold wave of genuine panic washed over her, replacing the dark humor of the moment. She couldn't afford a scandal. She needed to be the "Stable Mother," the "Reliable Professional." She didn't need to be the "Woman Who Lives Next to the Hammer-Wielding Anachronism."
She looked back out toward the boundary wall. Jon Dayne was still out there, silhouetted by the moonlight as he checked the latch on the stallion's paddock.
He was the only witness. He and the three amused police officers who were currently, no doubt, sharing the story over coffee at the station.
Sansa realized with a jolt of dread that her reputation—and potentially her custody case—now rested in the grease-stained hands of the man who blared Soundgarden at 3 AM. If he played this up, if he made her look like the helpless "Princess" he clearly thought she was, she was in trouble.
But then she remembered the way he’d looked at the burglar—the absolute, cold authority in his whistle. Jon Dayne didn't seem like the type to gossip. He didn't even seem like the type to talk to people he liked, let alone the local press.
"Right," she muttered, her PR brain finally kicking into gear. "Damage control. Phase one: bribe the horse. Phase two: convince the 'Wanker Next Door' to keep his mouth shut."
She looked at the ruined French doors and sighed. It was going to be a very long, very expensive morning. And for some reason, the thought of having to negotiate with Jon Dayne made her heart beat faster than the burglary ever had.'
The "stiff drink" was no longer a want; it was a biological necessity. Sansa reached down to retrieve a stray silver teaspoon from the wreckage, her movements sharp and jagged with caffeine and cortisol.
TWEEEE-OOO!
The sharp, piercing trill of a wolf whistle cut through the damp air, vibrating right down her spine. Sansa froze, her hand hovering over the silver. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. The air had already changed, charged with that low-frequency hum of testosterone and soot that seemed to follow him everywhere.
She turned, her face flushing a deep, humiliated crimson. Jon Dayne was leaning against the jagged remains of her French door frame, looking for all the world like he was watching a private cabaret show. His grey eyes weren't just "dancing"—they were practically doing a victory lap.
"Nice knickers, Princess," Jon drawled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that seemed to vibrate in the pit of her stomach. He gestured lazily with a soot-stained thumb toward her exposed legs. "Though you might want to put on some trousers. Detective Sergeant McClyde has a weak heart, and I’m pretty sure his insurance doesn’t cover heart failure brought on by an eyeful of London’s finest silk."
Sansa bit her lip so hard she tasted copper. She was suddenly, painfully aware of the freezing Perthshire wind cutting through her thin white cotton t-shirt. She hadn't put on a bra. The cold—and the sheer, infuriating proximity of the man—had turned her nipples into hard, visible points against the fabric.
Her body was a traitor. Her knees felt like they were made of damp shortbread, and a traitorous heat was blooming in her chest that had nothing to do with the temperature.
God, she hated him.
She hated him more than the burglar. She hated him more than the rooster. She almost—almost—hated him more than Harry. Because at least she knew how to handle a cheating scumbag in a suit; she had no PR strategy for a shirtless, grease-covered soldier who looked at her like he knew exactly what she looked like without the designer armor.
"Get out!" she hissed, her voice trembling. "Get off my property, you... you overbearing, voyeuristic wanker!"
Jon’s smirk widened, showing a flash of white teeth against his stubble. He didn't look offended; he looked fed. He pushed off the doorframe with a slow, athletic grace that made Sansa’s breath hitch in her throat despite her fury.
"Technically," he said, stepping back over the threshold into the night, "the horse is the one who took the door down. I’m just here for the scenery."
He gave her a mocking, two-finger salute, his eyes dropping one last time to the visible silhouette of her chest before he turned away.
"Night, Sansa. Try to keep the door shut," he called over his shoulder, his massive white "wolf" pacing silently at his side as they vanished into the mist.
Sansa stood in the ruins of her home, her hands balled into fists, wanting to scream, throw a vase, or perhaps chase him down and demand he apologize—or kiss her. The fact that she wasn't sure which one she wanted more made her want to kick the nearest piece of furniture.
Instead, she just stood there in the draft, her heart hammering against her ribs, listening to the distant, rhythmic clink of his boots on the gravel and the sudden, mocking crow of that damn rooster.