Read Chapter 1: The Wet Arrival

The rain came down in sheets, the kind of relentless Highland downpour that made the windscreen wipers on Iona’s Land Rover feel like a suggestion rather than a solution. She leaned forward, squinting through the smear of water and grime, one hand white-knuckled on the wheel as the narrow road curved around a granite outcrop that seemed to have been placed there specifically to test her patience.

The sat-nav had given up twenty minutes ago, its cheerful voice replaced by a flat, reproachful silence. The signpost she’d passed — LOCHRAVEN 3 — was the only reason she hadn’t turned around and driven back to Glasgow, back to the flat she’d sublet to a stranger named Colin, back to the clinic where Dr. Hartley had suggested, with the delicacy of a sledgehammer, that perhaps she needed a “fresh start elsewhere.”

A fresh start. She snorted, and the Land Rover coughed in sympathy.

The village materialised out of the grey as if it had been waiting for her all along. A single main street of whitewashed cottages, a pub called The Drowning Stag with a sign that swung violently in the wind, a post office, and a small stone church whose steeple seemed to pierce the low clouds. Lochraven. Population, according to the faded wooden board at the edge of town, 312. Iona supposed that number was optimistic. Everyone with any sense was probably indoors on a day like this.

She checked her watch. 9:47 am. Her first appointment was at ten. Dr. MacIntyre — her new employer, the man who’d hired her over the phone after a single, mercifully brief interview — had said the practice was on the main road, next to a cottage with a blue door. “You can’t miss it,” he’d said, with the kind of confidence that only locals possessed.

She could miss it. She was, in fact, about to miss it completely, her eyes fixed on the row of identical grey-stone buildings, when she caught a flash of white in her periphery. A sheep, its fleece stained a dirty ochre, was caught in a gap in a rusted wire fence beside the road. It was thrashing, its legs tangled in the strands, and with every wrench of its body the wire bit deeper into the soft flesh of its flank.

Iona pulled over, the Land Rover’s wheels spraying gravel and mud. She killed the engine, and the silence that followed was filled only by the drumming of rain on the roof and the sheep’s panicked bleats.

“Alright, alright,” she muttered, grabbing her waterproof jacket from the passenger seat and shoving the door open. The wind caught it, nearly ripping it from her grip. She wrestled it shut and jogged toward the fence, her boots squelching in the saturated ground.

The sheep was a ewe, heavily pregnant, her belly a taut, swaying drum. The wire had wrapped around her back leg, just above the hoof, and the more she struggled, the more the rusty metal tore at her skin. Blood mingled with the mud, a thin, dark rivulet running down her leg.

“Easy,” Iona said, her voice low and calm as she approached, hands raised. The ewe’s eyes rolled white with panic. “I’m not going to hurt you, you big idiot.”

She knelt in the mud, the cold seeping through the knees of her trousers instantly. She reached into her pocket for the leather gloves she always carried, and was just pulling them on when she felt it — a vibration, a low tremor in the earth, distinct from the rumble of the storm.

She looked up.

A horse was coming down the road. A massive black beast, its coat slicked with rain, its mane plastered to its arched neck. And on its back, a man. He was dressed in a dark waxed jacket, collar turned up against the weather, and he rode with an easy, fluid grace that spoke of a lifetime in the saddle. He pulled up a few feet from her, and the horse stood still, blowing steam from its nostrils.

The man swung down. He was tall. Taller than she’d expected, and broad-shouldered, with a face that seemed carved from the same granite as the hills — all sharp angles, a strong jaw, and dark hair plastered to his forehead. His eyes were the colour of the loch itself on a grey day. He took in the scene in a single glance: her, kneeling in the mud, the sheep, the tangled fence.

“You’re early,” he said. His voice was a low rumble, with the soft burr of the Highlands in it. “Or late. Depends which way you look at it.”

“Late,” Iona said. “Nine minutes late, to be precise. And this one’s determined to make it ten.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile. “You’re the new vet.”

“I’m the drowned rat who’s been sent to replace the drowned rat who left. Name’s Iona. Iona MacRae.” She gestured at the ewe. “You have a knife? These wire strands are too tight to work loose by hand.”

He didn’t answer. He moved past her, and she caught a whiff of something — wet wool, woodsmoke, and something else beneath that she couldn’t place. Something clean and sharp, like the air before a storm. He crouched beside the ewe, who immediately quieted, her trembling subsiding.

“Shh,” he murmured, and his hand came up to rest on the sheep’s woolly head. She watched, transfixed, as the animal’s panic simply bled away. He worked his fingers along the wire, not yanking, not pulling, just… feeling. Finding the tension.

“I need to cut it,” he said, reaching into his own coat pocket and producing a small, curved blade. “Hold her head. Protect her eyes.”

Iona did as he asked, her hands cradling the ewe’s skull, feeling the heat of her, the rapid flutter of her pulse. The man worked quickly, the blade slicing through the rusty strands with an ease that seemed almost too easy. The wire was thick, corroded, and yet he cut it like it was butter.

The sheep’s leg came free, and she scrambled upright, shaking herself. Iona ran her hands down the limb. The wound was superficial — angry and red, but not deep. She’d need a clean and some antiseptic, but it would heal.

“She’s fine,” she said, looking up at him. “Just a bit of a fright. You’ve got steady hands for a—” She paused, realising she didn’t know what he was. A farmer? A local?

“Lachlan Blackwood,” he said, straightening. He slipped the knife back into his pocket. He didn’t offer his hand. “This is my land you’re on.”

Blackwood. The name had come up in the one email Dr. MacIntyre had sent her before she’d left, buried in a list of useful local contacts. Blackwood Estate. The oldest family in the valley, MacIntyre had written, with a hint of something unreadable. They keep to themselves. Mind the boundary stones.

“Well, Mr. Blackwood,” Iona said, standing up and brushing the mud from her knees as best she could. “You’ve saved me a trip to the clinic’s supply cupboard. Much obliged.”

He was watching her now, his eyes narrowed slightly. She noticed again how still he stood, even in the rain. The water seemed to roll off him rather than land on him. She shook the thought away. She was tired, hungry, and her first day was going spectacularly badly.

“You should go,” he said.

“That’s the plan. I’ve got a horse with a colic and a cat with a urinary blockage waiting for me, if the receptionist’s not already wondering if I’ve drowned.”

“Leave the village,” he said, the words flat, cutting through her attempt at levity. “Before nightfall.”

She blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Get in your car. Drive back the way you came. There’s nothing here for you, Miss MacRae.”

She stared at him. The rain hammered down between them. In the distance, lightning flickered, a brief, eerie glow that lit the hillside. And in that flash, she saw it. For a fraction of a second, his eyes weren’t grey. They were amber. Lit from within, like the embers of a fire.

Then the darkness returned, and he was just a man again. A stern, forbidding man with rain on his face and a warning on his lips.

“That sheep,” Iona said, forcing her voice to stay level, “was stuck in the fence. I stopped to help because that’s what I do. I’ve got a job here, a lease signed on a cottage, and a trunk full of boxes my ex-boyfriend never came to collect. I’m staying.” She picked up her bag, slung it over her shoulder. “But thank you for the hospitality, Mr. Blackwood. Very Highland of you.”

She turned and walked back to the Land Rover, her boots slipping on the wet grass. She didn’t look back. She could feel his gaze on her, a pressure between her shoulder blades, until she climbed into the cab and slammed the door shut.

The engine turned over, and she pulled away, the ewe now grazing contentedly on the verge as if nothing had happened. In her rearview mirror, she saw Lachlan Blackwood still standing there, a dark silhouette against the rain. He didn’t move.

She drove the remaining hundred yards into the village, past the pub, past the post office, until she saw it: a small, tidy practice with a sign that read LOCHRAVEN VETERINARY SERVICES, and beside it, a cottage with a blue door. Dr. MacIntyre was waiting in the doorway, a slight, grey-haired man with a kindly face, holding a mug of tea.

“Miss MacRae!” he called, waving. “I was beginning to think you’d turned around.”

Iona climbed out, grabbed her duffel bag, and walked toward him. The rain had eased to a fine drizzle, and for the first time, she caught a glimpse of the loch beyond the village — black, vast, ringed by hills that seemed to fold in on themselves like a closed fist.

“No chance of that, Dr. MacIntyre,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m just settling in.”

She took the keys to the cottage from his outstretched hand, walked to the blue door, and pushed it open. It smelled of damp wood and lavender. The heating was on, a welcome relief. She dropped her bag on the floor and looked out the window.

The Blackwood estate was visible from where she stood, a dark smear of forest against the shoulder of the nearest mountain. She thought of Lachlan’s amber eyes, the impossible strength in his hands, the way he’d told her to leave before nightfall.

He was just a strange local, she told herself. Highland folk were known for their superstitions, their warnings about the dark. She unpacked her kettle, plugged it in, and made a cup of tea.

Outside, the storm rolled on, and somewhere in the hills, thunder grumbled like a creature stirring from sleep.