Read Chapter 10: Piecing the Map

The village library smelled of dust and old paper, a scent Iona had come to associate with secrets buried deep enough to fossilize. She had chosen the corner table farthest from the window, where the weak Highland light struggled to reach, and spread her findings across the scarred oak surface like a gambler laying down cards.

The estate's land records were filed under "Blackwood — Historical Holdings," a thin folder that felt almost apologetic for existing. Iona had expected parchment scrolls and leather-bound ledgers, but the library's collection was modest: photocopied deeds, typed summaries, and the occasional faded map reproduced at poor quality.

She traced her finger along the first map, a survey from 1789. The deer park was there, drawn as a neat oval, but beyond it the moor stretched unmarked — common land, according to the accompanying notes. *Crown land, never enclosed, used for grazing and peat cutting.* The cave system, as far as she could tell from the topographical markers, sat squarely within that commons.

The Blackwoods had used it for centuries, but they did not own it. That made the hidden entrance not a secret door in their estate, but a passage on land that belonged to everyone.

Or to no one.

Iona pulled the next sheet toward her. A typewritten transcript from the 1920s, recording a local historian's observations about "folk practices" in the glen. Her breath caught at the phrase: *wolf cult, documented among upland families, persisted into the eighteenth century. Members gathered at the full moon in natural chambers beneath the common moor. Ritual significance unclear; possibly pre-Christian in origin.*

She read the passage three times, willing the words to rearrange themselves into something less damning. They didn't.

A scraping sound made her look up. Gareth stood in the aisle between the shelves, clutching a stack of books to his chest like a shield. His face was pale beneath his freckles, his eyes fixed on the papers spread across her table.

"Mrs. MacRae," he said. His voice came out thin. "I didn't know you were in here."

"Gareth." She smiled, but it felt forced. He had been friendly enough at the surgery, eager to learn, always asking questions about animal anatomy instead of human gossip. But now something flickered in his gaze that she hadn't seen before. Fear.

"I was just — the library's closing soon." He shifted his weight, glancing at the door as if measuring the distance.

"It's not even four o'clock." Iona kept her tone light. "You're not trying to get rid of me, are you?"

A nervous laugh escaped him. "No, no, it's just — " His eyes landed on the photocopied newspaper clipping she'd left face-up, the one about Ellis Blackwood's death. *Tragic Accident on Estate Grounds,* the headline read. *The Beast.*

Gareth went very still.

"That's old," he said. "That's from before I was born."

"Twenty years ago," Iona agreed. "You wouldn't remember it."

"Nobody talks about it." He set the books down on the end of her table, not meeting her eyes. "The older ones, I mean. My gran won't say a word about the Blackwoods, not one, and she'll talk about anything else for hours."

Iona leaned forward. "Why won't she talk about them?"

Gareth's throat worked as he swallowed. He looked young then, younger than his twenty-two years, and profoundly out of his depth.

"Because," he said slowly, "whatever happened to Ellis Blackwood happened because he went looking for something that wasn't his to find. That's what my gran says. She says the hills keep their own counsel, and the Blackwoods have been here long enough to know where the boundaries are."

"Boundaries of what?"

He finally looked at her, and there was raw fear in his eyes. "Mrs. MacRae, I need you to stop asking questions."

The plea landed like a blow. Iona opened her mouth to argue, but Gareth pressed on, his words tumbling out faster now.

"You've been to the estate. You've seen how they are. All of them, the whole family, they're not — " He stopped, biting his lip. "My great-uncle worked as a gamekeeper there in the eighties. He was a hard man, never scared of anything. But he quit after one season and moved to Inverness, and he never once talked about why. Not once. And when my mother asked him about it years later, he told her something I've never forgotten."

"What did he tell her?"

Gareth's voice dropped to a whisper. "He said the family is not the only monster in the hills. And the ones that aren't family are worse."

A chill ran down Iona's spine. The library's heating hummed in the silence, and the shadows between the shelves seemed to deepen.

"Gareth," she said carefully, "what did he mean?"

"I don't know." He shook his head, pulling his books back toward him. "I don't want to know. That's the whole point. Whatever's out there, whatever the Blackwoods are hiding, it's survived this long because people learn to leave it alone. People who don't — " He broke off, and she thought of Morag MacIntyre's missing poster, the photograph of a woman with kind eyes who had asked too many questions.

"People who don't," Gareth repeated quietly, "end up on the moor."

He was gone before she could respond, leaving his books behind in his haste. The door swung shut behind him with a soft click that seemed louder than it should have been.

Iona stared at the empty space where he'd stood, then back at the papers on her table. The newspaper clipping caught her eye again. *The Beast.* The word had been used in connection with Ellis's death, dismissed by the authorities as a misidentification — a stag, perhaps, a stray dog. But she knew better now. She had seen the black wolf in her garden, had heard the howls that ran on two legs, had watched two Land Rovers vanish into a hillside that she now knew belonged to common land.

She pulled the last document from the folder, a handwritten note from an estate manager dated 1812. His script was cramped and hurried, as if he'd written it in fear.

*The family met again in the old chambers beneath the commons. The Lord returned at dawn changed in temper if not in shape, and the servants were dismissed for three days. Whatever pact binds this land to its masters, it grows stronger with each passing moon, and I fear what it will demand next.*

Iona read the note three times. Then she folded it carefully and tucked it into her coat pocket, along with the survey map.

Outside, the light was fading, and the hills had taken on that purple bruise of color that preceded dusk. She thought about Gareth's words, about his great-uncle who had fled to Inverness and never spoken of his time at the estate. She thought about Morag, asking questions until she vanished on a full moon.

She thought about Lachlan's hand on her cheek, the warmth of his touch at odds with the coldness of his secrets.

He had promised her answers after the next full moon. But the new newspaper clipping in her pocket — the one she'd found tucked inside the estate records, too recent to be part of the official collection — said something different. It was a death notice, dated just three weeks ago, for a man named Callum MacRae.

Her father.

He had been living in Inverness under a different name, and he had died in what the paper described as a hunting accident. He had been asking questions about the Blackwoods, too. Questions his daughter had unknowingly inherited.

Iona's hand closed around the locket beneath her jumper. It was warm — hotter than her skin, pulsing with a heat that had nothing to do with body temperature. She pulled it out, watching the gold catch the dying light, and she understood at last that she was not merely following a thread of curiosity.

She was walking a path her family had walked before her.

And at the end of that path, someone was waiting.