Read Chapter 22: The Rival Pack

The first light of dawn was still gray when a knock came at the library door. Lachlan was already on his feet, ledger still open on the desk between them, his body going tight in that way she'd come to recognize—the shift before the shift, the animal waking beneath his skin.

Ewan stood in the doorway, mud-caked boots leaving prints on the flagstone. His face was drawn, eyes hollow. "Eastern moors. Callum and I tracked prints from the deer kill last night. They weren't wolf prints, Lachlan. Not ours, either. Bigger. There's a pack of at least five moving toward the tree line."

Iona rose slowly, her joints stiff from a night of too little sleep and too much revelation. "You have other wolves nearby? I thought your family was the only line left in the Highlands."

Lachlan exchanged a look with Ewan that made her stomach drop. "We are," he said quietly. "Those aren't our kindred. They're rogues."

Ewan nodded once and withdrew, boots scraping against the stone. Lachlan closed the ledger with a heavy thud, and the sound echoed through the cavernous room like a door slamming shut.

"Refugees," he said, answering the question she hadn't yet asked. "Scattered remnants of other packs. When a line dies out or an alpha is overthrown, the survivors either find a new family or they wander. Some of them congregate. They don't hold territory, they take it."

"They want yours."

"They want the land. The caves. The hunting grounds." He ran a hand through his hair, and she noticed the muscle jumping in his jaw. "We've seen signs for months. Livestock torn apart in ways that didn't match our kills. Tracks that circled our borders before veering away. I thought they were testing us, feeling for weaknesses. Now they're coming in daylight."

"Do you know who leads them?"

His mouth pressed into a thin line. "They call him the Ross alpha. No one knows his given name. He's been building a coalition for years—displaced wolves from the McTavish line, the Donnelly pack, a few broken families from as far as Lewis. He wants a stronghold. A base to launch from." He looked at her then, and something raw flickered behind his eyes. "Iona, this isn't your fight. You should—"

"Don't." She held up a hand. "Don't tell me to leave. I'm already in this. The locket, my mother, the diary—I'm not walking away because there's danger."

He took a step toward her, close enough that she could smell the pine sap and cold air clinging to his wool sweater. "The danger is real and it's escalating. If the Ross pack decides you matter to us—"

"Then I matter," she said simply. "Which means I can help."

She crossed to the desk and pulled out her phone. "They're tracking. They're hunting livestock. So we let them hunt something that watches them back."

Lachlan frowned. "What are you thinking?"

"Camera collar." She pulled up a photo of a device she'd fitted to a dairy cow in Glasgow. "I use them for behavioral studies. Small motion-activated cameras, GPS transmitters, lightweight. I can disguise one as a sheep bell and put it on one of your free-grazing ewes. If the rogues take her down or even circle her, we'll have footage of their numbers, their patterns, where they're lairing."

He stared at her for a long moment. "You want to send one of my sheep into the eastern moors as bait."

"I want to know what we're facing." She met his gaze and held it. "You said you'd tell me everything tomorrow—including the truth about my mother. Until then, I still have questions. But one thing I know for certain: predators are easiest to stop when you know where they rest."

Something shifted in his expression—not the wariness she'd grown used to since the photograph came to light, but something closer to respect. Perhaps even wonder.

"All right," he said. "Pick your ewe."

By midafternoon, the collar was fitted. Iona had chosen a hardy blackface ewe from the eastern pasture, a stubborn animal that had outlived three winters and was strong enough to keep her distance from danger but curious enough to investigate unfamiliar scents. The device sat snug against her wool, the leather strap and brass bell looking almost antique.

Lachlan insisted on accompanying her as she released the ewe at the edge of the moors. The land dipped and rose in waves of purple heather and pale grass, the sky a wash of thin clouds that promised rain by evening. They walked in comfortable silence until the estate was a smudge behind them.

"You didn't have to come," she said, adjusting her pack.

"The eastern moors aren't safe."

"I gathered that."

"Not just from the rogues." He paused, and she stopped beside him, reading the tension in his shoulders. "The ground is treacherous. Sinkholes, hidden burns, peat bogs that can swallow a man up to his chest. If you'll be out here in the dusk, I'll be here too."

Something warm unfurled in her chest, and she ruthlessly suppressed it. The sibling question hung between them like a drawn curtain. She had no right to feel what she felt.

The ewe trotted ahead, grazing, bell chiming softly. They followed her deeper into the moors, checking the GPS signal on Iona's phone every few minutes. The light began to fail, gold bleeding to amber and then to bruised purple.

"We should head back," Lachlan said, scanning the horizon. "I don't like the feel of this."

Iona looked up from her phone and saw it in the same instant he must have—a flicker of movement at the edge of a distant copse of birches. Not deer. Too low, too purposeful. A dark shape that merged with the shadows and then was gone.

"Lachlan."

"I see it." His voice had dropped to a register she'd heard only during the full moon. He stepped in front of her, hand moving to the small blade at his belt. "Walk backward. Slowly. Don't run until I tell you."

The ewe bleated.

Two shapes broke from the tree line at once, low and fast and impossibly large. Not wolves in the way she understood wolves—their bodies were too long, their shoulders too thick, their eyes burning with something that was not animal. They moved in a pincer formation, one cutting left, one right, surrounding them with terrifying ease.

Lachlan shoved her behind him. "Run. Now."

She didn't run.

The first wolf lunged and Lachlan met it head-on, blade flashing. The creature twisted midair and Lachlan caught a rake of claws across his ribs, the fabric of his sweater shredding. He grunted but didn't fall, pivoting to face the second wolf as it circled.

Iona's hands were already moving, freeing the sedative from her pack. She'd brought it on instinct, a habit from years of emergency calls. The syringe was pre-loaded, the dose calculated for a horse.

The second wolf feinted and Lachlan stumbled, blood darkening his side. It went for his throat and Iona saw his arm come up, heard the sickening grunt of impact, and then she was moving, darting forward, plunging the needle deep into the wolf's haunch.

It howled—a sound that started animal and ended somewhere beyond that—and collapsed, twitching, into the heather.

The first wolf paused, nose rising, taking in the scent of its fallen companion. Uncertainty flickered across its feral features. Lachlan seized the moment, dragging Iona backward, his grip iron-tight.

"Now we run."

They ran. Through the deepening gloom, over ground that grabbed at their boots, Lachlan's hand never leaving hers. The estate's lights finally appeared ahead, warm and golden, and she could hear the first wolf's howl lifting behind them—not pursuit, but summons.

They stumbled through the garden gate and Lachlan slammed it shut behind them, bracing his hands on his knees, chest heaving. His shirt was soaked crimson, the claw marks running deep from his armpit nearly to his hip.

"You're bleeding badly." She was already moving toward him, reaching for his shirt.

He caught her wrist. His face was pale beneath the blood, his eyes burning. "That was a warning. They could have killed us. They held back."

She looked at him, understanding dawning cold and clear. "They want you alive. Both of us."

Lachlan nodded slowly. "The Ross alpha doesn't want to annihilate us, Iona. He wants something from us. Someone." His grip on her wrist tightened. "And if he knows about the locket—about you—then we've just shown him exactly where to find you."