Read Chapter 23: Eavesdropped Plans

The library clock chimed eleven, and Iona counted its chimes against the dull thud of her heart. Lachlan had said *tomorrow*. Tomorrow he would tell her everything. But tomorrow felt an eternity away when the estate hummed with suppressed violence and her mother's face stared from a photograph that might prove her a liar or a victim or something worse.

She couldn't sleep. She'd tried. The guest room's four-poster bed was soft, but her mind raced circuits around the same questions: Who was Eilidh MacRae? What had she taken? And what would Lachlan's "truth" reveal about the blood running through Iona's own veins?

The east corridor stretched dark ahead of her. She'd meant to find the kitchen for tea, but her feet had carried her past it, toward the wing where the family held their private meetings. Perhaps she was drawn by the faint murmur of voices, barely audible through the old oak door at the end of the hall.

She should turn back. She knew she should turn back.

Instead, she pressed her ear to the wood.

"—cannot afford patience." That was Duncan's voice, rough with the memory of last night's involuntary shift. "The Rosses have taken two of ours in as many months. If we do nothing, they will interpret it as weakness."

A woman's voice—Morven, Lachlan's aunt, Iona guessed from the clipped vowels—cut in. "Duncan's right. The blood feud has simmered for three generations. The Ross alphas scent blood in the water now that Ellis is gone."

Ellis. The name landed like a stone in Iona's chest. Lachlan's older brother. The previous heir. Dead under circumstances Lachlan had never explained.

"Ellis's death was not a Ross action." Lachlan's voice was low, controlled. "We verified that. The attack bore no territorial signature."

"Verified." Morven's laugh was brittle. "We verified what Angus told us. And Angus was the one who found the body."

Iona's blood chilled. Angus. The groundskeeper with the kind eyes and the soft Gaelic accent. The man who had shown her the lambing sheds her first week in the village. He'd been nothing but helpful, nothing but gentle.

"Angus has served this family for thirty years," Lachlan said. "His father served before him. I will not hear baseless accusations—"

"Not baseless." A voice Iona didn't recognize. Low, older, carrying rough weariness. Alistair, perhaps, the family's oldest surviving uncle. "I have watched Angus these past months. He takes his leave on odd days. He receives no letters, and yet his cottage is full of paper. And last week, I saw him on the eastern moors—where the rogue pack was sighted."

Silence stretched. Iona's legs trembled. She leaned harder against the door.

Lachlan spoke at last, stiffly: "The eastern moors border Ross territory. It may have been a boundary patrol. Nothing more."

"Or it may have been a report," Alistair pressed. "To his true pack."

"He is Blackwood-born—"

"His mother was a Ross." Alistair's voice cut like wind through a cracked pane. "You know this. You have read the ledger."

The ledger. The one Lachlan had shown her just yesterday, with its cramped script and generations of secrets. She hadn't read far enough to see Angus's name. She'd been too focused on her own.

"That was sixty years ago," Lachlan said, but his certainty wavered now. "His mother married into our service. Angus has given loyal—"

"Loyalty is bred in the blood," Duncan interrupted. "You of all people should know that. You're the one so afraid of your own inheritance you let a stranger with a locket calm your brother instead of doing it yourself."

The words were brutal, and the silence that followed was worse. Iona heard the scrape of a chair. Footsteps. Lachlan's voice, when it came, was quiet and tired.

"I know what you think of me, brother. That I am weak. That I hide behind science and caution while the pack needs a fist." A pause. "But taking the Ross alpha's head will not return Ellis to us. It will only feed the cycle that has eaten our family for generations."

"And what would you have us do?" Morven asked. "Wait for them to take another of us in the night? Lock ourselves in this cave forever?"

"I would have us understand what they truly want."

"They want land and blood. What else—"

"They captured two of our hunters alive." Lachlan's voice rose slightly, an edge of steel in it that Iona had rarely heard. "Two healthy men taken in the open. If they wanted them dead, they would have torn them apart where they stood. They took them. Why?"

Silence again. When Duncan spoke, his voice had lost some of its rush. "To force a parley."

"To force a treaty," Lachlan corrected. "On terms that favor the Rosses. And to do that, they need leverage. They need something we value more than land."

Ice crept down Iona's spine. She knew, before anyone said it, what was coming.

"They have found it." Lachlan's voice grew heavier. "The Ross alpha has been watching this estate for weeks. He knows what walks our halls. He knows we are weak, divided, still grieving. And he knows—" A pause. "He knows a MacRae woman has returned."

"She's a veterinarian," Duncan said dismissively. "She fixes sheep and calms puppies."

"She carries the locket." Lachlan's words fell like stones into still water. "The locket that was made for Rosalind Ross a hundred years ago, before she married a Blackwood and changed her name. The locket that was stolen from this family in 1980. The locket that the Ross line believes belongs to them."

Rosalind. Iona's mind reeled. The diary had mentioned a MacRae woman from Glasgow. The photograph showed her mother with Lachlan's father. But the locket—the locket had been Ross property before it was Blackwood property. And her mother had taken it.

She was not merely the daughter of a thief. She was a carrier of stolen symbols between two warring houses of monsters.

"She is a tool," Lachlan said firmly. "Not a prize. The Ross alpha believes that with the locket and the woman who wields it, he can force us to capitulate. He believes the locket's power belongs to his line. And I intend to prove him wrong."

A chair scraped. "And how do you prove that," Morven asked slowly, "when half your pack believes you're too soft to lead?"

The door handle turned.

Iona had barely enough time to spring backward into the alcove where a suit of armor stood rusting in the shadows. She pressed herself against the cold stone wall, breath held to a whisper, as the council filed out. Morven's sharp heels clicked past. Duncan's heavy boots. Alistair's shuffling gait.

Lachlan came last.

He stopped in the corridor, head turning. He sniffed once—a subtle movement, almost unconscious. Then his eyes found the alcove.

"Iona."

There was no accusation in his voice. Only exhaustion.

She stepped out, heart pounding. "I'm sorry. I couldn't sleep. I heard—"

"You heard enough." He crossed to her, took her elbow in a grip that was gentle but firm, and steered her away from the corridor, through a side door into a small study. He released her, closed the door, and stood with his back to it, watching her in the thin moonlight.

"You should not have eavesdropped," he said quietly. "But you are here now, and I will not lie to you again."

"Is it true? About Angus?"

"I do not know." He passed a hand over his face. "I want to believe it is not. But the old blood runs deep, and the Rosses have long memories. If Angus is a spy, then every plan we make tonight is already compromised."

"And the locket." She pulled the chain from beneath her collar. The silver burned warm against her palm. "It was made for a Ross bride. Your family stole it back. My mother stole it from you. And now I am standing in the middle of a war that began long before I was born, carrying the very thing they are fighting over."

Lachlan said nothing. His silence was its own confession.

"Lachlan." She stepped closer, so close she could see the grey at his temples, the creases around his eyes that made him look older than his years. "If Angus reports to the Ross pack, he will tell them about me. About the locket. About what it did for Duncan."

"Yes."

"They will come for me."

"Yes." His voice cracked. He reached for her hand and folded it around the locket, pressing her palm closed. "Iona, I have spent my life trying to keep this family safe by staying small. By refusing to be the wolf my father was. By choosing caution over courage." His grip tightened. "And I have failed. My brother is dead. My pack is fractured. My land is hunted. And now you—the one good thing to walk into this house in years—are in danger because you trusted me."

She opened her mouth to protest, but he shook his head.

"Let me speak. You asked for truth, and I have given you fragments. But this is the whole of it. I am afraid. Not of the Rosses. Not of the villagers with their rifles. I am afraid that I will lose you before I ever learn who you are to me. Whether you are sister or stranger or something I have no right to want." His voice dropped. "I have been alone for a very long time, and then you walked in with your Glasgow sharpness and your soft hands, and I let myself believe—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I let myself believe."

Iona stared at him. The moonlight carved his face into planes of sorrow. He was not the composed laird tonight. He was a man shouldering a century of blood, and he was begging her not to abandon him to it.

"Lachlan." She spoke softly. "I am not going anywhere."

Something shifted in his eyes. Hope, and beneath it, fear.

"I will find the truth about my mother," she said. "And I will help you face whatever the Rosses send. But I need you to trust me as I am trusting you. No more secrets. No more closed doors."

His breath came out in a long, uneven rush. "No more secrets."

He did not kiss her. But his hand tightened around hers, and in the quiet of the study, it felt like a promise.