Read Chapter 25: The Blood Summons

The ruined chapel crouched on the moor like a broken tooth, its roof long gone, walls leaning into the wind. Iona’s boots sank into the wet earth as she walked beside Lachlan up the worn stone steps, the locket cold against her sternum beneath her jacket.

“We shouldn’t be here,” she murmured.

“We have no choice.” Lachlan’s jaw was set, but his hand found hers briefly—a squeeze, quick and fierce—before he released it and straightened his shoulders.

The interior smelled of damp stone and old moss. At the far end, beneath where an altar must have stood, a woman waited among a half-dozen others. She was tall, silver-haired but young-faced, wrapped in a grey travelling cloak. Her eyes were pale as winter frost and fixed on Iona with unsettling stillness.

“Dr. MacRae,” the woman said. “And the Blackwood heir. You came.”

“Meghan.” Lachlan’s voice was flat. “I expected your father.”

“My father is dead. I am alpha now.” Meghan stepped forward, her boots echoing on the stone. “And I have no interest in your family’s pride. I have interest in what she carries.”

Iona’s hand went instinctively to her collar, then stopped itself.

“The locket,” Meghan said. “You know what it is, don’t you? Or has Lachlan kept you ignorant?”

“I know it belonged to my mother.”

“It belonged to my grandmother.” Meghan’s mouth curved, but there was no warmth in it. “It was forged as a treaty token when our families first divided these lands. A Ross bride wore it when she wed a Blackwood, sealing the pact between our bloodlines. Each generation, an ambassador wore it to keep the peace.” She paused. “Your mother was that ambassador.”

Iona felt the weight of the locket like a stone in her chest. “You killed her.”

“She broke the pact. She fled with the token, fell in love with the enemy, and hid.” Meghan’s eyes flicked to Lachlan. “And now she’s returned it to the Blackwood fold. You’ve become the very thing she died trying to escape—a pawn in their hands.”

“She’s not a pawn,” Lachlan said, stepping forward.

“She doesn’t know what she is.” Meghan’s gaze never left Iona. “The locket is not a keepsake, Dr. MacRae. It’s a summons. It calls to Ross blood. It holds the original pact—and it answers only to a Ross bride. That’s why you survived the bite. That’s why you can walk among us without fear.”

Iona’s mind raced. The bite—an animal attack on the moors weeks ago, a wound that had healed too fast, too clean. She’d dismissed it. Lachlan had never explained—

“Give it to me,” Meghan said. “Return it to its true line, and I will call off the culling. Your hunters will walk free. The feud ends tonight.”

“You murdered my mother,” Iona said quietly.

“Your mother betrayed her pack and stole a sacred object. Her death was justice.”

“You murdered Ellis Blackwood because he guarded it.”

Meghan’s expression didn’t change. “He stood between us and our birthright.”

Iona’s hand closed around the locket through her jacket. The metal was warm, humming faintly against her palm—a vibration she’d felt for days and dismissed as imagination.

“No,” she said.

Meghan’s eyes narrowed. “You would side with the family that has used you since the moment you arrived? They hid your mother’s secrets. They feared you for your blood. And you would refuse me?”

“I’m not siding with anyone.” Iona’s voice was steady despite the hammering of her heart. “I’m not giving you my mother’s locket because you demand it with blood on your hands.”

The chapel went still. Then Meghan smiled—slow, almost sorrowful—and raised her hand.

The Ross wolves moved.

Lachlan surged forward, shoving Iona behind him as the first wolf lunged—a man, distorted mid-shift, fur ripping through skin. Lachlan met him with a snarl of his own, his body beginning to twist, but he was slower, caught off-guard. Two more wolves flanked, driving him back against the altar stone.

“Run!” he shouted at her.

Iona scrambled toward the gap in the wall, but Meghan was there, impossibly fast, seizing her wrist. The woman’s grip was iron.

“You have Ross blood,” Meghan hissed. “You don’t even feel it, do you? The pull? You’re one of us whether you want it or not.”

Iona twisted, clawing at Meghan’s hand, and behind her she heard Lachlan cry out—a sound she’d never heard him make, raw and broken. She whipped around.

Lachlan was on the ground, a wolf’s jaws clamped around his shoulder, another at his thigh. Blood darkened the stone beneath him. His eyes found hers, and in them she saw something that cut through the chaos—a single, desperate word, unspoken.

*Go.*

She tore free of Meghan’s grip and ran. Not out, but toward him. She grabbed his outstretched hand, dragged him backward across the slick stone, through the gap in the wall, into the rain-soaked night. A wolf lunged after them, but Lachlan swung a wild, half-shifted fist and caught it across the muzzle, buying them three seconds—enough.

They ran. Down the moor, through the heather, the estate’s silhouette growing in the grey dawn. Iona half-carried him, his arm across her shoulders, his blood hot and wet on her hands.

At the gates, Duncan met them, took his brother’s weight, shouted for help.

In the library, they laid Lachlan on a low couch. His breathing came shallow and ragged. The wounds had already closed—the rapid healing of his kind—but his skin was grey, and his hands trembled.

“Too deep,” Dr. MacRae said, using Iona’s own professional tone back at her. “Poison. Ross wolves carry venom in the bite. Untreated, it will stop his heart.”

Iona knelt beside him. “What do we do?”

Duncan’s face was stone. “There’s only one cure. A bite from a true alpha moon-struck wolf—one who has fully turned.” He swallowed. “That means he must shift completely, burn the venom out of his own blood. But he was struck before the moon. It might kill him.”

Lachlan’s hand found hers, cold and weak.

“Iona,” he breathed. And said nothing else.

Outside, the sun rose grey over the Highlands.

And Lachlan’s eyes drifted closed.