Read Chapter 28: A Strange New Moon

The vault’s air was cold and mineral, a tooth of old stone biting into the Highland hillside. Iona had set up a makeshift lab on the oak table in the corner, beneath the low arches of the ceiling, where the light from three storm lanterns pooled like molten gold. The dust she’d stirred from the manuscript pages hung in the glow, slow as silt settling in a still loch.

She measured the last drop of belladonna tincture into the glass vial, held it up, and watched the liquid turn from murky green to the pale amber of weak tea. The recipe called it *Aelbren’s Draught*, after the ancient healer of the Blackwood line. The text was crabbed, dense with references to plants the manuscript called by old names—but she’d translated them all with the help of a herbarium she’d found three shelves down.

“It’s done,” she said aloud, more to steady her own hands than for any audience.

Outside the vault, rain fell in a soft, steady rhythm. The estate had been quiet for the better part of a week now, the Blackwood family still raw from the events at the chapel. Duncan had been the hardest to read: a tall, quiet man whose devotion to his brother was matched only by his distrust of her. He’d barely spoken to her since she’d refused to hand over the locket to Meghan. She couldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t have trusted her either.

She found Duncan in the estate’s small gun room, cleaning a pair of claymores that hadn’t been used in two generations. He looked up as she entered, his jaw set, but something in his eyes flickered when he saw the vial in her hand.

“What is that?” he asked.

“A chance,” she said. “Aelbren’s Draught. It doesn’t break the curse. It doesn’t remove it. But it grants control—full human cognition through the change, provided you take it before the moon peaks. I need you to test it.”

Duncan set the claymore down slowly. He was a hand taller than Lachlan, with the same dark hair and pale, watchful eyes, but where Lachlan’s features were lean and sharp, Duncan’s were broad, heavy-boned. He looked at her the way a man looks at a rope bridge during a storm.

“My brother asked you to make this?”

“He asked me to find a way to help you. You know what the change has done to you. The violence isn’t who you are—it’s the curse, twisting instinct beyond restraint. This would give you back the person between the wolf and the man. One night,” she said. “Full control. No haze. No lost hours.”

Duncan’s hand went to his jaw, where a scar ran white against his tan—a scar, she guessed, from a night he didn’t remember. He studied her for a long moment, then took the vial from her fingers.

“The next moon is in four nights,” he said. “If this fails, I’ll be a wolf in the same room as my family. If it works—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Come find me on the ridge east of the orchard when the moon rises. If I’m still me when it’s full overhead, we’ll know.”

Iona nodded. “If it fails, I’ll be there. With a rifle.”

That pulled a startled, almost-bark of a laugh from him. It was the first warmth she’d seen from Duncan since her mother’s name had surfaced in the ledger.

The moon rose four nights later, huge and pale, over the dark ridge of the orchard.

Iona stood at the treeline, the grass damp against her boots. She had the rifle slung across her back, but she hoped she wouldn’t need to raise it. The wind carried the smell of wet bark and turning leaves. Then she saw him—Duncan, walking up the ridge with a steady, human gait. No loping cross between strides. No fur. No glint of fang when he turned his head to look at her.

He stopped ten feet away and held up his hands, palms out. The moonlight caught his face, relaxed, untroubled. “I remember everything,” he said, and his voice broke on the words. “I remember the feel of the grass. The cold. The sound of my own breathing, without the pounding of blood in my ears. Iona—I remember thinking, *I am Duncan Blackwood*, and knowing it was true.”

She crossed the space between them, and when he pulled her into a hard hug, she let him. He smelled of pine and rain and something clean—himself, not the wolf.

“Thank you,” he said roughly. “I didn’t realize how much I’d lost until I got it back.”

The village noticed within the week. Not by any grand event—no livestock killed, no fences torn—but by the small absence of fear. The Blackwood estate had always carried a hum of unease, locals keeping their distance after dark, schoolchildren daring each other to run past the gates. But now there was a calmness to the place, a steadiness. Duncan walked into the post office in town, bought a newspaper, and tipped his cap to old Mrs. MacLean, and she did not flinch.

Lachlan found Iona in the library late that evening, the conflict of hope and caution plain on his face. “They’re saying the estate feels lighter,” he said. “They don’t know why. But they’re saying it.”

“Duncan’s carrying less weight. The whole household can feel it.” She closed the manuscript she’d been reading. “It’s working, Lachlan. Not a cure. But a reprieve.”

He crossed to her and placed a letter on the table, face up. The wax seal bore the imprint of a fox—Meghan’s mark. She read it silently.

*To the House of Blackwood, in the spirit of the old vow: the wolf who bares teeth at the shepherd forgets that the sheep may provide the wool that warms him in winter. Let us meet at the Crannog stones, three days hence, at the hour of the evening star. I come not to demand, but to speak of what was promised before the blood was shed. Bring the keeper of the locket. It is she who must hear the words of the old vow.*

Lachlan’s hand rested on the table beside hers, not quite touching. “She’s offering a parley. She called it a *vow*—that’s not language of threat. It’s the tongue of a treaty.”

“It’s a trap,” Iona said flatly. “She could have raised this offer at neutral ground last week, when we stood across stone from each other. Instead, she demanded the locket and you nearly died. Now, suddenly, she wants to speak of the vow? She’s learned something. Or she’s banking on our desperation.”

“Maybe both.” Lachlan turned to face her fully. “But if it’s genuine, and we refuse, we lose the only chance at peace we’ve had in a century. Duncan’s better now. That’s because of you. It doesn’t mean the feud is over.”

Iona stood, folding her arms. The letter glowed pale in the lamplight, fox-seal red against the paper. “I’ll attend. Not as a Blackwood, and not as a Ross. I’ll go as the neutral mediator—the keeper of the locket, the one who reads the documents in that vault. She said she wants the keeper to hear the vow. Fine. She’ll get the keeper, not a partisan.”

Lachlan’s jaw tightened. “You’re asking me to let you walk into a meet with the woman who ordered my poisoning, alone, with the artefact my family has bled for for three centuries.”

“I’m not asking you to let me,” Iona said. “I’m telling you I’m going. And if you want to stand beside me as the representative of your house, you’ll be welcome. But I won’t be either pack’s pawn or prize. The vault made that clear. We were guardians before we were enemies. She needs to remember that, and I’m the only one who can make her.”

Lachlan held her gaze for a long breath. His hand closed over hers, warm, calloused, steady. “Then we go together, as equals. But Iona—if she so much as looks at you wrong, I will end the feud the old way.”

She didn’t argue. She simply pressed his hand back and nodded.

But as she picked up the letter, her thumb brushed against the wax seal, and something cold settled in her stomach. Meghan had written *the old vow*. There was only one document in the vault that referenced a vow between the packs—and it was the one she’d only skimmed, because its first page had been torn, its opening line lost. She’d assumed it was a treaty of land holdings.

She hadn’t read far enough to know what either pack had once promised the other.

And Meghan may have known that.