Read Chapter 29: The Heirloom's Secret

The vault smelled of old stone and cold iron, but Iona had grown used to it. She sat cross-legged on the floor beside the scattered remnants of her research, the pieces of the shattered locket laid out on a square of black velvet like the bones of some small, sacred animal. The gold casing was cracked beyond repair, its gutted interior revealing only the faintest residue of whatever magic had once coiled inside. But it was the chain that held her attention now.

She had noticed it the night before, in the low lamplight, when she'd lifted the pieces to wrap them for safekeeping. The links weren't metal. They were hair.

She'd dismissed it at first—a trick of the light, a fragile old keepsake braided into chain. But now, under the vault's cold glare, she saw it clearly. Each link was a single strand, thick and dark, woven with a precision that couldn't be natural. She lifted one end to the light, and the strand caught the glow, throwing off a dull, silvered shimmer.

Wolf hair. She'd seen enough of it in the last months to recognize it. But this was old. Ancient. It carried a weight that made her fingers tingle.

Iona pulled the manuscript from her lap—the same one that had been torn at the first page. She'd read it cover to cover three times now, but she turned to the final leaf, where the ink was fresher, more careful. It listed the bloodline. The first Blackwood alpha, Eòghan, and his descendants, marked with tiny symbols for each birth, each death, each marriage.

She ran her finger down the names. And stopped.

There, halfway down the page, was a mark she hadn't noticed before. A small knot, drawn in red ink, beside a name she'd barely registered the first time she'd read it: *Mhairi Blackwood, daughter of Eòghan's third son. Deceased. No issue.*

No issue. But the chain was in her hands. And the hair on it—she'd seen it gleam under moonlight before, on her mother's throat, in the single photograph that survived.

Her mother had called it a family heirloom. Her father, the man who'd raised her in Glasgow, had called it a waste of money. Neither of them had known what it was. But the Blackwood vault did. And now, so did Iona.

She was still sitting there, staring at the page, when she heard boots on the stairs.

Lachlan descended slowly, his face still carrying the shadow of the week's exhaustion, but his eyes were clear. He stopped at the bottom, taking her in, then the mess of papers, then the velvet. His voice was quiet. "You should have called me."

"I wasn't sure until now."

"Sure of what?"

Iona rose, holding the chain between two fingers. The hair swayed, silken, impossibly strong. "This isn't metal, Lachlan. It's wolf hair. One strand, braided into a chain. And it matches the bloodline in this vault."

He crossed to her, frowning, and took the chain from her hand. He turned it over, felt the weight of it, and something flickered across his face—recognition, then wonder, then a slow, dawning fear. "This is Eòghan's hair. The first alpha. There are records in the estate's older archives that mention a relic passed to the first ambassador—a chain woven from the alpha's own coat, meant to bind the bearer to the pact."

"Your family sent an ambassador to the Rosses," Iona said. "A Blackwood."

"Not just a Blackwood." Lachlan's gaze lifted to hers. "A descendant of the first alpha himself. The chain was meant to prove the ambassador's blood. It couldn't be worn by anyone else."

Iona's chest tightened. She swallowed. "My mother wore this."

The words hung in the cold air. Lachlan stared at her, and then he looked down at the chain again, and she watched him do the math. She watched the questions rise in his eyes and fall again, one by one. And then he said, softly, "Your mother was never a Ross."

"No."

"She was a Blackwood. She was sent to the Rosses as an ambassador. She fell in love, left, had you—"

"I'm not a spy," Iona said. "I'm not a pawn. I'm not a half-sibling to anyone in your family."

Lachlan let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "God, Iona. Do you know what I've been afraid of?"

"That I was your cousin?"

"Worse." He set the chain down carefully on the velvet. "That you'd find out you had more claim to this estate than I did."

Iona blinked. "What?"

"Eòghan's line passed through the eldest son's branch—that's mine. But the ambassadors were chosen from the second and third sons, and their lines were given a special place in the pact." He paused, searching her face. "You're not just a Blackwood. You're a line that was designated as a potential anchor for the treaty. A keeper who could stand between packs without belonging to either."

"That's a lot of weight for one strand of hair."

"It's more than hair." Lachlan stepped closer. "It's a blood claim. If the Rosses knew—if Meghan knew—she wouldn't just want the locket. She'd want you."

Iona felt her stomach drop. "I'm supposed to be neutral. I'm supposed to be the mediator."

"You were. But now—" He reached out and took her hand, his palm warm against her cold fingers. "Now you're something else. You're the one Eòghan's pact was built around. You're the heir to the treaty itself."

She looked up at him, and for a moment, the vault's darkness seemed to recede. The scar on his cheek was pale in the lamplight. He was still not fully healed, still not fully free of the curse. But he was looking at her with an open, unguarded awe that made her breath catch.

"You're not my half-sister," he said, as if the words were a blessing he'd been waiting to speak. "You're not a distant relative. You're the woman whose mother ran away to keep you safe. And you came back to this valley to save us all—by accident, by fate, by whatever gods still watch this land."

"I came back because I had nowhere else to go."

"And now you have somewhere. You have the vault. You have the pack." He stepped closer still, and his voice dropped. "You have me."

Iona's throat tightened. "Lachlan—"

"I'm not asking for an answer now. I'm not asking for anything but a truth." He held her gaze. "I want you to consider staying. Not as the mediator. Not as the doctor who patches us up when the moon gets its claws out. As the matriarch. As my—"

He stopped. Swallowed. The words hovered between them.

"Iona, I want you to stand beside me. Not as an ally. Not as a cure. As the woman I love."

She couldn't breathe. The cold stone of the vault, the rich dark of his eyes, the weight of the chain still lying on the velvet—it all pressed in on her, and yet somehow the only thing that felt solid was his hand in hers.

"I don't know who I am," she said, her voice barely steady. "I found out my mother lied to me my whole life. I found out I'm part of a feud I didn't know existed until a month ago. I'm a veterinarian from Glasgow. I'm not a keeper. I'm not a matriarch."

"You're a woman who read a vault full of dead men's secrets and decided to heal wolves instead of fleeing from them." Lachlan smiled, small and tired and achingly real. "That's enough for me."

Iona laughed—a thin, surprised sound that broke against the silence. "You're asking me to decide the rest of my life two days before I walk into a parley where a pack of wolves might try to kill me."

"I'm asking you to decide it now so that when you walk into that parley, you know what you're fighting for."

She looked down at the chain. At the hair of an alpha who'd died centuries ago, still binding its blood to a promise no one fully remembered. And then she looked up at the man in front of her—the wolf who had offered her nothing but truth since the day they'd met, even when it cost him.

"After the parley," she said. "Ask me again after the parley."

Lachlan's smile deepened, and he lifted her hand, pressing his lips briefly to her knuckles. "I can wait."

Iona returned the pressure of his grip, then turned back to the velvet and the shattered remnants of the locket. There was something else she needed to find, but she couldn't remember what it was. Her mind was full of him.

Which was why, hours later, sitting alone in her room, she missed the faint scratching from the cellar beneath the estate.