Read Chapter 31: The Double Cross

The clearing before the Blackwood standing stones was slick with rain, the grey sky pressing down like a palm. Iona stood beside Lachlan, her coat soaked through, the locket cold against her sternum. Across the mossy ground, Meghan Ross approached with a smile that never touched her eyes.

“So the animal doctor comes as a peacekeeper,” Meghan called, voice carrying over the wind. “How noble. How naive.”

Behind Meghan, the Ross wolves fanned out in a loose crescent. Twenty at least, most still in human form, but their movements had that predatory economy that marked the old bloodlines. Iona counted weapons—knives, a few iron-tipped poles—and forced her breathing to stay even.

“You asked for the locket’s keeper,” Iona said. “Here I am. Let’s talk about the old vow.”

Meghan laughed. “The old vow is dead, girl. Your family buried it generations ago.”

She snapped her fingers. Two Ross wolves dragged a figure forward from behind the trees—a boy, barely seventeen, with Lachlan’s sharp cheekbones and a bruise flowering across his jaw.

Iona’s blood went cold. “Jamie.”

Young Jamie Blackwood stumbled, caught himself, lifted his chin. His eyes found Lachlan and held. “Didn’t tell them anything, brother.”

“I know.” Lachlan’s voice was stone. “You’re a Blackwood.”

Meghan stepped forward, casual, deadly. “The boy for the eastern foothills. The hunting rights. And the locket, of course.” She smiled at Iona. “You’ll hand it over, and we’ll pretend your mother never sullied the treaty.”

Iona’s hand moved before she could think, closing over the locket. The metal seemed to pulse, as if answering Meghan’s greed.

“No.” Lachlan’s word cut the air. “You want a parley, we speak as equals. You want a war, you’ll have one. But you will not trade children for land.”

Meghan’s smile vanished. “Then we take what we came for.”

She raised her arm. The wolves surged forward.

Lachlan was already moving, shifting mid-stride—fur ripping through skin, jaw elongating, amber eyes gone black with fury. Iona ran for cover behind the standing stone, fumbling in her satchel. The rolled canvas of vials clinked together, and her fingers found the one marked with Eòghan’s seal—the draught she’d refined from the vault manuscripts, stronger than anything she’d given Duncan.

She looked up. Wolves clashed in the mud, grey and black and brindled, jaws finding throats. Lachlan fought two at once, his massive frame twisting, teeth sinking into a Ross shoulder. Three more broke toward the tree line where Jamie stood alone, wrists bound, feet sliding as he tried to run.

Iona made a decision she knew she would never be able to take back.

She ran toward the chaos, screaming Lachlan’s brother’s name. “Duncan! Duncan, come to me!”

Duncan Blackwood broke from the melee, blood-matted and furious. He skidded to a halt before her, and she shoved the vial into his paw.

“Drink it. Now. Trust me.”

He didn’t hesitate. The wolf’s jaws cracked the vial, glass shattering, and he swallowed. For a blink, nothing. Then Duncan roared—a sound that shook the leaves from the birches—and his body began to change in ways that had nothing to do with the wolf. His silhouette swelled, broadened, thickened at the shoulders. His fur darkened to a deep, rusted bronze. His head lowered, and where a wolf’s skull had been, a vast horned auroch shape rose—massive, ancient, something from the cave paintings in the vault.

The Ross wolves froze. The auroch lowered its head and charged.

It was like a landslide through sheep. Wolves scattered, yelping, crashing into the undergrowth. Meghan screamed something, but her voice was lost in the thunder of hooves. The auroch trampled the front line and kept going, hunting the tree line, and in the confusion Iona sprinted to Jamie.

Her hands shook as she sawed through his bindings with the small blade Lachlan had given her. “Run. Run to the estate, tell them everything.”

Jamie grabbed her wrist. “Lachlan—“

“I’ve got him. Go!”

Jamie ran. Iona turned, searching the slaughter for Lachlan.

She found him standing at the edge of the fighting, human again, breathing hard. He was watching the auroch scatter the last of the Ross wolves, and something like wonder crossed his face. Then his gaze shifted—

To the tree line beyond the standing stones.

To the glint of a rifle barrel.

The crack of the shot came a heartbeat later. Iona saw it happen in fragments: Lachlan’s body snapping back, a spray of red that seemed to hang in the air too long, his knee buckling, the slow, terrible fall to the wet earth.

“Lachlan!”

She was running, mud sucking at her boots, her lungs burning. The hunter who stepped out from the trees wore a village coat, a red cap pulled low, and held the rifle level—

Iona didn’t stop to think. She threw herself between them, arms wide. “Shoot me and you’ll hang for murdering the healer too.”

The hunter hesitated. Behind her, Ross wolves were pulling back, dragging their wounded. The auroch stood at the edge of the clearing, head lowered, bellowing a challenge at the sky.

Iona dropped to her knees in the mud beside Lachlan. The silver bullet had taken him in the chest. Blood pooled beneath him, black in the grey light, and already she could see the poison raking through him—veins darkening, muscle spasming, breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.

“Lachlan,” she said, and her voice broke on the word. “Lachlan, stay with me.”

His eyes found hers, wide and dark. “Iona—” He coughed, blood flecking his lips. “Tell Duncan—tell the pack—“

“You’ll tell them yourself.” She pressed her hands to the wound, feeling the burn of silver through her palms. Screaming inside. Silence outside. “You’re not leaving me. Not now. Not when I finally—“

She couldn’t finish. Behind her, the hunter began to raise the rifle again, and Iona turned, baring her teeth in a way she never thought she had in her.

“The constable is already coming,” she said, low and venomous. “You’ll hang. All of you.”

The hunter hesitated one breath too long. In that breath, Duncan’s auroch form shrank, folded, staggered back into the shape of a man—huge, naked, and shaking.

The hunter dropped his rifle and ran.

Iona turned back to Lachlan. His eyes had lost focus, and his heart beat faint beneath her hands, like something trying to remember how to be alive. She gathered him into her arms, his blood hot against her chest, and screamed.

The scream tore out of her. Raw and ragged. It echoed off the mountains, off the grey water of the loch, off the watching stones.

It was a sound that did not end. It carried all the way to the estate walls, where Jamie stood panting, his mouth open. It carried to the Blackwood manor, where Elspeth dropped the teacup in her hand and knew, knew, her son was dying.

And it carried down, deep beneath the estate, where something in the vault stirred and answered with a growl that shook the foundations of the earth.