Read Chapter 32: The Price of Silver

The world had gone quiet except for the thud of her own heart and the wet rasp of Lachlan’s breathing. Iona’s hands were slick with blood before she’d even lifted him off the moor. Someone—Duncan, she thought, or maybe Hamish—had grabbed his shoulders, and together they hauled him toward the estate gates, the silver burning a blackened crater in his chest.

“Don’t you dare,” she muttered, half to herself, half to him, as his head lolled against her arm. “Don’t you dare leave me with this mess.”

The great hall was chaos—wolves in human form dragging the wounded, women weeping, children peering from the staircase. But Iona saw none of it. She saw only the door to the surgery, and the narrow cot where she’d stitched up Duncan’s torn paw three weeks ago. It would have to do.

“Get me Dr. MacElroy,” she snapped at Hamish, who stood frozen in the doorway, his face the color of ash. “Now. Run.”

He ran.

Iona cut Lachlan’s shirt away with scissors that shook in her grip. The bullet hole was small—hunters knew their work—but the flesh around it had already begun to blacken, the silver poisoning spreading in slow, creeping veins up toward his shoulder. His skin was too hot, then too cold, then hot again. The pack’s healing was fighting, but silver was the one thing it couldn’t beat on its own.

She packed the wound with clean linen and pressed hard. He didn’t stir. That was the worst part. A wolf in agony would have thrashed, snarled, fought her hands. Lachlan lay utterly still, his chest rising and falling in shallow, reedy breaths, as if even that small effort cost him everything.

Dr. MacElroy arrived within the hour, gray-haired and grim, carrying a leather bag that smelled of iodine and old paper. He took one look at the wound and nodded once, no questions asked. In a village like this, you learned not to ask.

“The bullet’s still in there,” he said, peering close. “I’ll need forceps, a scalpel, and steady hands. Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” Iona said. “He’s my patient.”

MacElroy didn’t argue. He set up a tray, swabbed the wound with antiseptic, and handed her the scalpel. Iona’s own hands were steady now, the way they always were when the world narrowed to a single problem. Glasgow had taught her that—you couldn’t panic and save a life at the same time. One or the other. She chose the life.

The bullet was lodged against a rib, and the silver had fragmented on impact, little slivers of death buried in muscle and bone. She worked for what felt like hours, MacElroy holding a lamp close, occasionally dabbing sweat from her brow with a cloth. The room smelled of copper and burnt herbs. Somewhere beyond the door, she could hear the estate settling—murmured voices, the clink of cups, the soft tread of feet—but here, in this small circle of lamplight, there was only Lachlan’s breathing and the careful, terrible work of her hands.

“Found it,” she said at last, and the forceps closed around the largest piece of lead. It came free with a wet sound that made MacElroy grimace. She dropped it into a steel pan, where it lay gleaming, innocent, deadly.

“The fragments,” MacElroy said. “There’ll be more.”

She nodded and went back in. The silver nitrate antidote was in the vault—she’d synthesized it only yesterday, a pale green tincture from the manuscript’s recipe, meant for wounds just like this. But the vault was below the estate, through the passage that had been shaking all week, and she couldn’t leave Lachlan’s side long enough to fetch it.

“I need you to get something for me,” she said to MacElroy, and she described the vial, the shelf, the stone that opened the passage. He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded again.

“The Blackwood vault,” he said. “Aye. I know of it. I’ll be back.”

He left, and Iona was alone with the unconscious man on the cot. She finished picking out the fragments—seven in all, each one a small victory—and then she sat back, her hands trembling now that the work was done. The black veins had not spread further, but they had not receded either. They lay just beneath his skin like dark rivers, waiting.

She took his hand. It was cold, heavier than it should have been. She pressed her fingers to his wrist and felt his pulse—weak, thready, but there. Still there.

“You stubborn bastard,” she whispered. “You were supposed to be the one protecting me, not the other way around.”

He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t.

MacElroy returned with the vial, its green liquid catching the lamplight. “The passage is shifting,” he said quietly. “Stones grinding against each other. I didn’t linger.”

Iona uncorked the vial and measured out the dosage with a syringe. She’d tested it on a torn silver wound in a lab rat, not a wolf, but the theory was sound—the tincture bound to silver ions and neutralized them, allowing the body’s own healing to take over. She injected it slowly into the flesh around the wound, watching the black veins pulse once, twice, and then begin to fade.

“Good,” she breathed. “Good.”

She bandaged the wound with sterile gauze and sat back, suddenly aware of how exhausted she was. Her arms ached. Her eyes burned. The adrenaline that had carried her through the battle and the surgery was draining away, leaving behind a hollow, shaking fatigue.

MacElroy put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s out of danger, I think. The herb will do its work. You need rest.”

“I’ll stay,” she said.

He didn’t argue. He just nodded, packed his bag, and left her there, closing the door softly behind him. The room was quiet now except for the steady tick of the clock on the wall and the soft rhythm of Lachlan’s breathing—stronger now, deeper, more regular.

Iona pulled a chair close to the cot and sat down, taking his hand again. His fingers were warmer now, the color returning to his face. She watched his chest rise and fall, and she let herself feel, for the first time since the shot had rung out across the moor, the full weight of what had almost happened.

She’d seen death before. She’d held dying animals in her arms, had them slip away despite everything she did. But this was different. This was Lachlan—infuriating, secretive, noble Lachlan—and the thought of a world without him in it opened up like a pit inside her chest.

She’d been so careful, so determined to keep her distance. A job was a job. A mystery was a puzzle to be solved. But somewhere between the vault and the parley and the look on his face when he’d stepped in front of her, that distance had collapsed.

Outside, the estate stirred with the aftermath—the arrested hunters, the wounded, the questions that would need answers by morning. She could hear Duncan’s deep voice in the hall, calm and commanding, and the softer murmur of Meghan’s retreat had long since faded into the hills. But here, in this small room, there was only the two of them, and the fragile threads that now bound her to this place, this family, this impossible man.

She must have dozed off, because when she opened her eyes, the lamp had burned low and the sky outside the window was gray with predawn light. Lachlan’s hand was still in hers—warmer now, stronger. She looked up at his face.

His eyes were open. Dark, tired, but open. He looked at her for a long moment, his gaze moving over her face as if memorizing it, and then his lips parted.

“Iona.” His voice was a hoarse, sandpaper rasp, barely a sound at all. But it was enough. It was everything.

She squeezed his hand, and she felt a smile crack across her face, unbidden and unguarded. “You’re alive,” she said. It came out stupid and obvious, and she didn’t care.

His lips twitched, the ghost of his old wry smile. “You’re still here,” he said, each word costing him visible effort.

“Where else would I be?” She pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. His skin was cool now, the fever broken. “The vault’s herbs work. You’re going to be fine, Lachlan. You’re going to be fine.”

He closed his eyes for a long moment, and she felt his fingers curl around hers, weak but intentional. When he opened them again, there was something in his gaze she hadn’t seen before—not gratitude, not obligation, but something deeper and quieter, settling into place like a stone finding its bed in a stream.

“Thank you,” he whispered. And then his eyes drifted closed again, and his breathing evened out into the rhythm of true, healing sleep.

Iona stayed where she was, her hand in his, watching the gray light grow brighter in the window. The hunters were arrested. The Rosses were gone, for now. The vault below the estate was stirring—she could feel it now, a low hum through the floorboards, like a great beast shifting in its sleep.

But Lachlan was alive. And for this moment, that was enough.