Read Chapter 33: The Hunt of Apology

The morning light came thin and grey through the casement windows, and Lachlan was already standing by the fireplace when Iona stirred from the chair beside his bed. Her neck protested the angle she’d slept in, her scrubs still wrinkled from the surgery the night before.

“You should be lying down,” she said, voice rough.

He turned, and the sight of him nearly undid her. He was pale, yes—but he was *standing*. The silver burn at his shoulder showed only as a faint pink scar beneath the loose linen shirt. His eyes had their old sharpness back.

“The pack’s healing,” he said. “It did most of the work. You did the rest.”

She rose, pressing a hand to his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart. “That was a silver bullet, Lachlan. You should be dead.”

“I was, for a moment.” His hand came up to cover hers. “Then you pulled me back.”

The words hung between them, heavier than gratitude. Iona looked away first.

“Duncan told me what happened after,” she said. “The auroch. The hunters arrested. Meghan retreating.”

“Yes.” Lachlan’s jaw tightened. “And the village thinks we are monsters with teeth and claws, regardless of what they saw. The hunters who came for us didn’t do so without whispers behind them.”

She let out a slow breath. “So what do we do?”

He looked toward the window, where the estate grounds rolled down toward the village. “We stop hiding.”

---

Two days later, Iona stood in the great hall of Blackwood House, watching a strange procession file through the front doors. Malcolm Fergus, the village elder, walked stiffly in his Sunday coat. Dr. MacElroy followed, his face unreadable. Behind them came the schoolmistress, the kirk minister, and Hamish the blacksmith—his scarred hands clenched at his sides.

Lachlan stood at the head of the long oak table, dressed in a formal dark kilt and jacket, his wounded shoulder barely visible beneath the fabric. Duncan flanked him, still gaunt from the transformation but present. The rest of the pack had been sent out to the grounds—visible, unthreatening, a show of numbers without weapons.

“Thank you for coming,” Lachlan said, his voice carrying. “I know this is not easy.”

Malcolm Fergus planted his feet. “We came because you asked, and because my daughter saw what your wolf did to those Ross folk. Saw it with her own eyes. But that doesn’t mean we understand it.”

“Then let me show you.” Lachlan gestured to the table, where several glass vials sat in a wooden rack. The vault draught glinted pale gold in the firelight. “We are not monsters, Mr. Fergus. We are born—not made, not cursed. A rare native bloodline that has protected these lands for centuries. The change is... part of our biology. And we have never, in recorded history, attacked a human who did not first attack us.”

Dr. MacElroy stepped forward, peering at the vials. He picked one up, held it to the light. “What is this?”

“The serum that allowed my brother to control his transformation,” Lachlan said. “And the antidote Iora—the vet here—used to pull the silver from my blood.” He glanced at Iona. “I could not have survived without her.”

Iona stepped forward, meeting Malcolm’s gaze. “I’ve examined them. All of them. Their genetics are unusual—a dormant sequence that activates under the full moon. But they’re as human as you or me. They feel pain. They love their families. They bleed.”

The minister shifted. “And the killings? The livestock?”

“Carried out by the Ross family, who broke the old treaty thirty years ago,” Lachlan said. “You have my word, and you have their retreat last night as proof of who started this fight.”

A long silence stretched. The blacksmith cracked his knuckles. Malcolm Fergus rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floor.

Finally, he looked up. “The men who shot you. They’re in the village lock-up now.”

“I know,” Lachlan said.

“They said they saw a wolf—a monstrous thing, bigger than any hound—carrying off a woman. They thought they were saving her.” Malcolm’s voice roughened. “We thought you were taking our children in the night.”

Duncan stepped forward. “And now you know better.”

Malcolm nodded slowly. Then, to Iona’s shock, he bent at the waist—a formal bow, the kind only given to lairds and elders.

“We owe you an apology,” he said. “All of us. The Blackwoods have kept this valley safe since before my grandfather’s time. We forgot that.”

Lachlan inclined his head, the ghost of a smile at his lips. “Then let us remember it together.”

---

The reconciliation took root faster than Iona expected. By that evening, word had spread through the village, and a delegation arrived with food and whisky—a Lowland malt that Malcolm insisted was the finest in Scotland. The pack emerged from the shadows, hesitant at first, then cautious, then almost warm. Children were brought to the estate gates, allowed to *see* the wolves from a distance, their eyes wide and thrilled rather than fearful.

But Iona knew peace was fragile.

On the third night, she found Lachlan in the vault beneath the estate, standing before the ancient carved stones. The scratches on the wall had grown—new marks, raw and deep, as if something large had dragged claws against them in the dark.

“It’s stirring more,” she said quietly.

He nodded, not turning. “The old magic feels the blood being spilled. It wakes.”

“And Meghan?”

“She sent word this morning.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded letter, handing it to her. She read it quickly—Meghan’s formal script, cool but conciliatory, offering a *new pact under the gathering moon*, to be made in the ruins of the old Blackwood chapel where the original treaty was signed.

Iona lowered the letter. “You trust this?”

“I trust that she wants to survive,” Lachlan said. “The Rosses lost face when they fled. She needs a win. A peace she can present to her own pack as honorable.”

“Or she needs us in one place to finish what she started.”

He turned to face her, and in the low light of the vault his eyes were tired but certain. “That is why I need you there. Not as my ally—but as the neutral keeper of the locket. The blood-anchor to the original vow. The one person both families recognize as bound to the treaty itself.”

Iona’s hand went to her collarbone, where the locket sat against her skin, the wolf-hair chain warm. “You said before you saw me as more than an ally.”

“I did. I do.” He stepped closer. “But the ritual requires the keeper’s hands to bind the new pact. Yours.”

“And if something goes wrong?”

“Then you will be the one to decide what happens next.”

The weight settled over her like a shroud. She had wanted to believe she could stay neutral, that she could be the healer and not the judge. But that hope had died in the parley field when she’d watched Lachlan fall.

She looked up at him. “Where is the chapel?”

---

The ruins stood at the edge of the Blackwood grounds, a broken stone skeleton open to the sky. Moss clung to the old altar, and the remains of the roof beams jutted like ribs against the moonlit dark. Iona walked the perimeter with a lantern, brushing away debris from the flagstones, marking where the families would stand, where she would stand.

Tomorrow night, the moon would be full.

She set her lantern on the altar and knelt, tracing her fingers over a carved symbol—the same interlocking pattern she’d seen in the vault. Beneath her palm, the stone felt warm, as if it breathed.

And then the scratches began—not in the vault, but here, in the earth beneath the chapel floor. A scraping, grinding sound that grew louder as she pressed harder.

Iona pulled her hand back quickly.

The stone she’d been touching was no longer cold with the damp of centuries. It was hot, as if warmed from below. And the scratches were moving—tracing the symbol faster, deeper, as if something on the other side was trying to reach through.

She stared at her hand, then at the altar.

The gathering moon wasn’t just a ritual for peace.

It was a door.