Read Chapter 36: Healing a Wound

The morning light came gray and thin through the cottage window, catching dust motes in its beam. Iona sat on the edge of Morag's bed, the woman's skeletal hand limp in hers, the knuckles sharp as river stones beneath papery skin.

Morag's eyes were open. That was new. For three days she had slept, waking only to take broth and water, her gaze fixed on some middle distance where no one else could reach. But now she looked at Iona directly, and there was something in those eyes that had not been there before. Awareness. And with it, terror.

"You're safe," Iona said, keeping her voice low and even. "You're at Blackwood. Lachlan's home."

Morag's lips moved. No sound came out.

Iona reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, held it to Morag's cracked lips. "Slow now. Small sips."

Morag drank. Her throat worked with visible effort, the muscles of her neck standing out like cords. When she finished, she tried to speak again.

"Ross." The word came out barely above a whisper. "They did this to me."

"I know." Iona set the glass down. "Lachlan told me what he could. But I need to hear it from you, if you can tell me. What happened?"

Morag's gaze drifted to the window, to the gray sky beyond. Her hands plucked at the blanket—a nervous, repetitive motion that Iona recognized from human patients who had endured terrible things. The body remembered even when the mind tried to forget.

"I was walking home from the village," Morag said. Each word cost her. "Market day. I had flour, tea, a length of ribbon for my niece's hair." A pause. "They came out of the trees. I thought—I thought they were just wolves. I'd heard the stories, everyone had, but I never believed—"

Her voice cracked. Iona squeezed her hand gently, saying nothing.

"There was a woman. Red hair, like a fox. She shifted back in front of me. Made sure I saw her face. She said—" Morag's jaw tightened. "She said the Blackwoods needed to learn that their kindness had a price. That taking in strays made them weak. Then she bit me. Right in front of her pack. And they laughed while I screamed."

The blanket twisted in Morag's grip. Iona let the silence stretch, giving Morag room to breathe, to exist in the space after the words.

"Red hair?" Iona asked finally. "Meghan?"

"Meghan Ross." Morag spat the name like poison. "She wanted me to be a message. A slow, festering message that would crawl back to the estate and turn on everyone I loved. She said the first full moon would do the rest."

Iona's stomach turned. She had known the Ross pack was brutal—had seen the evidence in Lachlan's silver-scarred body, in the violence at the parley. But this was something else. Deliberate. Cruel. Methodical.

"You didn't turn on anyone," Iona said firmly. "You crawled to a sheepdog door and found help. You fought it. That took more strength than most people will ever understand."

Morag's eyes glistened, but she did not cry. Perhaps she had no tears left. "What happens now? I'm a monster. I'll be a monster every full moon."

"Tomorrow night is the full moon," Iona said gently. "And you won't be alone."

---

Lachlan found them an hour later in the estate's old library, which he and his brother had spent the morning clearing of dust and debris. Iona had set up a makeshift treatment station there—better light than the cottage, more space. She was preparing a syringe from the vault's dwindling store of serum, measuring the amber liquid into a graduated cylinder.

"How is she?" Lachlan asked, leaning against the doorframe.

"Physically, she's stable. Malnourished, dehydrated, but stable. The bite wound healed cleanly—no infection. That's the wolf constitution working in her favor." Iona capped the cylinder and shook it gently. "Mentally, she's a shattered vessel. She told me what happened. Meghan bit her deliberately. Made her a weapon."

Lachlan's knuckles whitened on the frame. "I'll kill her."

"That's not helpful." Iona turned to face him. "And it's not what Morag needs. She needs care, structure, and time. She needs to learn to live with what she's become."

"And the wolf inside her? She's never been trained. Never been prepared. Her first shift tomorrow night will be—" He stopped, searching for a word.

"Uncontrolled," Iona finished. "I know. That's why I'm trying this."

She held up the syringe. Lachlan's brow furrowed.

"What is that?"

"A stabilizing serum. I've been working on it since Fergus told me about the vault's ingredients. Something to ease the transition for newly turned wolves—calm the animal instinct, keep the human mind present." Iona hesitated. "It's experimental. I've tested it on tissue samples, not live subjects. But I think it can help her."

Lachlan crossed the room, stopped beside her. His hand came up, brushed a strand of hair from her face. The gesture was so natural, so intimate, that Iona almost forgot to breathe.

"If anyone can make it work," he said, "it's you."

---

The needle slid in clean. Morag winced, then relaxed as the serum took hold. Within minutes, her breathing slowed, the tremor in her hands easing.

"What was that?" she asked. Her voice was clearer now, less like gravel shifting.

"Something to help you through the moon." Iona disposed of the syringe carefully. "It won't stop the change. Nothing can do that. But it should help you stay... you."

Morag's gaze drifted to the window again, where the afternoon light had begun to soften toward evening. "I used to love the moon. Used to sit on the hill behind my cottage and watch it rise over the Grampians. Thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world." A pause. "Now I dread it."

"You won't always." Lachlan spoke from the doorway. He had been listening, quiet as a shadow. Now he moved into the room, keeping his distance, giving Morag space. "I remember my first shift. I was twelve. My father caught me before I could hurt anyone, taught me to breathe through the change, to find the human core even when the wolf was screaming. I can teach you the same."

Morag looked at him—really looked, taking in the sharp angles of his face, the silver at his temples, the careful gentleness in his posture. "Why would you do that for me? You don't know me. I'm a stranger who showed up at your door."

Lachlan's expression softened. "You're not a stranger. You're a Blackwood now. That's what this estate does—it takes in the lost, the broken, the ones everyone else has given up on." He glanced at Iona, something warm kindling in his eyes. "It finds them a home."

---

The village hall smelled of wood smoke and rain-damp wool. Iona stood at the back, watching the meeting unfold, Bess the sheepdog pressed warm against her leg. The villagers had come in force—farmers, shopkeepers, the minister, even old Mrs. Baird, who had not left her cottage in a decade.

"Ye've all seen her," Hamish Ferguson was saying, his voice carrying across the packed room. "Morag Stewart, who we all thought dead. Found alive, but changed. Bitten by the Ross pack, turned into one of them—without her consent, without her choice. If the Blackwoods hadn't taken her in, she'd be dead now. Or worse."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Iona watched the faces—fear, yes, but also something else. Anger, directed not at the Blackwoods but at the Rosses. At the cruelty that had used a village woman as a message.

"This changes things," Duncan Blackwood said from the front. He was on his feet, broad and commanding, his brother a silent shadow beside him. "The Rosses have shown what they are. They'll not stop at wolves and land. They'll come for our people. For your families. The question is whether we face them together or fall apart."

"Together?" someone called out. "Ye're the ones who've been lying to us for centuries!"

"Aye." Duncan accepted the accusation without flinching. "And that was wrong. We should have told ye long ago. But we're telling ye now, and we're asking ye to make a choice—not out of fear, but out of trust. Do we stand together against the Rosses, or do we let them pick us off one by one?"

Silence stretched. Iona held her breath.

Then Hamish Ferguson raised his hand. "The Blackwoods have protected this valley since my great-grandfather's time. They've never let us starve, never let the winter claim our herds. I say we stand with them."

"Aye," said another voice. Then another. The assent spread through the room like a tide coming in. When it settled, Duncan inclined his head, something like relief crossing his broad features.

"The full moon is tomorrow," he said. "We'll need every hand we can get."

---

Later, when the meeting had dispersed and the village had returned to its evening routines, Iona found Lachlan at the edge of the moor, where the heather gave way to open grass and the sky stretched vast and star-scattered above them. He stood with his back to her, hands clasped behind him, watching the distant lights of the estate.

"You did good in there," she said, coming to stand beside him. "Both of you."

"It was Duncan's speech. I just stood there looking brooding."

"You do that very well."

A ghost of a smile crossed his face. It was the first genuine amusement she had seen from him since the parley, since the silver bullet had torn through his chest and she had screamed his name over his body. The memory still woke her some nights, cold and sharp.

"I meant what I said to Morag," Lachlan said after a long moment. "This estate takes in the lost. I never thought I'd be one of them, but here I am. Lost, and found."

Iona followed his gaze to the estate, its windows warm with light. Somewhere inside, Morag was learning to walk again, guided by Bess. Duncan was sorting through the estate's oldest records, looking for anything that might explain the stirring beneath the chapel.

"Meghan said she wanted a private audience," Iona said quietly. "About the danger below."

"I know."

"Do you trust her?"

"No." Lachlan turned to face her, his eyes dark in the fading light. "But I trust you. Whatever she has to say, we'll hear it together."

The wind moved across the moor, carrying the scent of heather and distant rain. Iona shivered, and Lachlan shrugged off his jacket, settled it around her shoulders. The warmth of him lingered in the fabric.

"What happens after tomorrow?" she asked. "If we survive the moon, if the treaty holds, if Meghan's warning proves true or false—what then?"

Lachlan was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was low, rough-edged. "I don't know. I spent so long planning for survival that I never thought about what came after. But I know this: I want you here. In this place. In my life." He paused, and she heard the careful weight of his words. "I want to find out what 'after' looks like with you."

Iona reached for his hand. His fingers closed around hers, warm and certain.

"Then we'll find out together," she said.

The stars wheeled overhead. Tomorrow, the moon would rise full and hungry over the estate. But tonight, standing at the edge of the moor with Lachlan's hand in hers, Iona felt something she had not felt in years: not fear, not doubt, but a quiet, stubborn hope.

She had found a purpose. And whatever came next, she would not face it alone.