Read Chapter 37: Unity of the Pack

The great hall of Blackwood House had never held so many wolves in one place. Iona stood at the head of the long oak table, Lachlan at her right, Meghan Ross at her left, and between them the full assembly of both packs—Blackwood silver eyes and Ross amber—packed shoulder to shoulder in a fragile truce that smelled of pine, peat, and old fear.

Meghan had come alone to the private audience, as promised. She'd stood in the chapel's shadow and told Iona what stirred below: an old binding, older than either pack, that required the bloodlines to be woven together or the stones would crack and release something none of them could name. And Iona had listened, and she had thought, and then she had called this meeting.

"Two centuries of blood," Iona said, her voice carrying to the rafters. "Two centuries of teeth and grudges and children raised to hate before they could walk."

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

"The village has voted to stand with the Blackwoods," she continued. "But that won't hold if the packs are still at war. And tomorrow night, whatever sleeps beneath the chapel will wake—unless we bind it again."

Finlay Ross, Meghan's scarred enforcer, stepped forward. "And how do you propose we do that, healer? You're not one of us."

"No," Iona said. "I'm not. That's exactly why I'm the one standing here."

Lachlan's hand found her back, warm and steady. "Iona saved my life," he said to the gathered wolves. "She risked everything for a man she barely knew. And she's spent the weeks since fighting for Morag—a wolf who was made, not born, through cruelty she had no part in."

Meghan's jaw tightened, but she didn't look away.

"I'm offering a blood treaty," Iona said. "One pack. Two families. With an oath of care that binds both sides to every wolf under this roof—born or turned. I'll be the medical advisor to both packs. No favor. No feud. The village is my practice, and every wolf in it is my patient."

The hall went quiet. The fire crackled in the great hearth.

"You're talking about the old way," Meghan said slowly. "The blood echo."

"I am."

"An alpha from each blood must drink from the bridge." Meghan's amber eyes studied Iona like a surgeon reading a wound. "The bridge gives her line to both families. Whatever she becomes, she belongs to neither pack and both. She carries the treaty in her veins."

"Until she dies," Lachlan said, his voice tight.

"Until she dies," Meghan confirmed. "Or until her bloodline fails. But the binding holds either way, unless the oath is broken by her own hand."

Iona looked at the faces in the hall. Bess had found her way in, pressed against Iona's leg, tail still. The old collie had shepherded her to a miracle once. Now she was asking for another.

"I give my consent," Iona said.

The room erupted—voices raised, hands gestured, sharp words about outsiders and old betrayals. But above the noise, Lachlan's voice cut through.

"Enough."

He stepped to Iona's side, facing Meghan. "I'll drink from her. Will you?"

The hall went silent again. Meghan looked at her brother Finlay, at the ragged line of Ross wolves who had come to the estate under a flag of truce. Then she nodded.

"Yes."

The ritual was swift and brutal.

They laid Iona on the oak table, and she tried not to think of the last time she'd lain there—the table beneath Lachlan's back as she fished silver from his blood. Now she offered her own.

Lachlan knelt on one side of her, a small obsidian blade in his hand. Meghan knelt on the other. Iona held out her arm, palm up, and watched Lachlan's eyes go dark with something she couldn't name.

"You don't have to do this," he said softly.

"Yes," she said. "I do. I'm the bridge, Lachlan. Not just a healer, not just a vet. The bridge." She looked at Meghan. "Do it."

The blade bit into her palm. Warm blood pooled in the hollow of two jade cups—one carved with Blackwood wolves, one with Ross mountains. Lachlan drank first, his lips against the cup's edge, his eyes never leaving hers. The taste of her own blood, metallic and strange, filled his mouth, and then—

The world went white.

Iona felt something tear open inside her chest, a door she hadn't known was closed. Lachlan's silver mind flooded into hers—the pack, the moor, the moon, a hundred years of memories that weren't hers. Then Meghan's: darker, hungrier, the taste of old wrongs and older wounds, a lineage that had been denied too long.

Both of them. In her. Through her. She was the scaffolding between two houses that had never touched, and they were collapsing into her at once.

The room tilted. The stones beneath the great hall groaned.

Iona's vision blackened at the edges. She reached for Lachlan—his hand was already there, catching her, pulling her against his chest as her knees buckled.

"Iona." His voice was far away. "Iona, stay with me."

The last thing she felt was her own blood pooling warm in her palm, the twin cups rattling on the table like dropped stones, and the weight of two entire families pressing down on her heart like a second ribcage.

Then nothing.

When Iona woke, she was on the floor of the great hall, her head in Lachlan's lap. The fire had burned low. The wolves had gone, and the hall was cold and quiet, but she could feel them—every one of them. The Blackwoods, bright as knots of summer lightning. The Rosses, a heavier warmth like banked coals. She could feel them sleeping in the wings and the outbuildings, feel their heartbeats and their dreams.

"No compulsion," she whispered.

Lachlan's hand was on her brow. "What?"

She sat up. Her palm was bandaged, but the wound beneath was already closing. She could feel the treaty thrumming in her veins like a second circulation.

"I can feel them," she said. "Both packs. But they're not pulling me. They're holding me. Up."

Lachlan laughed—a sound of raw, disbelieving relief. "Iona MacRae." He pressed his forehead to hers. "You just bound two warring families with your own blood."

"Someone had to." She smiled. "I'm the vet. I fix things."

She looked at the door of the hall, where the moon was rising beyond the window—full, white, one night away. And for the first time, she wasn't afraid of what it would bring.