"Then you're walking into danger you don't understand." He moves toward the door, then pauses. "Stay away from Raven's Point after dark. And if you see or hear anything strange at night—anything at all—stay inside. Lock your doors. Don't investigate."
It's the same warning everyone keeps giving me, and my journalist instincts flare. When everyone tells you not to look at something, that's exactly where the story is.
"What am I not supposed to see?" I challenge.
Declan looks at me for a long moment, those storm-grey eyes searching my face. "Nothing you're ready for."
Then he's gone, moving down the hallway with a fluid grace that seems almost inhuman. I hear his footsteps on the stairs, the low murmur of conversation with Moira, then the door closing as he leaves.
I sink onto the small bed, my hands trembling slightly. What the hell was that? I've interviewed hundreds of people—powerful, dangerous, charismatic people—and never once had a reaction like that. Never felt like gravity itself had shifted.
My breakfast sits forgotten on the nightstand as I pull out Maureen's journals and start reading in earnest, looking for anything about Declan MacRae or Raven's Point or the secrets everyone seems determined to keep.
Night falls early in September on the Isle of Skara. By the time I've spent the day exploring the village and photographingeverything I can for my article, the sun is already setting behind the cliffs, painting the sky in shades of copper and blood.
I'm back at Clifftop House, uploading photos to my laptop and making notes for the article I'm supposed to be writing, when I hear it.
Howling.
Not the distant sound of dogs. This is deeper, more primal, raising every hair on my arms and sending instinctive fear racing through my bloodstream. It sounds close—maybe on the cliffs behind the house.
There haven't been wolves in Scotland for over a century.
I should stay inside. Lock the doors like everyone warned me. But I'm a journalist, and journalists don't hide from stories.
I grab my camera—the good one with the telephoto lens—and slip out the back door. The moon is nearly full, providing enough light to navigate by as I pick my way through the overgrown garden toward the cliff path.
The howling comes again, closer now, and I freeze. There—movement in the moonlight, about fifty yards away on the cliff edge.
The creature is massive.
Too large to be any dog or wolf I've ever seen. It moves with liquid grace, all muscle and predatory power, and when it lifts its head to the moon I can see the glint of eyes that catch and hold the light.
My hands shake as I raise the camera, focusing through the telephoto lens. The shutter clicks once, twice, three times. The sound seems impossibly loud in the quiet night.
The creature's head snaps toward me.
Time stops as we stare at each other across the distance. Even through the camera lens, I can see its eyes. They're not animal eyes. There's intelligence there. Human intelligence. And recognition.
It knows me.
The camera slips from my nerveless fingers, hanging from the strap around my neck. I take a step backward, then another. My foot catches on a root and I go down hard on the wet grass.
The creature moves.
One moment it's fifty yards away. The next it's closing the distance with impossible speed, all teeth and claws and muscle. I scramble backward on my hands, too terrified to scream, my rational brain completely offline in the face of this impossibility.
It stops three feet away.
The creature is massive up close—easily five feet at the shoulder, with dark fur that seems to absorb moonlight and eyes that are definitely, impossibly intelligent. It studies me with the same intensity Declan MacRae had this morning, head tilted slightly as if considering.
Then it does the strangest thing.
It lowers its head. Not in threat, but in what looks like acknowledgment. Respect, even.
Before I can process that, the creature backs away. And as I watch, frozen in shock and disbelief, mist begins to swirl up from the ground around it. The tendrils curl and twist, rising higher, enveloping the massive form until I can't see the wolf anymore—just the swirling fog, thick and unnatural in the moonlight.
When the mist dissipates moments later, nothing remains. Just empty cliff and grass, as if the creature never existed.
