Mist the color of moonlight rises from the floor at Jax's feet, spreading in a low blanket before surging upward. It wraps around his legs, then his torso, climbing higher until it swallows him completely. Streaks of color flash through the fog with quick, sharp bursts of light, and a low rumble rolls through the boathouse that feels like distant thunder trapped inside stone walls. The air tastes charged, every hair on my arms lifting as the mist thickens, hides him, then thins again.
Where a man stood a moment ago, a massive wolf now occupies the space, eyes fixed on me with an intelligence no wolf should possess.
My legs give out. Only Grayson's arm around my waist keeps me upright.
"Breathe." His voice rumbles near my ear. "Breathe."
The wolf that was Jax watches me for a long moment, then turns and pads back toward the door. The mist rises from the floor once more, wrapping his furred body in another column of color and light. Thunder whispers through the boards under my feet as the fog closes around him and then blows away in a soft rush of air.
The man is back, naked, scarred, already reaching for his jeans with the casual ease of someone who's done this a thousand times.
"Convinced?" His voice is rough, challenging.
No words come. My scientific mind has finally fallen completely silent, crushed beneath the weight of evidence it cannot explain or dismiss.
And in that silence, other thoughts rush in. The dreams I've had since childhood, of swimming through waters too deep for any human diver. The way the sea has always called to me, not metaphorically but literally, a voice beneath the waves that I've spent my whole life pretending I couldn't hear. The stories my grandmother told, and the sadness in her eyes when she looked at the ocean, and the way she gripped my hands at the end and whispered about gifts and knowing and weight.
The pendant burns against my skin, hotter than it's ever been, and the question forces itself past my lips before I can think to stop it.
"What am I?"
Silence falls, deeper than before. Every eye in the room turns to me, and I see surprise on some faces, recognition on others. Grayson's arm tightens around my waist, and when I look up at him, his expression holds wonder threaded with fear.
"That's what I've been asking myself since you showed up on my dock." His voice is low, meant for my ears alone. "The sea responds to you, Isla. The way it responds to those who carry the old blood."
Moira moves closer, and when I meet her eyes, I see the same recognition I glimpsed when she first opened the door. She studies my face, my pendant, the way I'm standing, and her expression gradually transforms from curiosity into certainty.
"Your grandmother," she says softly. "She was born on Skara, wasn't she? Left and never came back."
"Yes." The word is barely a whisper. "Ailsa Drummond. She left in 1954."
Something passes across Moira's face, grief that seems both personal and ancient. "The Drummonds. I should have seen itsooner. The pendant you're wearing, the symbols on it, they're the same as the marks the old families used to identify each other. Before the diaspora, before so many of the bloodlines scattered to the mainland and beyond."
"What bloodlines?" My voice cracks on the question. "What are you saying?"
Moira glances at Declan, at Grayson, at the others watching in silence. Then she turns back to me, and when she speaks, her words carry the weight of secrets kept too long.
"I think we need to have a conversation about your grandmother, Isla." She reaches out and takes my hand, her touch cool and somehow soothing against my overheated skin. "About what she was. And what you might be."
The pendant flares hot against my throat, urgent as a second heartbeat, and somewhere in the darkness beyond the boathouse walls, I hear the distant call of seals crying out across the water.
CHAPTER 7
GRAYSON
Moira guides Isla toward the back of the boathouse, Eliza falling into step beside them with the easy confidence of someone who has recently navigated this same impossible transition. The door to the storage room closes behind them, and the click of the latch sounds louder than it should in the sudden silence.
My bear stirs restlessly, unhappy with the separation. He wants to follow, to stand guard, to ensure that nothing threatens the woman who somehow became essential to us from the moment we met her. The instinct is irrational and I know it. Isla is safer with Moira and Eliza than she would be anywhere else on this island. But knowing something and feeling it are different beasts entirely.
"Hale." Declan's voice cuts through my distraction. "You brought the intel. Talk."
The brotherhood has rearranged itself around the long table, the maps and documents that covered its surface now pushed aside to make room for the evidence I recovered from my cove three weeks ago. Waterproof cases containing surveying equipment. GPS devices with coordinates logged into their memory. And most damning of all, the leather satchel filledwith photographs and charts that no ordinary development corporation should possess.
I move to the table and spread the contents of the satchel across the scarred wood. "I found this gear hidden in a sea cave on the western edge of my territory. Professional equipment, military-grade waterproofing, no identifying marks. I assume it was left by the corporation's advance team."
"Assume?" Rafe's voice carries from his position against the wall, where shadows gather around him despite the lamplight. "Present tense suggests you're not certain."
"Look at what they were mapping." I tap the nearest chart, a detailed rendering of the seafloor around Skara that shows features no standard survey would reveal. "These aren't shipping channels or potential dredging sites. These are the hidden places. The communion trenches. The deep waters where our kind have gathered since before this island had a name."
