Chapter 22 Rory
Rory
Smoke. Bitter. Sharp in nose.
Hide behind twisted metal. Crouch low. Breathe shallow.
Two-legs emerge. Female clutches hot-liquid scent. Male rolls tobacco between fingers.
Listen. Important.
“Christ, I’m already knackered,” female says. Voice tired. Defeated. “Tomorrow night’s going to be a nightmare.”
“Tell me about it.” Male has plant-smoke. Inhale. Exhale. Poison-sweet drifts on wind. “How many new arrivals are we expecting?”
“Could be as many as ten, I hear. Depends on how the extraction goes.”
“Overtime again, then.”
“Triple shift, more like. I haven’t seen my kids in days.”
“But ten? Do we even have space for them?”
“Two kicked the bucket last week. Plus, there’s a few empty rooms nobody’s set up yet.”
Wind shifts.
Death.
The scent hits like claw across muzzle. Old death. Recent death. Fills nose. Fills lungs. Choking on it.
Stolen wolves. Dead wolves. Wrong-wrong-wrong.
Terror floods veins. Need safety. Need—
Raindrops-lemongrass-mine.
Panic burns through chest. Must return. Must run. Now-now-now.
Door slams. Two-legs gone inside. Building swallows them.
Run. Fast-fast-fast through scrub. Paws strike earth. Heart hammers against ribs.
Raindrops-lemongrass-mine waits where left him. Crouched. Tense. Binoculars shake in hands.
Relief floods everything. Safe. Here. Together.
“Rory! I told you not to go close to the buildings!”
Raindrops-lemongrass-mine angry. Don’t like. I fix.
Launch myself at him. Full weight. Knock backwards into heather. Pin shoulders. Lick face-neck-everywhere. Salt-sweat-fear taste. Mine-mine-mine.
“Rory, what the hell—” Muffled under my tongue.
Lick harder. Joy bubbles up. Found him. Safe now.
Laugh breaks from his throat. Deep sound. Good sound. “Get off me, you mad—”
More licking. Can’t stop. Need taste of him. Need proof he’s real.
“Change back,” he snaps, but voice holds fondness. “Now, Rory.”
Should hide to change. But don’t want to be away. Shift here. With him.
Burns through bones. Human skin replaces fur.
Naked. Cold air bites. But his warmth underneath me, solid and real.
“You absolute lunatic,” Maxwell breathed, hands coming up to frame my face. “I thought— When they came out and I couldn’t see you—”
“I heard them talking,” I said quickly, rolling off him to grab my clothes. “Tomorrow night. They’re expecting new arrivals…”
I told him what I’d overheard as I yanked on my jeans, the words tumbling out in a rush. The overtime shifts, the casual way they’d discussed the numbers like livestock deliveries.
“I could smell it so clearly,” I said, pulling my shirt over my head. “The smell of death. Recent. All over the place. That’s what I was tracking, before they came out. I think they might have had bodies in that building. Before they dragged them to their burn site.”
Maxwell pulled the small surveillance cameras from his rucksack. “Let’s get these positioned.”
Nearly an hour it took us to get the bloody things sorted. Maxwell insisted on testing angles three times, muttering about optimal coverage and battery life whilst I held branches out of the way.
All the while, I couldn’t stop thinking about the castle ruins we’d spotted from the burn site—grey stones jutting from the hillside like broken teeth. Something tugged at my chest, urgent and insistent.
“I want to go check out those castle ruins,” I said.
Maxwell squinted in that direction, then checked his watch. “That’s a bloody long walk, Rory.”
“We’ll go quickly.”
Maxwell was quiet for a moment, considering. “I suppose there isn’t much we can do back there anyway,” he said eventually. “If you think Isla and Dev will still be okay shacked up together in town.”
I snorted. “I wonder how they’re getting on.
Dev’s probably trying to charm his way into getting Isla to uncuff him.
Sweet-talking her about his journalistic integrity or some bollocks.
” I grinned despite everything. “Good luck to him, though—Isla’s too smart for that.
She’ll see right through his pretty-boy routine. ”
By the time we reached the ruins, it was half past seven. The air carried that crisp bite that promised a cold night ahead, while late spring light mellowed to that particular Highland gold that photographers spent fortunes trying to capture, painting the lake’s surface in molten copper.
“Castle” was generous terminology for what we found. One wall remained mostly intact, maybe twelve feet high with a stubby tower structure jutting from its corner like a broken finger. The other three walls had crumbled, leaving gaps where wind and weather had claimed victory over ancient mortar.
We tossed our bags into the centre of the ruin. I tilted my head back, scanning the intact wall.
There—something metallic caught the evening light, nestled between weathered stones near the tower’s peak.
“See it? Right where the wall meets the tower.”
Maxwell shaded his eyes. “How do we get to it?”
Deep grooves scored the wall at regular intervals—too uniform to be natural weathering. “These look like handholds.”
His hands settled on my waist. “Right, up you go, then.”
Heat burned through my jeans where his palms pressed. That familiar spark zapped between us, making my breath catch.
“Bit higher,” I managed.
His hands slid up, fingers spreading just above my hipbones. I had to bite back a groan as he lifted me.
The climb took barely a minute. Up close, the solar panel was clearly expensive kit—sleek black surface with professional-grade cables snaking down into perfectly drilled holes through ancient stone.
“This isn’t heritage preservation,” I called down. “This is serious tech, and someone’s hidden the wiring.”
I scrambled back down, Maxwell’s hands steadying me.
We moved around the interior, running hands along every stone surface. Found nothing but centuries of Highland weather damage. I wandered towards the collapsed section where one of the towers had crumbled, leaving a pile of weathered stones and deeper shadows. Something felt… off.
“Maxwell,” I called, crouching in the shadowed corner. “Look at this.”
The grass grew differently here—trampled into a faint path that led right to the base of the rubble pile. And where the path ended, the ground looked… maintained. Not wild like everywhere else.
Maxwell joined me. “Someone’s been walking here regularly.”
I pressed my nose closer to the earth, breathing in. Underneath the Highland dampness and ancient stone, I caught something else—metal, concrete, and the lingering scent of humans who’d been here recently.
“There’s definitely something under here,” I said, starting to pull away the loose grass. It came up easily, too easily, revealing a rectangular outline in the soil. “This isn’t natural.”
We cleared the debris together. Underneath, clean edges emerged—metal seams barely visible, a hatch flush with the ground and perfectly camouflaged by its position in the tower’s shadow.
“Modern concrete,” Maxwell breathed, running his fingers along the edge. “Hidden where no casual hiker would think to look.”
The concealment was clever—tucked into the collapsed tower’s base where shadows fell even in daylight, invisible unless you knew exactly where to search.
“There’s not any visible panels, card readers, or anything…” Maxwell said. “We’re not getting into this anytime soon. Let’s look around the outside.”
We carefully replaced the soil and grass, making the hatch invisible again. Examining the ground near the castle, it wasn’t hard to find tyre tracks carved deep into the earth. Wide, aggressive treads designed for serious off-road work.
“SUV,” he said, photographing the impressions. “Heavy one. Look how deep these cuts go.”
I traced the tracks across the moorland—rolling hills with scattered trees. Perfect terrain for bringing people here undetected.
“Drive right up, unload your cargo, disappear back into the hills,” I said quietly.
Maxwell checked his watch. “Nearly eight o’clock.”
I looked back across the lake towards the death site, then at our camping gear still piled in the ruins.
“I suppose we should head back to Dev and Isla,” I said, watching Maxwell carefully.
“I suppose,” he eventually replied. “Though… it’ll be dark soon. Trekking back all that way will be a nightmare. We could use that tent. Set up down by the lake and monitor the place overnight, see if anyone shows up.”
“I suppose…” My face split into a silly grin, as if Maxwell was suggesting we have a romantic camp out together, rather than gather intelligence about wolf murderers. “I suppose that’s a very sensible idea.”
Maxwell snorted. “I don’t know about sensible. I think you might be rubbing off on me, Terrier.”
I nudged his shoulder with mine, enjoying the way his expression shifted between exasperation and something warmer. “I know your game. Ancient castle ruins, Highland lake, just you and me under the stars…”
“And potentially armed murderers.”
“Sounds like my ideal evening.”
But as I beamed up at him, and his lips twitched into that reluctant smile he tried so hard to hide, there was truth behind my words. Something warm and wonderful settled within me. Out here in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but Highland wilderness and each other, Maxwell felt properly mine.
No pack, no Dev, no distractions.
Just us, a tent, and whatever the night might bring. My stomach gave a pleased little flutter at the thought.