Page 24 of Unveiled

Chapter Eight

Adrian

The Highlands didn’t care who you were. It didn’t care about bloodlines, titles, or the politics that clung to a name like burrs. It didn’t care that Adrian had been raised among chandeliers and sharp-edged expectations, that he’d learned to smile while men measured him like a commodity. Here, the land stripped you down to what you could endure.

Adrian loved it for that.

The short climb began at the edge of the glen, where the last of the trees gave way to an open slope and the wind came at them with teeth. The Gauthier clan moved in a loose file, boots scuffing over stone, breath smoking in the cold. Their fort, less castle, more stronghold, sat behind them in the valley, its lights already small and distant.

Max walked at Adrian’s right shoulder, silent as a shadow. Rowland brought up the rear, muttering about French kings and their terrible ideas, but his eyes were bright with anticipation. Piper kept pace with Adrian on the left, her scarf wrapped high, her expression calm and unshakeable. Marilee sauntered at a snail’s pace, to the side of everyone, always trying to be the one on the periphery.

Garrett stalked a few paces ahead, as if determined to reach the low summit first and claim it by sheer spite. Jasmine moved with the sure-footed ease of someone who’d spent her life on uneven ground, occasionally pointing out safer footing without making a fuss about it.

Laurence looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else, but Adrian caught the way his gaze kept sweeping the group, counting and assessing, a doctor’s habit.

He lifted his chin and tasted the air. Cold. Heather. Snow somewhere higher up. And beneath it all, the faint metallic tang that always rode the wind here, as if the Highlands had iron in its bones.

“Nearly there,” Jasmine called, not winded in the slightest.

Rowland huffed. “She says that like it’s a comfort.”

Adrian laughed. The sound snatched away by the wind. “It is a comfort. It means she’s not lying to us.”

Max’s mouth twitched. “She could be lying. She wouldn’t sound like it.”

Piper gave Adrian a sideways glance. “You’re enjoying this.”

Adrian didn’t bother denying it. “Of course, I am.”

Because the higher they climbed, the more the noise inside him quietened. The fort, the tension of his new role and supposed purpose, the constant undercurrent of challenge. Garrett’s resentment, the clan’s uncertainty, the weight of being new to a crown that still felt too heavy, all of it fell away with every step.

Up here, there was only wind and stone and the pull under his skin. The itch on his shoulder that wouldn’t leave.

His wolf. It had been restless all day, pacing behind his ribs, impatient with walls and human voices. Adrian had felt it in the way his fingers flexed, in the way his teeth ached faintly as if they wanted to lengthen.

They crested a final ridge and the world opened. The summit wasn’t a sharp point but a broad, stony shoulder of a mountain, scattered with lichen and patches of frost. Above them, the sky was clear for once, a deep, endless black, and the moon hung low and bright, a silver coin pinned to the heavens.

Adrian stopped, his chest rising and falling, and turned slowly in place. The Highlands stretched out in every direction, dark and vast, the glens and lochs like shadows poured into the earth. The wind up here was stronger, cleaner, carrying the scent of snow and distant water.

It felt like standing on the edge of something holy.

Rowland let out a low whistle. “Never fails to impress. If this doesn’t make a man feel small, nothing will.”

Piper’s eyes shone. “It’s beautiful.”

Max scanned the horizon, ever vigilant, then nodded once. “Clear.”

Garrett threw his arms out, as if daring the mountain to challenge him. “About time.”

Adrian watched him for a beat, then looked away. Garrett’s anger was a constant, but even he couldn’t ruin this. Adrian stepped forward to the centre of the flat stone and turned to face them.

“No fighting,” he said, his voice carrying in the thin air. “No proving points. This is a run. This is for us.”

Garrett’s lip curled. “And if I don’t take orders from you?”

Max shifted subtly, but Adrian saw it for what it was: a warning.

Adrian held Garrett’s gaze, calm as ice. “Then you can walk back down alone in the dark.”