Inti and her team release fourteen tranquilized wolves from crates into pens in the Scottish Highlands to begin the rewilding project.

Locals protest the wolf project at a town meeting; Red McRae threatens to exterminate the wolves if his livestock is harmed.

Inti buys the injured horse Gall from Stuart Burns and notices his wife Lainey's fearful behavior toward her husband.

Inti learns that Lainey has been hospitalized with injuries she claims came from falling off a horse.

Wolf Number Nine is found shot dead on Red McRae's farm; Red claims he mistook the wolf for a wild dog.

Inti confronts Stuart publicly at a pharmacy trying to expose his violent nature; Duncan arrives afterward with injuries from fighting Stuart.

Inti wakes at 3 AM to find Duncan gone and discovers Stuart's disemboweled body abandoned in the snow.

Inti buries Stuart's body deep in the forest to prevent suspicion from falling on her wolves.

Inti takes a pregnancy test and confirms she is carrying Duncan's child.

Duncan officially questions Inti at the police station about Stuart's disappearance and her possible motive for harming him.

Lainey tells Inti she witnessed her burying Stuart's body and reveals that Stuart was dropped at Duncan's house that night.

The town holds a public meeting about Stuart's disappearance; Lainey's brothers offer a reward for information.

Inti finds Duncan and his dog Fingal bleeding in the snow with their throats slashed and barely alive.

Inti tracks and kills wolf Number Ten in a forest clearing, then goes into labor and gives birth alone in the freezing woods.

Aggie confesses in the hospital to killing Stuart and attacking Duncan; Duncan survives and Inti brings him their newborn daughter.

Inti Flynn leads a team to reintroduce wolves into the Scottish Highlands, facing fierce local resistance from farmers led by Red McRae. While managing the project, she grows suspicious of the abusive farmer Stuart Burns after his wife Lainey is hospitalized with suspicious injuries. After a series of confrontations, Stuart turns up dead and Inti buries his body to shield her wolves from blame. The investigation deepens as Duncan MacTavish — the police chief and Inti's secret lover — becomes her primary suspect. The stakes reach a breaking point when Duncan is nearly killed and Inti gives birth alone in a freezing forest. In the dramatic resolution, Aggie is revealed as the true killer, Duncan survives, and Inti begins a fragile new life with her daughter.

The wolf rewilding project, a murder, and the fight for survival in the Scottish Highlands.

Young Inti runs from her father's shed after feeling a rabbit being skinned and spots her first wolf in the distance.

Inti helps a limping stranger save a horse from a frozen river; the stranger turns out to be Duncan MacTavish.

Inti visits Lainey in the hospital and urges her to admit Stuart's abuse, but Lainey refuses to come forward.

Wolf Number Ten becomes the first to leave her pen when the packs are released into the wild.

Inti tranquilizes wolf Number Six and discovers she has given birth to six pups hidden in a gully.

Stuart Burns shows up at Inti's cottage and demands the remaining payment she owes him for the horse.

Inti and Duncan sleep together for the first time after he defuses a confrontation with Stuart outside a bar.

Duncan tells Inti that he has no interest in ever having children.

Aggie uses sign language to tell Inti she knows about the pregnancy and agrees that Duncan should not be told.

At Duncan's dinner party, Inti discovers that Duncan and Lainey had a relationship before and during Lainey's marriage to Stuart.

Colm McClellan shoots and kills wolf Number Fourteen; the town strings up the wolf's severed head at the Halloween festival.

Inti breaks Colm's kneecap with a crowbar in her cottage's shed in retaliation for killing Number Fourteen.

Duncan meets Aggie for the first time when he arrives to remove Colm and his friends from Inti's property.

Duncan waits at Inti's car outside the grocery store and asks directly whether the baby she is carrying is his.

Inti removes the wolves' radio collars in spring; Number Six has died but her daughter now leads the pack.

These events trace the significant developments woven through the novel's main storyline, from Inti's very first encounter with a wolf to the completion of her life's work. The wolves' individual struggles — from a litter of pups discovered in a gully to a wolf killed and displayed at a local festival — mirror the tensions fracturing the human community. Inti's relationship with Duncan unfolds in fits and starts, complicated by secrets, jealousy, and her deep distrust of intimacy. Stuart's threatening presence hovers over Inti's daily life even as the investigation into his disappearance intensifies. Inti wrestles with her unplanned pregnancy and her inability to fully trust the man she loves. The pool ends with the rewilding mission finally complete, the wolves freed from their tracking collars and truly wild at last.

The quieter but essential moments shaping Inti, the wolves, and the community around them.

Inti's father slits open a rabbit and she feels the sensation on her own body, revealing her mirror-touch synesthesia for the first time.

Aggie breaks a schoolmate's nose with a book to defend Inti from bullies; both sisters are sent to live with their father in British Columbia.

Aggie marries Gus Holloway on impulse without inviting their mother; the three of them move to Alaska for Inti's wolf project.

Fergus reveals to Inti that Duncan killed his own abusive father as a teenager to protect his mother from further violence.

Gus confesses to Inti that he killed a patient during surgery and insists Aggie must never find out.

Inti calls her mother for advice on investigating a murder; her mother unexpectedly reveals that her own stepfather was abusive.

Inti follows Duncan into the forest at night and confronts him directly, demanding to know whether he murdered Stuart.

Aggie steps outside for the first time since arriving in Scotland and rides the horse Gall without warning.

Red tells Inti that Duncan had locked Stuart in jail on the night Stuart died, undermining her theory about Duncan's guilt.

Duncan reveals that his limp was caused by his father shattering his leg with a cricket bat when he was thirteen.

Gus and his cousin James rape Aggie at a party while Inti is locked out and unable to stop them.

Aggie barely survives the rape and completely withdraws into herself, ceasing to speak or meaningfully communicate with the world.

Inti confronts Gus alone in his home with a knife and threatens to kill him if he ever comes near Aggie again.

Aggie speaks aloud for the first time since her rape when she arrives on horseback to rescue Inti from the forest.

Aggie rides into the forest on Gall and vanishes, leaving only a note that reads 'Gone home.'

This pool follows the chain of personal revelations and pivotal decisions that shape the sisters' inner worlds, beginning with Inti's childhood discovery of her mirror-touch synesthesia. The events trace Aggie's volatile marriage to the dangerous Gus, the catastrophic night he raped her, and the lasting silence that followed. Key revelations — including the truth about Duncan's violent past, the real timeline of Stuart's death, and the depth of their mother's buried pain — gradually dismantle Inti's assumptions about everyone around her. The crisis deepens when Inti confronts Gus alone with a knife, and the emotional arc reaches its climax when Aggie speaks aloud for the first time in years to rescue her sister from the forest. The pool closes with Aggie's departure into the wilderness, a bittersweet resolution that echoes the disappearance of their father years before.

The traumatic discoveries and decisive moments that define Inti and Aggie's lives.