Scotch Mist

Explore a Scottish highland romance of lochs, glens, and ancient water spirits.

By Babs Rudlin

About Scotch Mist

She came to the Highlands seeking order. The glen provided a monster—and a prince of the deeps.

Leaving behind a soul-crushing corporate career in Edinburgh, Màiri Ross purchases Heatherbell Cottage sight unseen, desperate for peace, quiet, and a clean break from her crippling panic attacks. Romance was never on the to do list. But her secluded Highland sanctuary is far from the peaceful haven advertised. The tap water tastes of bitter rust, the ancient iron key bites her hands, and the very walls seem to shrink, moving her belongings when her back is turned. Worse still, an ancient, parasitic entity—a bòcan—stirs beneath the cellar flagstones, hungry for a fresh soul to devour.

Emerging from the fog-draped waters of Loch Achen, Callum is a lord of the deeps—a terrifying, flesh-tearing predator who has claimed the glen for six hundred years. He expects Màiri to cower like the rest. Instead, when she looks at his matted, waterlogged horse form through the mist, she feels only deep, gentle pity. She scrubs a stone basin, sets out clean water, and unwittingly binds a wild, ancient guardian to her doorstep.

When the entity in the cellar strikes, forcing Màiri to fight for her sanity with cold iron, Callum steps out of the reeds in human form to hold the line. But bridging the gap between a modern city woman with a obsession for order and a brooding water-spirit who woos her with rotting kelp and eagle scraps isn’t easy. As the bòcan waits for the iron to cool and the dark to settle, Màiri must learn to trust the mysterious stranger sitting on her steps—before the shadows beneath the floorboards consume them both.

Content Specs

Status: Editing

Word Count : TBC

1/5 Spice Rating