Cole. Zeke. Did they get out? Are they here too, in rooms like this one? Or did they make it? Not knowing about them is worse than the confusion about where I am and what it all means.
And Tara. I told her to stay with Iris. Did she? Did these fuckers go to the house?
A sound reaches me through the walls. Faint at first, distorted by concrete, but unmistakable. A scream. High, raw. The kind of sound that can only come from white-hot pain.
Iris. I don’t need my wolf to know the sound of her voice.
My whole body goes rigid. I wrench against the shackles hard enough that the metal cuts into my skin and blood wells up around the cuffs. I don’t feel it. She’s screaming. Somewhere inthis building, behind these walls, she’s screaming, and I can’t get to her.
“Iris!” My voice bounces off the concrete, coming back to me flat and useless. She can’t hear me. No one can hear me except whoever’s watching through that camera, and they don’t care. Or maybe they do, maybe they like it, which only makes things worse.
The screaming goes on. Then it stops. Not gradually, not trailing off, just stops like someone flipped a switch. The silence that follows is worse.
I lie still, breathing hard. Blood runs from my wrists down my forearms, dripping onto the steel table. My heart is slamming against my ribs so hard I can feel it in my throat, and my wolf is throwing himself against whatever wall that collar has built between us, howling in a register only I can hear.
What are they doing to her?
Minutes pass. Or hours. I can’t tell. I stare at the ceiling, and I count the flickers of the fluorescent light, and I wait, because that’s all I can do.
The door opens.
Moore walks in first. White coat, clipboard, reading glasses perched on his nose. He looks like he’s walking into a board meeting, not a cell where he’s keeping a man chained to a table. Behind him, an orderly in scrubs pushes a gurney through the door.
Iris is on the gurney.
My lungs stop working. She’s on her back, wearing a hospital gown, hair damp with sweat and plastered to her face. Her eyes are half open, rolling, unfocused. She’s shaking, her whole body caught in a tremor that makes the gurney rattle against the floor. Her lips are moving, but nothing’s coming out. Just these small, broken whimpers that hit me somewhere so deep I didn’t know the place existed.
“What did you do to her?” The words rip out of me. “What did you do to your own daughter, you bastard?”
Moore glances at me over the top of his glasses. “The treatment is proceeding as planned. Her body is responding exactly as anticipated.”
“She can barely—” I pull against the shackles again, hard enough that pain shoots up both arms. “Look at her. She’s in agony. How can you do this?”
“She volunteered.” He says it the same way she did. Same flat certainty, same practiced ease. “Iris understands the importance of this work. She always has.”
He nods to the orderly, who wheels the gurney alongside my table. Close enough that if my hands were free, I could reach her. She’s right there, inches away, trembling and whimpering, but I can’t touch her. I can’t do anything but lie here and watch.
“Now then.” Moore sets his clipboard on a counter and removes his glasses, folding them carefully into his breast pocket. “You are going to complete the mating bond with her.”
The words don’t register at first.
I stare at him. He stares back expectantly. Like he’s waiting for me to process a set of instructions.
“What?” My voice is barely a whisper.
“The mating bond. The biological imperative that connects a shifter to their destined partner. I’ve studied it extensively. I know it’s already begun between you—the physical response, the protective instincts. All documented indicators.” He pauses. “I need you to complete it.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“I assure you, I’m not.” He pulls a small remote from his coat pocket. “The completion of the bond triggers a cascade of biological changes in both parties. In Iris’s case, with the serum already integrating into her cellular structure, the bond willcatalyze full transformation. It’s the final piece. Everything I’ve worked toward depends on this.”
I look at Iris. She’s looking at me, or trying to, her eyes drifting in and out of focus, her hand twitching on the gurney like she’s reaching for something she can’t find. She doesn’t know what he’s saying. She’s too far gone to understand any of this. Or maybe that’s what I need to believe, because the alternative—her knowing how cold and unfeeling her own dad can be—is damn near heartbreaking.
“No.” I say it clearly. Some things don’t require strength or power. They just require certainty. “I’m not doing that. Not like this. Not to her.”
Moore watches me for a moment. Then he nods slowly, like he planned for it. “I thought you might say that.”
He raises the remote and presses a button. The monitor on the wall flickers to life.
