“Right now, we need to get out of here,” he says after a moment. Steadier now. “That’s what matters. Everything else comes after.”
I nod against his chest.
Even if I don’t believe he’s as steady as he sounds, because I feel the truth. There’s something wrong with all of this. I’m human. He shouldn’t have been able to complete the bond with me, but he did. And he has no idea what it means.
They come for me after what feels like forever, but isn’t nearly long enough. Not Dad this time. Two orderlies with a gurney and an injection that goes into my arm before Declan can do more than snarl.
His collar lights up with some kind of shock, I think, because his body jerks and his grip on me loosens just long enough for them to pull me free. I even feel his pain—not like it’s in my body, not like the infusion. But I feel the jolt anyway, and it brings tears to my eyes as I’m wheeled away. The last thing I hear before the door shuts between us is his voice, my name, ragged and desperate.
Then I’m rolling down a hallway, staring at fluorescent lights sliding past overhead, and the warmth from the bond is thinning. The absence of his arms around me is a physical ache that has nothing to do with the serum.
They take me to Dad’s office. He’s already there, seated behind his desk, my blood work spread out in front of him. Charts, graphs, numbers I don’t understand. He looks up when they wheel me in and gestures with his hand for them to help me into the chair.
I sit. My legs are shaking. The hospital gown is thin, and the office is cold. Declan’s warmth is fading from my skin, and I want it back so badly I could cry.
“Remarkable.” Dad is studying the charts. His eyes are bright. Alive. More animated than I’ve seen him in years. “The cellular integration has accelerated beyond every projection. The bond has acted as a catalyst, exactly as I hypothesized.”
He turns a chart toward me. I stare at it. Lines and curves and data points that are supposed to mean something. “Your DNA is rewriting itself, Iris. The shifter markers are embedding at a rate I’ve never seen. The bond triggered a hormonal cascade that essentially eliminated the immune rejection we’ve been fighting for years.” He taps the chart. “This is what success looks like.”
Success? “The mating bond,” I say slowly. “You knew this would happen.”
“I theorized it. The bond creates a biological feedback loop between mates. In a human subject who’s already been primed with shifter blood, the bond essentially completes the circuit. Your body stops fighting the serum because the bond tells it the shifter DNA belongs.”
He leans back, folding his hands. “Elegant, really. Nature did most of the work. I only needed to set the conditions.”
Set the conditions. He means forcing Declan. He means using Tara. He means forcing the most intimate, permanent thing that can happen between two people like it’s a chemical reaction in a lab.
“The bond is permanent,” I remind him. “Declan told me that.”
“It is. Which is actually ideal for our purposes.” Dad picks up another sheet. “The connection will maintain the biological feedback loop indefinitely. No more weekly infusions. No more rejection cycles. Your body will continue to integrate the shifter DNA on its own, sustained by the bond.”
Something about the way he says “our purposes” makes my skin prickle, and it’s not the bond this time. Just plain, human instinct. “What purposes?” I ask.
He looks at me over the chart. That look. The one I used to think was genius at work. The one I used to admire. Now it makes something cold crawl up my spine. “The bond has another function, Iris. A reproductive function.”
The cold spreads.
“Shifter-human pairings don’t typically produce offspring. The biological incompatibility is too great. But with the level of integration you’ve achieved, that barrier no longer exists.” He sets the chart down. “You and the alpha will be able to reproduce. And any children you produce will carry both human and shifter DNA in a naturally integrated state.”
Children.
He’s talking about children.
“Hybrid offspring,” he continues, and his voice has that lecture quality now. It used to make me feel proud to be his daughter. “Born with the advantages of shifter biology, but without the instability of artificial integration. Natural-born hybrids, Iris. Do you understand what that means? The implications for medicine, for human evolution?—”
“You want me to have babies.” My voice sounds far away. Like it’s coming from someone else. “You want me to have babies so you can study them.”
He pauses and blinks as if I’ve said something slightly off-topic, and he needs to redirect. “I want to advance the research to its logical conclusion. This has always been the goal, Iris. Not just transformation, but reproduction. A sustainable bridge between species. You’re the proof of concept. Your children would be the first generation of a new?—”
“You want to experiment on my children.”
The words hang in the air between us without a response. He simply stares at me. I stare at him.
And for the first time in my life, I see him.
Not the hero who was going to fix me, fix the world, push humanity forward into some brilliant future.
I see a man who looked at his own daughter and saw a vessel. Who planned from the beginning to breed her like livestock and study what came out. Who has never once asked me how I feel without wanting a clinical answer.
