“He’s not what you thought he was,” I conclude. Not cruel. Just honest.
“No.” Her voice is small. “He’s not.”
We sit with that for a while. The fluorescent light buzzes. The collar hums. Somewhere in the building, machinery runs. I count Iris’s breaths. In, out. In, out. Steady. She’s calmer than she was when they brought her in. The bond is helping, I think. Even in here, chained, collared, and caged, it helps.
Sometime later, the door opens again.
Two orderlies this time, with a guard behind them carrying one of those dart rifles. They don’t take chances anymore. Smart.
“Dr. Moore wants you both in the lab,” the first orderly says. “Blood work and vitals.”
I feel Iris tense against me. I sense her spike of fear, quickly suppressed. “Together?” I ask.
“Together.”
I don’t like it. But together is better than apart. If they’re taking her to a lab, I want to be in the room. I want to see what they do.
They cuff my hands in front of me and walk us down a corridor I haven’t seen before. Bright lights, white walls, the chemical smell of industrial cleaner. Iris walks beside me, her shoulder brushing my arm. She’s wearing the hospital gown they put her in yesterday, and her feet are bare. She looks like the ghost of the girl I met two nights ago. Has it only been two nights? It feels like a lifetime.
The lab is large. Bigger than the exam room I woke up in, with multiple stations and tons of equipment. Monitors showing data I can’t read. Two exam tables in the center, side by side, separated by about four feet.
They put Iris on one. And me on the other, then strap me down at my ankles and wrists. The guard stays by the door, rifleready. The thought of being unconscious and helpless while Iris needs me is the only thing keeping me still rather than fighting.
Two technicians join us, wearing lab coats and pulling on gloves. They start with blood draws. I watch one of them tie the tourniquet around Iris’s arm, tap her vein, slide the needle in. She winces. The tech doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Just doing his job. I’m sure that’s what he tells himself.
My wolf throws himself against the collar’s wall hard enough that my vision whites out for a second. I breathe through it. Steady. I have to be steady. They’re taking blood. I can handle watching them take blood.
They take mine next. Four vials. My tech doesn’t make eye contact. I’m a specimen to her, just like Iris is to her father.
Vitals next. Blood pressure, heart rate, temperature. They note the elevated readings but don’t comment. Of course, my heart rate is elevated. I’m shackled to a table in a lab run by a man who uses people as test subjects. Resting heart rate isn’t exactly on the menu.
They check the bite mark on Iris’s neck. The tech touches it, her gloved fingers prodding the bruised skin, and my growl comes out before I can stop it.
The tech flinches and pulls back, then looks at the guard. The guard shifts his weight before adjusting his grip on the rifle. “Easy,” Iris murmurs. Through the bond, I feel her trying to push calm through the connection. It helps a little.
Then one of the techs pulls a curtain between our tables. Not all the way—I can still see the top of Iris’s head, her blonde hair against the white pillow—but enough to block my view of what’s happening below her shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I grunt, teeth clenched.
“Pelvic exam,” the tech says without looking at me. “Standard protocol for bonded females in the program.”
Bonded females in the program. Like there’s a whole category for this. Like there are others. Like this is routine.
I hear the snap of fresh gloves. The click of an instrument being prepared. The tech’s voice, flat and professional: “Slide down to the edge of the table, please. Knees up.”
No.
The word fills my entire body. Not a thought. A force that starts somewhere in the center of my chest and radiates outward until my muscles are vibrating with it.
They don’t get to strap her down and examine her like she’s livestock being assessed for breeding. They don’t get to touch her there, look at her there, catalogue what they find and send it back to Moore.
Through the bond, I feel Iris’s fear spike. Not pain—yet—but the cold terror of being exposed and helpless, and it hits me like a fist to the sternum.
I pull against the restraints. Not testing this time. Pulling. The leather straps creak. The metal frame groans. The tech on my side takes a step back. “Sir, you need to remain?—”
The left wrist strap breaks. The buckle tears free from the leather, and my hand is loose. I’m already reaching for the other one when the guard raises the rifle.
I don’t care. The right strap goes next. I swing my legs off the table, the ankle restraints ripping free from the frame with a screech of bending metal that echoes off the lab walls. The collar is still humming, still keeping my wolf locked behind that invisible wall, but I don’t need my wolf for this. I’m two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle and fury, and I have a very specific target.
