14
IRIS
I wake up warm.
Not like that hasn’t happened before. Not like I’ve never woken up in Declan’s arms, either. But this is different. This is a bed. An actual bed, with a mattress and sheets and a soft quilt draped over me.
His bed. His room. I know that because his scent is everywhere. In the pillow and the sheets, in another flannel I’m wearing because it’s the only thing I have that feels like mine, even though it’s his. His arm is around me, heavy and warm, and his breathing is slow and even against the back of my neck.
For a few seconds, I just lie there. I let myself have those seconds because I know they’re borrowed. I know that once we get up and the day starts, everything that’s been hanging in the air since he carried me out of that awful place is going to come crashing down.
His family wants to undo the bond. I heard Cole say it.We’ll fix this. We’ll find a way to reverse it.I felt Declan’s reaction through the bond, too. Complicated, conflicted. Not the immediate agreement Cole was looking for. But not a refusal, either. It gave me hope I’m still trying to cling to, fists clenched…but I’m not sure I can clench them tight enough to keep it from leaking through like water.
I don’t know what I am to him. Mate, captive, obligation, mistake. Maybe all of it. Maybe none of it. I can feel he cares, at least. This warm pulse of protectiveness and something softer underneath that he keeps trying to bury. But caring about someone and wanting to be permanently bonded to them are different things. Especially when the bond was forced on you by a monster who wanted to breed hybrid children.
I close my eyes and try not to spiral. I fail.
Declan stirs behind me. His arm tightens, then loosens. I feel him surface—the slow climb from sleep to awareness, the moment he registers where he is, who he’s holding. A brief pulse of warmth. Then the heavier stuff creeping in underneath. Worry. Uncertainty. The same questions I’m asking, reflected back at me from the other side.
“Morning,” he mumbles in a voice thick with sleep.
“Morning.”
Neither of us moves for a while. The house is quiet around us, the kind of quiet that means people are awake but waiting. After a while I can make out faint sounds from downstairs. A kettle. Low voices. Someone moving a chair.
“We should go down,” he says eventually. There’s a lot of regret in those four small words.
And in the single word I use to reply. “Yeah.”
More silence.
“Let’s get you something to wear,” he decides.
He finds me actual clothes. A T-shirt that’s way too big, a pair of sweatpants with the drawstring pulled tight and the waistband rolled a bunch of times to keep the hems from covering my feet. Everything smells like him. All I want is to soak in the scent for as long as I can, since there’s no way to shake the fear of this being over soon.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above his dresser and barely recognize what I see: thin and pale, dark circles under my eyes, the bite mark on my neck vivid and purple against my skin. I look like someone who’s been through something terrible.
It’s not exactly untrue.
We go downstairs together. He goes first, and I follow a half-step behind, my hand on the railing because my legs still aren’t entirely trustworthy. The staircase opens into a living room I haven’t really seen before. The night they brought me here, I was barely conscious, and it was only the spare room and bathroom and counting the thin cracks in the ceiling.
It’s a nice house. Warm. Lived-in, the way my house with Dad never was. There are books on shelves, a couch with a blanket thrown over the back, and photos on the wall by the stairs. I catch a glimpse of them as we come down. A dark-haired, green-eyed, smiling family. Two parents, four kids. The parents look young. Happy. They have no idea what’s coming.
Everyone is in the kitchen. Cole and a girl I haven’t met. She’s small, blonde, pressed close to his side, and holding the cutest baby. Zeke, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, and next to him a girl with long brown hair and haunted hazel eyes, who goes very still when she sees me. Tara, sitting at the table with a mug between her hands and a look on her face that’s hard to read.
And a man I recognize from the night they invaded my house. The bear. Kyran. He’s standing by the window, arms folded, taking up roughly a third of the available space in the kitchen just by existing.
The kitchen goes quiet when we walk in. Every pair of eyes lands on me. Some are curious. Some are cautious. Zeke’s are still hard, though the sharp edge of hatred has dulled.
The girl with the hazel eyes. She’s looking at me like she’s seeing a ghost. Or a memory she’d rather not revisit. That must be Addison. Zeke’s mate. The one who was held in Dad’s facility.
My stomach turns over.
“Sit down,” Cole says. Not unkind. He pulls out a chair.
I sit. Declan sits next to me. His hand finds mine under the table and holds on. I feel him bracing for something. Steadying himself. Steadying me.
Cole looks at Declan, then at me. “We’ve been in contact with other packs overnight. And with Kyran’s people.” He takes a breath. “It’s done. All of it. Every facility we had intel on has been dismantled. Moore’s network is gone.”
