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My half-brother studied me for a moment. “Have you and Iris been intimate at all?”
“I—” My brain finally caught up and I scowled. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Remus shrugged one shoulder. “When a wolf is intimate with their fated mate, it changes the bond between you. It can make a wolf quite anxious when they get separated, even though it’s perfectly normal not to spend every waking moment with one another. It’s one of the reasons young wolves who find their fated mates seem to waste no time in getting officially mated or married.”
I snarled before I could stop myself. “Fated mates are a crock of shit,” I snapped.
“Okay,” Remus replied, making no further comment on the matter.
My father watched me for a moment longer. “Are you alright?” he asked, pressing his lips together.
I nodded, taking a breath. I didn’t really want to think about it any longer, much lesstalkabout it. “I’m fine,” I replied, taking another deep breath. “But we need to find Iris. If she was with Demi…” I shook my head. I couldn’t think of anything else.
Remus nodded, looking back out the windshield at the crime scene ahead of us. “We’ll retrace their steps,” he said. “Both of them. If we can figure out where Demi was before she ended up here, perhaps we can figure out where Iris is, too.”
He put his key into the ignition and the car rumbled to life. I felt grateful, then irritated.At least they’re finally listening to me, but this is not the way I wanted it to happen…
IRIS
Project Night Moon Facility
???, ???
They left me here. I don’t know for how long — it could have been minutes or hours — but it felt like abject torture. The remaining part of me that still clung to logic knew it was likely on purpose, getting me to wear down, but hell. Just because I understood what was going on didn’t mean I could stop my heart from racing or my muscles from tensing. Instinct was overriding thought, and I hated every second of it.
Somehow, that made everything even worse.
When the door finally opened again, someone in a white lab coat entered, followed by two others dressed in similar garb. It was like they’d taken their doctors or scientists or whatever straight out of a bad ‘80s sci-fi flick, when the “big bad” was revealed to be some evil genius driven to madness. These people didn’t have wild hair or an unhinged look in their eye, but that didn’t make me feel any better. The cold detachment wasn’t exactly comforting.
The man who approached me was human. I could tell that easily, even though he’d tried to mask his scent with some disgusting aftershave. That was the first hint, really. Any shifter worth his pelt didn’t bother disguising his natural scent with something artificial. The stink of humanity still ran true underneath, and the middle-aged man stopped a few feet away from me, eyes trailing over my body like he was assessing a piece of meat, not a person. The ID tag on his coat read “Dr. Pete Brenner.” There were some other details in smaller font, but he kept moving. I couldn’t read them before he turned and the badge swung away from me again.
“Nice to meet you, Subject 296,” he drawled, his accent thick and southern. He didn’t sound Texan; maybe from a state further east.
I glowered.Does that accent actually work on anyone?To me, it was sickeningly sweet. Fake. A put-on. “My name is Iris,” I snapped, a spark of anger starting to burn away some of the anxiety. “I’m a fucking person.”
I didn’t know who this man was, but he didn’t get to see that I was afraid, uncomfortable, or anything else. I had to swallow it all down and deal with it later.
Dr. Brenner simply blinked at me and wrote something down on his clipboard. “Everyone starts strong,” he noted, barely looking at me. “It’s just a matter of time, Subject 296.” He lifted his eyes, not even giving me a sneer or a smirk oranyemotion. He was cold. Ice-cold. “Everyone breaks down eventually.”
I growled, giving a jerk of my arms. The leather straps didn’t move. “I’m not like everyone else. You think that’s the worst threat I’ve heard?”
He simply moved to a wheeled tray nearby, setting down his notes. I hadn’t even noticed the tray. “You’re just like everyone else,” he replied blandly, eyes roaming over the equipment on the table. I wished I could see what was sitting there. “And it wasn’t a threat, Subject 296. It is simply a fact.”
I didn’t know what to make of that statement, and he took advantage of my silence to push down the top of my white shirt, sticking electrodes onto my chest. I felt hardly any sensation, but the idea of some strange man pawing at me like that — it took a lot of willpower not to shudder. I wasn’t giving that man anything besides venom.
He stepped back, moving somewhere behind me. I could hear a machine, and I could only assume he had the monitors placed so I couldn’t see them, but I knew what they’d say.
“You appear to be defective, Subject 296,” Dr. Brenner noted dryly, writing a few more notes down as he stepped back into my peripheral vision. “Abnormal readings. That is…disappointing.”
I rolled my eyes. “No shit, really? You mean they gave me this pacemaker for a reason?!” It wasn’t as if the device was hidden. Strapped down like this, he’d have seen it whether I wanted him to or not.
He scratched the graying bristle on his chin, turning back to one of the two younger people still standing several feet away. They both seemed to be taking rapid notes, hanging on every word he said.
“She’s not going to be particularly useful for the original plan,” he informed them. He was answered with nods and thoughtful “hmms.” “However, it will not be a waste. We can still learn things. She is, after all, a white wolf, and we didn’t think there were any of those left. Dr. Samboni, you had a theory you were working on, yes?”
“Oh! Um, yes,” said a younger male voice. I heard one of the doctors began flipping through papers.
Dr. Brenner waved a hand. “We will discuss this in a bit after we get some baseline data on her. It is important to observe the control, after all.”
