I see Dr. Elton Moore, and he is a monster.
He’s still talking. Something about controlled environments and developmental tracking. I can hear the words, but they’ve stopped meaning anything. They’re just the sounds a monster makes when he’s explaining why the monstrous things he does are actually reasonable.
“No,” I say.
He stops mid-sentence. “Excuse me?”
“No.” Louder now. My hands are shaking in my lap, but my voice is steady, and I don’t know where this is coming from. Maybe the bond, maybe Declan’s stubbornness bleeding through whatever connects us. Or maybe it’s just me, buried under years of wanting to be good enough for a man who was never going to see me as anything more than data.
“This isn’t a negotiation, Iris.” His voice cools. Not angry, but dismissive. The way you’d speak to a child throwing a tantrum. “This is science. This is what we’ve been working toward.”
“This is whatyou’vebeen working toward. I wanted to be fixed. I wanted to have a normal life. I didn’t sign up to be a breeding program.”
“You signed up to advance the research. The research has advanced. This is the next step.”
“The next step is experimenting on babies. Onmybabies.”
“On naturally integrated hybrids whose existence could change the course of?—”
“They would be mychildren.” My voice cracks. “They would be people. Not test subjects. Not data points. Your grandchildren.”
He looks at me across the desk, and there it is. The expression I’ve been too blind or too desperate to see for twenty-one years. Impatience. Not anger, not cruelty. Just the flat impatience of a man whose experiment is arguing with him.
That’s all I’ve ever been. An experiment that talks back.
There’s an ache in my chest, like a fist is slowly squeezing my heart tighter and tighter. He’s never cared about me as a daughter, has he? I see it now, and it’s like a floodlight has been turned on and is shining on my life. My memories. I see everything clearly now, and I hate the way it looks. But I can’t turn away. No closing my eyes, no pretending not to see what is so obvious. We’re way beyond that point now.
I stop talking. Not because he convinced me, but because I understand now that nothing I say will change what he sees when he looks at me. He doesn’t see his daughter. He never has.
“Take some time,” he urges, already looking back at his charts. “Rest. We’ll discuss the timeline tomorrow.”
He waves at the orderlies without looking up. They take my arms and guide me toward the door. I let them, because my legs won’t hold me on their own and fighting these guys won’t help, anyway.
But as they walk me down the hallway toward the recovery room, I reach for the bond. For that thin, stretched thread that connects me to my mate. It’s all I have now. The only real connection that exists with another living creature. Ironic, in a way. Declan isn’t human, and his kind has always been treated as… less-than by Dad and his colleagues. Yet he pushed me closer to them. Further away from him. I doubt he cares.
I send something through our connection, hoping it works the way it did when I was in Declan’s arms. Not words, not a plan. Just a feeling.
I see him now. I see what he is.
And faintly, I feel something push back. A warmth. A sense of rightness. Like something that was very wrong has been fixed.
Good.
11
DECLAN
It’s official:I just went through the longest night of my life.
It takes the place at the top of the list. Above even the night Dad died. Above the night Mom decided she had no choice but to follow him.
I’m starting to understand on a much deeper level now that she had no choice. Not really. I only thought I understood before, on a basic, intellectual level. Fated mates can’t live without each other. It’s worse than death.
Now? After completing the bond? I feel it in my soul. I understand why she did what she did. I’ve thought about it for hours, since the alternative was letting worry for my sister and my mate and my entire fucking pack eat me alive—and sleep was sure as hell not happening.
That red light never once flickered. Somebody’s been watching through it all.
The locks disengage without warning. I’m on my feet before the door opens, which is about all I can manage with the collar humming against my throat and whatever they last injected me with still sitting heavy in my muscles. But I’m standing. That counts for something.