“These are animals, Iris. Abominations.” The softness evaporates. The mask is slipping, and underneath it is something uglier than I imagined, and I’ve imagined a lot. I’ve had the time. “They’re not human. They never willbe. Everything I’ve done—everythingwe’vedone—has been to control them. To harness what they are for the betterment of humanity.”
“You drugged him.” Iris’s voice cracks. “You drugged him and locked us in a room together and watched on a camera.”
“For science. For progress. Foryou.”
“You were going to breed me like an animal and experiment on my children.”
“Our children would have been the future of?—”
“They would have been yourgrandchildren!” She screams it. The sound tears through the corridor, raw and ragged and full of every lie she’s ever swallowed. Every justification she’s ever made. Every night she spent shaking on a table while her father took notes. “They would have been people! I am a person!”
Moore stares at her. And the mask falls away completely. “You were always going to be this. From the moment I realized what your condition could be used for. You were always an experiment.”
The rifle goes off.
The sound is booming through the corridor. Moore’s body jerks. Tara rolls clear. Iris stands still with the rifle still raised. Her face is blank with shock.
The gun drops from her hands and clatters to the floor.
I cross to her in three strides and catch her before her legs give out. She folds into me, boneless and silent. Not crying. Beyond crying. Somewhere past it, where the body just goes quiet.
I hold her while the alarms scream and the red lights strobe. Somewhere above us, the sounds of fighting are dying down, replaced by the howls of wolves who’ve won.
The facility falls in under an hour.
Cole and Zeke sweep the upper levels. Kyran’s bears take the perimeter buildings. The security teams surrender or scatter—most of them scatter, disappearing into the woods they were supposed to be guarding. Without Moore giving orders, the whole operation collapses like a house of cards.
I carry Iris out. She hasn’t spoken since the shot. She’s conscious, her eyes are open, but whatever’s happening behind them is somewhere I can’t reach even through the bond. She’s gone away to a place where I can’t follow, and all I can do is hold her and wait.
We emerge into cold, fresh air. Gray light. The smell of pine and wet earth and freedom. We’re free. Tara is beside me, limping but upright in a hospital gown like Iris and me. Cole meets us at the tree line.
He looks at me. At Iris in my arms. At the bite mark on her neck.
His face goes through something complicated. Then Zeke is there, and he sees it too, and his reaction is less complicated and more immediate.
“Tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Zeke says.
“It is.”
Silence. Heavy, loaded. Cole and Zeke exchange a look. Tara steps closer to me, flanking. Protective. Whatever happened to her in that cell, whatever she went through, she’s choosing my side. I feel a swell of gratitude so fierce it burns.
“Don’t worry,” Cole says carefully. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll find a way to reverse it. This isn’t… it’s not right. She’s human. Whatever Moore did, whatever he forced, we can fix this.”
I look down at Iris. She’s pressed against my chest, her face tucked into my neck, and even in her silence I can feel the bond between us. It’s not buzzing or surging. It’s just there, like a heartbeat.
And through that quiet, I feel the pain of Cole’s words landing in her. She heard him.We’ll find a way to reverse it.She’s too hollowed out to react, too emptied by what just happened with her father, but the pain is there. Rejection. Not from a stranger or an enemy. From the family of the man she’s bonded to. The first family she’s had since her own turned out to be a lie.
It cuts through her like glass, and I feel every edge of it.
Cole is watching me. Waiting for me to agree. Waiting for the obvious response:yes, of course, fix it, undo it, give me back my normal life.
I don’t say that.
I’m not sure I want to.
“Let’s get her out of here first,” I say instead. I carry her past my brothers, past the burning facility where a man spent years turning people into data.
Toward something I can’t name yet, but can feel. Something humming between us like a promise neither of us has made out loud. Neither of us needs to.