Iris
The floor is cold.
That’s the first thing I notice. The hardwood against my cheek, cold and smooth, and I don’t remember how I got here. Everything is… swimmy. As if I’m looking through water. My head is pounding and my arms feel like they’re made of sand or wet cement. The room is sideways.
Oh. I’m on the floor. That’s why.
I blink a few times and things come back slowly as if trying to remember a dream after you’ve already gotten out of bed. The armchair leg. The coffee table. A pair of boots that definitely aren’t Dad’s.
The men. Right. The men in our house. Dad on the couch and then Dad was… laughing? Was he laughing? That doesn’t seem right, but I think he was. And then there was a sound, a hissing sound, and then…
Dad left.
My chest gets tight, and I press my face into the floor and squeeze my eyes shut. He left. He told me to come with him, and I tried, I really tried, but my legs were… they just wouldn’t… and he left. The door closed, and he turned on the truck and drove away. I wasn’t imagining that part.
Everything else from the last however long it’s been is smeared together like wet paint.
He definitely drove away. But he didn’t leave me.
That’s not what happened. He had to go. These people broke into our house and threatened him.
If he stayed, what would they have done?
Hurt him? Take him? He can’t let that happen.
His work is too important. Everything he’s spent his whole life building.
He can’t let a bunch of angry shifters destroy all of it.
Besides, this is Dad. He always has a plan. I didn’t know about the gas, and that turned out to be brilliant, right? He’s got something else figured out. He’s probably already making calls. Sending people. He wouldn’t just leave me here with no way out.
He’s my dad. He wouldn’t do that.
I open my eyes again. The boots haven’t moved.
Past them, I can see shapes on the ground, and some of them are starting to stir.
The huge one, the mountain one, is pulling himself up using the fireplace mantle.
Another one is on his hands and knees near the door, and I watch him for a while before I remember I should probably be doing something other than lying here.
The gas. Dad said it only affects shifters. Which means they’re still messed up from it. Which means…
The thought floats up through the fog slowly, but when it lands, it’s clear. Move. Get up. Get out. Now, while they can’t stop me. If Dad’s sending help, the best thing I can do is not be here. I know these woods. I’ve walked them a hundred times. If I can just get to the back door—
I press my hands flat on the floor and push.
My arms shake so hard I go right back down.
The infusion. It’s still pulling at me, still dragging through my system, making everything heavy, wrong and disconnected.
My body doesn’t feel like mine. It hasn’t felt like mine since the needle went in, and it’s worse now because I’m tired and scared.
I think I might have been unconscious for a while, and something about that makes the whole thing hit harder.
The way my blood forgot how to do its job.
But I have to. I don’t have a choice. I get one knee under me, then the other. I grab the armchair and pull myself up, and the room spins around me in a wide, lazy circle. I hold on until it slows down. Sort of. Close enough.
Nobody stops me. They’re all still out of it, or close enough. The really big one by the fireplace watches me through half-closed eyes, but he doesn’t move. Maybe he can’t.
One step. Another one. The hallway is right there. The back door is at the end. I know this. Patio. Garden wall. Slope into the valley. I can do this.
The hallway is longer than I remember. Or maybe I’m just slower.
My feet keep doing this thing where they don’t go exactly where I tell them to, and I bump my shoulder against the wall and have to stop for a second because the impact sends a wave of dizziness through me that turns my stomach.
The edges of my vision are doing something weird—going dark, then bright, then dark again, pulsing with my heartbeat.
I’m halfway down the hall when I hear him.
I don’t understand how. Dad said the gas should’ve kept them down for an hour, but there are footsteps behind me, uneven but fast, and before I can get to the door, a hand closes around my arm.
Not hard. Not hurting. But strong, even now, after being gassed. He turns me around, and I’m looking up at him, and I have to blink a few times because my eyes aren’t focusing right. He splits into two for a second, then merges back together.
He’s the one. The leader who spoke to Dad. He’s really tall, or maybe that’s just because my knees are about to give out, with dark hair and green eyes. He’s young. That registers through the haze. He can’t be much older than me.
“Don’t,” he says. One word, low and rough.
I try to pull free. Pointless. My body has exactly zero fight left in it, and his grip doesn’t even budge. My legs are shaking so badly that I think the only reason I’m still upright is because he’s holding onto me.
He walks me back. I don’t really have a say in it.
The living room comes at me in pieces: lamp light too bright, hurting my eyes.
People standing now, though they look rough.
The one by the door is looking at me with an expression that I can read perfectly through the fog in my head.
He hates me. Really specifically hates me.
“Tie her up.” His voice is hard and flat. “We don’t know what she’s capable of. She’s probably got tricks like her father.”
My stomach drops, and for a second, I think I’m going to be sick. Whether that’s the fear or the infusion, I honestly can’t tell anymore. Everything’s blurring together.
“She’s not a threat.” The one holding me says it as if it’s obvious. “Look at her, Zeke. She can barely stand.”
He’s not wrong. I really, really can’t.
“I don’t care, Declan.” Zeke spits out every word. “Her father gassed us and walked out. We don’t know what she knows. She could have a phone; she could’ve already—”
“I don’t have a phone,” I tell them, and my voice comes out weird and slurred. I immediately wish I hadn’t said anything because now they’re all looking at me, and the attention feels like being under a heat lamp.
Zeke takes a step forward. Declan moves between us, facing him. “She doesn’t get tied up,” he grunts.
“Then what? We just sit here and wait for Daddy to send his goons?”
“I said no.”
They stare at each other and something’s happening between them that I can’t follow.
I’m having trouble keeping up with any of it.
My brain feels like it’s running on half power, thoughts arriving late and fuzzy.
I keep losing the thread of what they’re saying and then picking it back up a few words later. Zeke backs off, eventually. I think.
Declan turns to me. His hand is still on my arm, which is good because I’m pretty sure I’d be on the floor without it. This close, his eyes are really green. Weirdly green. And the way he’s looking at me doesn’t match anything else that’s happening right now.
“What does he do at the facility?” he asks. Quiet. “The experiments. What’s he doing in there?”
And here’s the weird thing. Even through the fog, even with my head full of cotton, and my body trying to shut down, I want to tell him.
Not like a decision. Like a pull. Like the words are already there and all I have to do is let go and they’ll just…
come out. Everything about the infusions and the serum and why Dad started all of this.
I catch myself. Bite the inside of my cheek hard enough that the pain cuts through the haze for a second.
No. These are the people who destroyed the other location. They must be. If I say anything, I could ruin everything. Dad’s work. My one chance at having my body actually work the way it’s supposed to.
So I don’t say a word. I stare past his shoulder, and I keep my mouth shut, even though it feels like fighting a current.
He watches me. I can feel it, warm and heavy, and I really, really need to not look at him because being this close to him is doing that thing again.
That pull, that scent from the car, warm and clean and something else underneath.
It’s so much stronger now and it makes me want to lean toward him, which is—no.
That’s the infusion messing with my head.
“She’s not talking,” the big one says. He’s upright now. “We need to move. He’ll have called somebody.”
“She comes with us,” Declan decides.
“What?” I ask. It comes out like a croak.
“You can’t stay here.” Simple. Done. Letting me know my input isn’t part of this equation. “Your father will send people. If you’re here, you’re a bargaining chip. With us, you’re leverage.”
I want to argue, but my brain can’t assemble the argument fast enough. Leverage. A minute ago, he was standing between me and somebody who wants me dead, and now I’m leverage.
Things move fast now. Or I think they do.
It’s hard to tell because time keeps doing this thing where minutes compress and stretch, and I can’t track it.
One second, we’re in the living room, and the next, we’re outside, where the cold hits me like a wall.
I stumble and someone steadies me. Not Declan.
One of the others. The air is sharp and crisp, and it clears my head a little, but not enough.
Two cars. Trees. Zeke says something about a trunk, and my stomach lurches.
“No,” Declan declares. No hesitation.
“You can’t let her sit in the car with us.”
“She can barely walk.”
“She almost made it out the back door—”
“She rides in the back. Between us. Get in.”
I stare at the open car door. Everything in me knows I should not get in that car. But my legs are about to give out, Dad left, the house is empty, and I’m standing in my pajamas in the dark. What am I supposed to do?
I get in.
Cold seat. I scoot to the middle, and then they’re on either side of me. Declan on my left, Zeke on my right. The doors shut, the car starts, and we’re moving.
The hatred coming off Zeke is so strong it’s a physical thing. I can feel it on my skin. He stares straight ahead with his hands in fists, and every part of him is saying he doesn’t want to be anywhere near me.
I look down at my hands. They’re shaking. Everything is shaking. I can’t tell if it’s the infusion, the cold, fear or all of it mixed together into one big tremor that won’t stop.
On my other side, Declan is different. Not angry. Every time the car goes over a bump, and I sway, he does this thing where his hand moves toward me, like he’s going to catch me, and then pulls back. It keeps happening. I’m too out of it to figure out what it means, but I notice it every time.
I should be scared of him. I am. But there’s also this other thing, this irrational thing where I feel…
safer? Next to him? Which makes no sense at all.
He’s kidnapping me. But that scent is filling up the whole car, warm and steady.
My body keeps wanting to lean toward it like a plant toward sunlight.
I’m too tired and too messed up to fight it as hard as I should.
I rest my head against the seat and close my eyes. Just for a second to stop the spinning.
“We’re not putting her in a cell.” Declan’s voice comes from somewhere far away. Or maybe right next to me. Hard to tell.
“Then where?” Zeke’s voice is icy. “Guest room? Want me to fluff the pillows?”
“She stays at the house. Where we can watch her.”
“Our house.” Zeke says it like it tastes bad. “You want to bring her into our home. Moore’s daughter.”
“She stays in the house.” Harder this time. The alpha voice. Even half-conscious, I can hear the difference. “But she stays tied up. That’s the deal.”
Silence. Zeke doesn’t argue. I feel his anger cool down from a boil to something lower. Not gone. Just contained.
Tied up. In their house.
I should be terrified. But the car is warm, and the seat is holding me up. I’m so tired from the infusion, tired from the fear. My eyelids are heavy, and the engine is humming, while Declan’s arm is warm against mine. I keep drifting in and out, thoughts dissolving before I can finish them.
Dad will come. He’ll figure this out. He always…
He’ll come.
He…
The thought dies before I can finish it, and I slip under.