Iris
Something is happening inside me.
Not the infusion. That’s different; that’s agony.
This is... the opposite. Something clicking in like a key turning in a lock I didn’t know was there. It starts where teeth are buried in the side of my neck and spreads outward, warm and slow, like honey being poured through my veins.
Declan. It’s Declan.
He’s inside me. Surrounding me. His chest against mine, his arm locked around my waist, his breath ragged and hot against the place where his mouth meets my skin. There’s pressure, and a sting, and then something that isn’t pain at all. Something nice.
My mind is clearing. With him pressed against me and whatever is happening at my neck spreading through me, the fog is lifting.
The pain is fading, too. The infusion pain, the deep bone-ache that usually takes days to let go. It’s loosening its grip. Not gone, but softer, like someone turned the volume down on it and keeps turning.
I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand why his body against mine makes the pain stop, or why the place where he’s biting me feels like the center of the universe, or why I can suddenly feel things that aren’t mine. Not emotions exactly. More like echoes of what he’s feeling.
A fierce, desperate protectiveness. Guilt. Something raw and tender underneath all of it that he’s trying very hard to keep locked away.
His jaw finally relaxes. His teeth release my shoulder, and he presses his forehead against the spot instead, breathing hard while his whole body trembles around mine. The arm around my waist tightens. He pulls me closer until there’s no space between us at all.
My eyes are heavy. My muscles are liquid. The warmth from where he bit me has spread everywhere, and it feels like being wrapped in something safe, and I know that doesn’t make sense considering where we are and what just happened, but I can’t fight it.
He pulls out of me carefully, gently, and a brief flash of regret stands out like an exclamation point before fading the way everything else is. He then repositions us so I’m curled against his chest.
He’s sitting up now, his back against the wall, with me in his lap.
Both arms around me. His chin rests on top of my head.
And there’s a sound—low, steady, vibrating through his chest into mine.
Not a growl. Something softer. A rumble, almost like a cat purring, if the cat weighed two hundred pounds and had just bitten your neck.
It’s the most soothing sound I’ve ever heard.
I close my eyes. Just for a second. Just to rest.
The sound of the door wakes me from sleep I didn’t know I was in. It’s a heavy metallic clang, locks disengaging, hinges grinding. I jolt, and Declan’s arms tighten around me instantly. His whole body goes rigid, and the rumble in his chest changes from that soft purr to something lower and harder.
A growl.
My father steps into the room.
He’s got two orderlies behind him, and he’s carrying a blood draw kit. His eyes sweep the room, taking it all in. Me in Declan’s lap. The gurney pushed aside. The state of us.
“Good,” he says, like he’s checking a box. “I need to run some tests. Iris, come with me.”
Declan’s growl gets louder. I feel it in my bones. “She’s not going anywhere.” His voice is rough—but underneath the damage, there’s iron. “The bond isn’t complete. You can’t separate us. Not yet.”
He’s lying. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. The bond. Whatever it is, I can feel him through it. Not in words, but impressions. And right now, the impression is deliberate. He’s saying what he needs to say to keep them from taking me.
I don’t argue or ask questions. I press closer to his chest and stay quiet.
Dad frowns. I can see him weighing it. The risk of separating us against the data he wants. He looks at the orderlies, then back at Declan. At me. “How long?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” Declan’s arms are steel bands around me. “Hours. Maybe longer. The bond is still forming. If you pull her away now, it could destabilize everything you’re trying to achieve.”
That’s smart. He’s speaking Dad’s language. I feel a flush of something that might be admiration, except it comes with a sharp tinge of sadness that isn’t mine. His sadness. Regret, heavy and dark.
Dad considers for a long moment. Then he nods.
“Fine. I’ll take samples here.” He crosses the cell and crouches beside us, pulling on gloves.
The needle comes out. I watch it slide into my arm, but I don’t flinch because I’m pressed against Declan’s chest and the warmth from the bond is still there, dulling everything.
Dad fills three vials. Labels them. Packs them away.
He doesn’t ask me how I feel. He doesn’t even look at my face. He looks at the bite mark on my shoulder, and for a second, something crosses his face—satisfaction, maybe, or excitement. “I’ll be back in two hours,” he says before leaving.
The locks engage. The door seals. We’re alone.
For a while, neither of us speaks. His hand is still over mine. The growl has faded back to silence. I can feel his heartbeat against my shoulder blade, slowing a little at a time.
“Iris.” His voice is quiet, lips close to my ear like he wants to be sure only I hear him. “I need to tell you what happened.”
“You bit me,” I whisper.
“Yeah.” He exhales. “In my world, when a shifter finds their mate, there’s a bond. A connection. It starts before either person understands what it is. The scent, the pull, the way it feels to be near each other. That’s how it started with us.”
The scent. The car ride with Dad, when I smelled something sweet on the air and couldn’t explain it. The pull in my chest when we drove past the tree line. That was this?
“The bite completes it,” he continues. “It links us. Permanently. You can feel things from me now. I can feel them from you. It’s—” He pauses. “It’s not something that can be undone.”
I know it’s true. I feel it because he feels it. I’ve been permanently bonded to a man I met yesterday.
“My dad made you do this.” It’s not a question.
The silence that follows is full of things he doesn’t say. I feel them through the bond. The guilt, the anger. Protectiveness that burns so hot it almost hurts. Underneath all of it, the dark regret that won’t go away.
“He used Tara,” Declan finally says. “She’s here, in another cell. He showed me a feed. Told me if I didn’t complete the bond, they would hurt her.” His voice gets rougher. “They cut the feed, and I heard her scream.”
My stomach turns over. Tara. She fought two armed-men to protect me.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “It shouldn’t have happened this way. The bond is supposed to be something good. Not this.”
I can feel his regret so clearly it makes my throat ache. “Don’t be sorry,” I whisper, because I feel his pain and want it to go away. “You couldn’t help it.”
“Right now, we need to get out of here,” he says after a moment. Steadier now. “That’s what matters. Everything else comes after.”
I nod against his chest.
Even if I don’t believe he’s as steady as he sounds, because I feel the truth. There’s something wrong with all of this. I’m human. He shouldn’t have been able to complete the bond with me, but he did. And he has no idea what it means.
They come for me after what feels like forever, but isn’t nearly long enough. Not Dad this time. Two orderlies with a gurney and an injection that goes into my arm before Declan can do more than snarl.
His collar lights up with some kind of shock, I think, because his body jerks and his grip on me loosens just long enough for them to pull me free.
I even feel his pain—not like it’s in my body, not like the infusion.
But I feel the jolt anyway, and it brings tears to my eyes as I’m wheeled away.
The last thing I hear before the door shuts between us is his voice, my name, ragged and desperate.
Then I’m rolling down a hallway, staring at fluorescent lights sliding past overhead, and the warmth from the bond is thinning. The absence of his arms around me is a physical ache that has nothing to do with the serum.
They take me to Dad’s office. He’s already there, seated behind his desk, my blood work spread out in front of him. Charts, graphs, numbers I don’t understand. He looks up when they wheel me in and gestures with his hand for them to help me into the chair.
I sit. My legs are shaking. The hospital gown is thin, and the office is cold. Declan’s warmth is fading from my skin, and I want it back so badly I could cry.
“Remarkable.” Dad is studying the charts. His eyes are bright. Alive. More animated than I’ve seen him in years. “The cellular integration has accelerated beyond every projection. The bond has acted as a catalyst, exactly as I hypothesized.”
He turns a chart toward me. I stare at it.
Lines and curves and data points that are supposed to mean something.
“Your DNA is rewriting itself, Iris. The shifter markers are embedding at a rate I’ve never seen.
The bond triggered a hormonal cascade that essentially eliminated the immune rejection we’ve been fighting for years.
” He taps the chart. “This is what success looks like.”
Success? “The mating bond,” I say slowly. “You knew this would happen.”
“I theorized it. The bond creates a biological feedback loop between mates. In a human subject who’s already been primed with shifter blood, the bond essentially completes the circuit. Your body stops fighting the serum because the bond tells it the shifter DNA belongs.”
He leans back, folding his hands. “Elegant, really. Nature did most of the work. I only needed to set the conditions.”
Set the conditions. He means forcing Declan. He means using Tara. He means forcing the most intimate, permanent thing that can happen between two people like it’s a chemical reaction in a lab.
“The bond is permanent,” I remind him. “Declan told me that.”