Iris #2
“It is. Which is actually ideal for our purposes.” Dad picks up another sheet. “The connection will maintain the biological feedback loop indefinitely. No more weekly infusions. No more rejection cycles. Your body will continue to integrate the shifter DNA on its own, sustained by the bond.”
Something about the way he says “our purposes” makes my skin prickle, and it’s not the bond this time. Just plain, human instinct. “What purposes?” I ask.
He looks at me over the chart. That look. The one I used to think was genius at work. The one I used to admire. Now it makes something cold crawl up my spine. “The bond has another function, Iris. A reproductive function.”
The cold spreads.
“Shifter-human pairings don’t typically produce offspring.
The biological incompatibility is too great.
But with the level of integration you’ve achieved, that barrier no longer exists.
” He sets the chart down. “You and the alpha will be able to reproduce. And any children you produce will carry both human and shifter DNA in a naturally integrated state.”
Children.
He’s talking about children.
“Hybrid offspring,” he continues, and his voice has that lecture quality now.
It used to make me feel proud to be his daughter.
“Born with the advantages of shifter biology, but without the instability of artificial integration. Natural-born hybrids, Iris. Do you understand what that means? The implications for medicine, for human evolution—”
“You want me to have babies.” My voice sounds far away. Like it’s coming from someone else. “You want me to have babies so you can study them.”
He pauses and blinks as if I’ve said something slightly off-topic, and he needs to redirect.
“I want to advance the research to its logical conclusion. This has always been the goal, Iris. Not just transformation, but reproduction. A sustainable bridge between species. You’re the proof of concept.
Your children would be the first generation of a new—”
“You want to experiment on my children.”
The words hang in the air between us without a response. He simply stares at me. I stare at him.
And for the first time in my life, I see him.
Not the hero who was going to fix me, fix the world, push humanity forward into some brilliant future.
I see a man who looked at his own daughter and saw a vessel. Who planned from the beginning to breed her like livestock and study what came out. Who has never once asked me how I feel without wanting a clinical answer.
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 what you’ve been 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. On my babies.”
“On naturally integrated hybrids whose existence could change the course of—”
“They would be my children.” 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.