Iris
I wake up warm.
Not like that hasn’t happened before. Not like I’ve never woken up in Declan’s arms, either. But this is different. This is a bed. An actual bed, with a mattress and sheets and a soft quilt draped over me.
His bed. His room. I know that because his scent is everywhere.
In the pillow and the sheets, in another flannel I’m wearing because it’s the only thing I have that feels like mine, even though it’s his.
His arm is around me, heavy and warm, and his breathing is slow and even against the back of my neck.
For a few seconds, I just lie there. I let myself have those seconds because I know they’re borrowed. I know that once we get up and the day starts, everything that’s been hanging in the air since he carried me out of that awful place is going to come crashing down.
His family wants to undo the bond. I heard Cole say it.
We’ll fix this. We’ll find a way to reverse it.
I felt Declan’s reaction through the bond, too.
Complicated, conflicted. Not the immediate agreement Cole was looking for.
But not a refusal, either. It gave me hope I’m still trying to cling to, fists clenched…
but I’m not sure I can clench them tight enough to keep it from leaking through like water.
I don’t know what I am to him. Mate, captive, obligation, mistake.
Maybe all of it. Maybe none of it. I can feel he cares, at least. This warm pulse of protectiveness and something softer underneath that he keeps trying to bury.
But caring about someone and wanting to be permanently bonded to them are different things.
Especially when the bond was forced on you by a monster who wanted to breed hybrid children.
I close my eyes and try not to spiral. I fail.
Declan stirs behind me. His arm tightens, then loosens.
I feel him surface—the slow climb from sleep to awareness, the moment he registers where he is, who he’s holding.
A brief pulse of warmth. Then the heavier stuff creeping in underneath.
Worry. Uncertainty. The same questions I’m asking, reflected back at me from the other side.
“Morning,” he mumbles in a voice thick with sleep.
“Morning.”
Neither of us moves for a while. The house is quiet around us, the kind of quiet that means people are awake but waiting. After a while I can make out faint sounds from downstairs. A kettle. Low voices. Someone moving a chair.
“We should go down,” he says eventually. There’s a lot of regret in those four small words.
And in the single word I use to reply. “Yeah.”
More silence.
“Let’s get you something to wear,” he decides.
He finds me actual clothes. A T-shirt that’s way too big, a pair of sweatpants with the drawstring pulled tight and the waistband rolled a bunch of times to keep the hems from covering my feet.
Everything smells like him. All I want is to soak in the scent for as long as I can, since there’s no way to shake the fear of this being over soon.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above his dresser and barely recognize what I see: thin and pale, dark circles under my eyes, the bite mark on my neck vivid and purple against my skin. I look like someone who’s been through something terrible.
It’s not exactly untrue.
We go downstairs together. He goes first, and I follow a half-step behind, my hand on the railing because my legs still aren’t entirely trustworthy.
The staircase opens into a living room I haven’t really seen before.
The night they brought me here, I was barely conscious, and it was only the spare room and bathroom and counting the thin cracks in the ceiling.
It’s a nice house. Warm. Lived-in, the way my house with Dad never was.
There are books on shelves, a couch with a blanket thrown over the back, and photos on the wall by the stairs.
I catch a glimpse of them as we come down.
A dark-haired, green-eyed, smiling family.
Two parents, four kids. The parents look young. Happy. They have no idea what’s coming.
Everyone is in the kitchen. Cole and a girl I haven’t met.
She’s small, blonde, pressed close to his side, and holding the cutest baby.
Zeke, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, and next to him a girl with long brown hair and haunted hazel eyes, who goes very still when she sees me.
Tara, sitting at the table with a mug between her hands and a look on her face that’s hard to read.
And a man I recognize from the night they invaded my house. The bear. Kyran. He’s standing by the window, arms folded, taking up roughly a third of the available space in the kitchen just by existing.
The kitchen goes quiet when we walk in. Every pair of eyes lands on me. Some are curious. Some are cautious. Zeke’s are still hard, though the sharp edge of hatred has dulled.
The girl with the hazel eyes. She’s looking at me like she’s seeing a ghost. Or a memory she’d rather not revisit. That must be Addison. Zeke’s mate. The one who was held in Dad’s facility.
My stomach turns over.
“Sit down,” Cole says. Not unkind. He pulls out a chair.
I sit. Declan sits next to me. His hand finds mine under the table and holds on. I feel him bracing for something. Steadying himself. Steadying me.
Cole looks at Declan, then at me. “We’ve been in contact with other packs overnight. And with Kyran’s people.” He takes a breath. “It’s done. All of it. Every facility we had intel on has been dismantled. Moore’s network is gone.”
I wait for the feeling that should come with that. Relief? Grief? Something.
What comes is... nothing. A hollowness. My father built those facilities. My father ran those programs.
And now it’s gone. He’s gone. And I should be grieving. He was my dad. Whatever else he was, he was my dad. Now he’s dead, and I killed him.
But I can’t find the grief. I reach for it and there’s just… empty space. Maybe it’ll come later. Maybe it’ll hit me in a week or a month when I’m not expecting it, the way grief does.
Or maybe it won’t, because the man I thought I was grieving never existed. The father I loved was a story I told myself because I needed to survive. The real man underneath was someone who looked at his daughter and saw a petri dish.
I don’t know how to feel about any of this, and I’m so tired of not knowing.
“There’s something else,” Cole says. He glances at Declan again.
Declan knew this was coming. “We had Doc look at Moore’s research.
His notes, his data. The latest test results.
” A pause. “What he did to you, Iris. The serum and infusions, and cellular changes. It’s permanent.
Your DNA has been fundamentally altered. There’s no reversing it.”
The words settle into me like stones dropping into water. Permanent. The thing I volunteered for, the thing I endured all those nights for—it worked. Dad got what he wanted. My cells are rewritten. I’m not fully human anymore, and I never will be again.
I should feel something about that, too. I can’t find it.
“As for the bond,” Cole continues, and I feel Declan’s grip tighten on my hand, “the same applies. It can’t be undone. Our doctor confirmed it. What’s done is done.”
He says it gently. Like delivering bad news. Like the bond is a diagnosis, they’re all going to have to learn to live with.
I stare at the table. The wood grain blurs.
I can feel everyone looking at me, the human girl who doesn’t belong here, who was injected with their blood and bonded to their brother by force and is now sitting at their kitchen table wearing their brother’s clothes.
I’m the aftermath of their worst enemy’s greatest experiment, and now they’re stuck with me.
Unless they’re not when Declan decides the bond is a cage he didn’t choose, and I’m the reminder of everything Dad put them through. I wouldn’t blame him. I’d understand.
“I don’t want to reverse it.”
Declan’s voice, cutting through the noise in my head like a blade. I look at him. He’s not looking at Cole or Zeke, or anyone else. He’s looking at me.
“I don’t care how it started,” he says. “I don’t care what Moore intended. The bond is real. What I feel is real.” His thumb runs over my knuckles. “I want you to be my mate, Iris. Not because a collar forced it or a drug made it happen. Because I’m choosing it. Right now. I’m choosing you.”
The hollowness cracks. Just a little. It’s enough for something warm to leak through.
I don’t trust my voice, so I hold onto his hand and nod, and he nods back, and through the bond I feel something I haven’t felt from him before. Not protectiveness, not guilt. Peace. Small and new, but real.
The kitchen is very quiet.
I can’t help but look at Addison. She’s watching me from across the table. Those hazel eyes—I can see the damage in them. The years of it. She’s not looking at me with hatred or blame. She’s looking at me like she’s waiting to see what I’ll do.
“I’m sorry.” My voice comes out thin and weak. “For what my dad did to you. I didn’t know… I thought…” I stop. Take a breath. Start again. “I told myself the lies he told me because it was easier than asking questions. I should have asked. I should have looked harder. I’m sorry.”
Addison is quiet for a long time. Long enough that I start to think she’s not going to respond, and I wouldn’t blame her. Sorry is such a small word for what was done to her.
Then she reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine. Her fingers are thin, her grip is light, and she doesn’t say anything. She just holds on for a moment, and then she lets go.
It’s not forgiveness. I don’t think I’ve earned that, and I don’t know if it’s something I even need, since I didn’t cage her. I didn’t run the tests. But I crave it, anyway. Knowing she doesn’t hate me for who my father happened to be.
Zeke clears his throat. I brace for the anger. For the reminder that I’m Moore’s blood and nothing changes that. “You shot him,” he says flatly. “You picked up a gun and shot him.”
I flinch at the memory. “I—”
“That took guts.” He unfolds his arms. His jaw is still tight, his eyes still hard. But something in his posture has changed. Not warm. Not welcoming. But not closed, either. “I’m not saying we’re good. But that took guts.”
I think that might be the most generous thing he’s capable of right now. I’ll take it.
It’s not a welcome party. It’s not open arms and warm embraces. It’s a kitchen full of people who’ve been through hell, making room for one more person who’s been through it with them. It’s messy and uncertain. Full of things that haven’t been resolved yet.
But Declan’s hand is in mine, and the bond is humming between us, and for the first time since I climbed out of Dad’s truck three nights ago with a strange scent in the air and a feeling I couldn’t name, I think I might be somewhere I belong.
Not home. Not yet.
But close.