The tech behind the curtain. The one with the gloves and the instruments and the flat, professional voice.
I grab him by the front of his coat and slam him into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. He makes a sound that’salmost a scream, almost a wheeze, before I pull him forward and slam him again. His head snaps back. His body goes limp.
The guard fires.
Not at me. At the vent above the door. A canister lodges in the duct, and I hear the hiss before I smell it. Moore’s gas, the same gas we breathed in at his house. It fills the room fast, thicker than what he used at the house, more concentrated. My knees buckle on the second breath.
Iris is calling my name. I can hear her, can feel her through the bond, terrified and reaching for me. I try to get to her table but only make it two steps before my legs give out and the floor rushes up to meet me.
The ceiling tiles blur. The fluorescent lights smear into streaks. The gas drags me under fast and hard, and the last thing I feel before it takes me is Iris’s fear.
Iwake up on the cell floor.
The concrete is cold against my back. The collar is still there. My wrists ache where the restraints cut in. My head is pounding, and I know it’s the gas hangover. The worst headache of my life.
Something warm and wet is pressed against my chest. Iris. She’s curled against me, her face buried in my shirt, and she’s crying. Not loud. Quiet, exhausted crying. The kind that happens when you’ve run out of everything else.
“Hey.” My voice comes out weak, raspy. I get one arm around her. It feels like lifting a bag of cement, but I do it. “Hey. I’m here.”
She presses closer. Her fingers grip my gown. Her emotions wash over me—fear, relief. Grief? “I’m okay.” I press my lips tothe top of her head. “It was the gas. It knocks me out, but it doesn’t… I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” Her voice is muffled against my chest. Thick with tears. “None of this is fine.”
She’s right. None of this is fine.
But she’s here. She’s alive. She’s pressed against me, and I can feel her heartbeat against my ribs. That has to be enough.
“We’re going to get out of here,” I tell her. I say it like a fact because that’s what she needs right now. Not uncertainty. Not honesty about how bad things look. She needs her alpha to tell her it’s going to be okay, and that’s what I’m going to do. “My pack is out there. Cole, Zeke—they’ll find a way. Kyran and his bears. They won’t stop looking.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s what a pack does. We don’t leave each other behind. Ever.” I tighten my arm around her. “They’re coming, Iris. And when they get here, we’re walking out of this place, and we’re never looking back.”
She’s quiet for a long time. I count her breaths the way I did earlier, tracking them as they slow, as the crying tapers off, and her body gradually unclenches against mine. Her fear doesn’t go away, but something else rises alongside it. Not hope, exactly. Something smaller.
Trust. She trusts me.
I hold her against my chest and stare at the ceiling, and I make a promise. Not out loud, not through the bond, but somewhere deeper than either of those.
I will get her out of here. I will get Tara out. I will burn this place to the ground.
And Elton Moore will answer for every single thing he’s done.
12
IRIS
I’ve started measuringtime by the meals.
It’s the only way that makes sense in a room with no windows and a fluorescent light that never turns off. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Everything between them is just... waiting and trying not to think too hard about what comes next, which is harder than it sounds when you’re bonded to someone whose emotions run through you like a second bloodstream.
Declan has been tense since the lab. He tries to project calm for my sake, but I’m starting to understand the bond doesn’t lie. Underneath the steady surface, he’s coiled tight. Planning. Calculating, and I know all about calculation. I was raised with it. Everything is part of a bigger plan.
But right now, in this moment, we’re okay. I’m tucked against his side with my head on his shoulder, and his arm is around me, and the bond is doing that warm, steady thing it does when we’re close. Like a low hum in my chest. Like being held from the inside.
I hear footsteps in the corridor and sit up. “Dinner,” I say, more to myself than to Declan. My stomach tightens with something that’s half hunger, half dread. The food is never enough, especially for him, but at least it’s predictable.
The locks disengage. I know the sequence by heart now. The door opens, only it’s not an orderly with a tray.
