It’s my father, and the sight of him makes my blood run cold.
He’s wearing his white coat. Clipboard in hand. Reading glasses on. All business. Behind him, two guards step into the cell. Not orderlies, not techs. Guards. Armed with the dart rifles, barrels pointed at Declan. Their faces are blank behind their visors.
My stomach drops straight through the floor.
Declan is on his feet instantly, pushing me behind him. I feel his muscles lock, feel the growl building in his chest before I hear it. I would not want to be the person on the other side of that growl. They can’t feel his fury the way I do. If they could, they would leave the room. Maybe the state.
“Relax,” Dad says. He doesn’t look at Declan. He looks at me, and there’s that expression again. The one I used to mistake for pride, but now recognize as the look a scientist gives a successful experiment. “I have good news.”
Good news. The words curdle in my stomach.
“The tests we ran this morning confirmed what I suspected.” He flips a page on his clipboard and practically beams down at what he sees. “You’re ovulating. The window is narrow, forty-eight hours at most, but the timing couldn’t be better. With the bond already established, and your cellular integration at this stage, conception during this cycle gives us the highest probability of?—”
“Stop.” Declan’s voice cuts through the cell like a blade. Low, hard, vibrating with barely contained rage. “Just stop.”
Dad looks at him the way I’ve seen him look at the dog we adopted who peed on his shoes two days later. We gave the dog back to the shelter. What a weird thing to think about now.
“She’s still healing,” Declan grits out. His arm is braced across me, holding me behind him. I can feel the tension in hisbody both through the bond and through his skin. Every muscle is drawn tight, and his heart is hammering. “The infusion nearly destroyed her. Her body needs time to recover. You can’t just?—”
“She’s recovered remarkably well, actually. The bond accelerated her healing far beyond our projections.” Dad tilts his head, studying Declan with clinical interest. “Your protective instincts are noted. They’re consistent with the bonding literature. But they’re not relevant to the timeline.”
“She’s not ready.”
“The data says otherwise.”
“I don’t give a damn about your data.” Declan takes a step forward. The guards track his every move with those rifles. He doesn’t seem to notice or care. “She’s a person. Not a breeding schedule. You can’t force this.”
Something flickers across Dad’s face. Not anger. He doesn’t do anger. Annoyance, maybe. The mild frustration of a man whose equipment isn’t cooperating.
“I figured you might say that,” he says calmly. He reaches into his coat pocket and produces a small vial of amber liquid, maybe half an ounce. He holds it up to the fluorescent light and turns it between his fingers. “This is a synthetic compound derived from shifter mating hormones. Concentrated, refined, and quite effective. It should help you feel more... cooperative.”
The blood drains from my face when I realize the same amber liquid is probably inside the darts they’re ready to fire. I grab the back of Declan’s shirt without thinking. “Dad. Don’t.”
He doesn’t look at me. He only nods at one of the guards instead.
It happens fast. The guard raises his rifle—not to his shoulder, just a quick aim from the hip—and fires. The dart hits Declan in the upper arm with a sound like a staple gun. He flinches, his hand going to the dart, ripping it out, but the plunger is already empty. Whatever was in the vial is in him now.
He stares at the dart in his hand. Then at Dad. Then at me.
Through the bond, I feel it start. Not all at once. The tranquilizer hit him like a speeding train, but this is slower. Creeping. A heat building from somewhere deep, spreading through the connection between us until I can feel it in my own skin.
His pupils are dilating. His breathing is changing. The growl in his chest shifts, drops, becomes something else entirely.
His hand tightens on the dart hard enough to snap it in half.
Dad is already moving toward the door, the guards backing out with him. He pauses in the doorway and looks at me, not at Declan, and his expression is perfectly neutral. Perfectly monstrous.
“I’ll check back in a few hours,” he says.
The door shuts. The locks engage.
And we’re alone.
I’m not with Declan anymore. Not really. Declan has always done his best to be gentle. To treat me well. I even remember the way he tried to apologize before he was forced to mate with me. I was so out of it then, but I tried to tell him I understood. And he tried to take it easy on me until he couldn’t anymore.
That was then.
This is a stranger standing in front of me. A stranger flexing his fists. Baring his teeth. Breathing hard and fast through flared nostrils.
