Page 18 of Waking Her Dragon

Thump-thump.

It wasn't a physical sound. It didn't belong to her own lungs or her own chest. It was a microscopic vibration traveling up the tether, bypassing the blackout, slipping past the guard of the Demon Lord.

Sydney’s breath hitched in her throat. “Is it Garrett? Is it Aodhan? Who is that?”

Kara didn't answer. The Dragon Queen thoughtfully held the space. Her golden presence wrapped protectively around Sydney’s heart as they both waited in the dark.

A long, agonizing silence stretched out before her.

Then, it came again.

Thump-thump.

It was weak. It was desperately faint, like a dying ember fighting against a freezing gale, but it was unmistakably alive.

Slowly, the sharp, predatory smirk from earlier vanished from Sydney's face. A new smile touched her lips. This one was soft, fragile, and deeply painful, born of a love that had survived a journey through the dark.

“Hold on, Garrett,” she whispered into the empty room.

The tether vibrated one final time. From the depths of the Void, a completely different sound pulsed back through the connection. Not a hollow beat, but a soft, rhythmic, reassuring echo.

Ba-bum.

5

Consciousness slowly returned to Garrett, not as a sudden awakening, but as an agonizing drag through shards of glass.

The physical reality of his incomplete execution slammed into him all at once. The massive iron spike remained driven ruthlessly through his shoulder, pinning his weight to the stone. Beneath the skin, the toxic burn of silver poisoning crept through his veins like liquid acid, turning his blood to sludge. Every forced inhale clawed at his throat, his lungs still coated in the suffocating, phantom heat of Chimera ash.

He was failing. His more-than-mortal shell was rapidly running out of time.

Yet, as he forced his eyes open against the heavy shadows, something was entirely different.

The overwhelming, crushing pressure of Leviathan’s presence was gone. The Demon Lord had vanished from the chamber, leaving the psychic air feeling oddly hollow. Garrett’s fractured mind scrambled for an answer, but the silence offered no clues. Why had he left? Had the monster finally broken through Garrett’s mental defenses without him realizing it? Or had something else diverted the Dark Lord's attention?

Deep within his soul, Aodhan remained completely still. Keeping his presence tightly masked, the Dragon King offered no answers through the dark.

For the first time since his captivity began, Garrett realized the chamber wasn't entirely silent.

Drip. Drip.

It wasn't the sound of blood hitting the floor. It was water. A slow, heavy, churning pressure vibrated through the foundation of the room. The black stone walls were weeping. They were slick with an icy, thick condensation that smelled faintly of salt and primeval rot.

Garrett stilled his ragged breathing, straining to listen past the pounding of his own pulse. Far beyond the thick, weeping walls, the primordial deep was moving. He could hear a massive, suffocating rhythm– the sound of an ungodly volume of dark water shifting under a crushing weight.

Then came a vibration, rattling the iron spike in his collarbone. Something massive, ageless, and unfathomably huge was shifting just beyond the barriers of his cage.

The shadow guarding his cell hadn't just locked him in a dungeon. It had anchored him directly into the throat of the Darkness itself.

Garrett rested the side of his face against the freezing stone wall, his breathing a shallow, ragged rattle. The phantom echo of his own voice still vibrated in his throat, raw and desperate.

“RUN.”

He didn't know her. Not really. The realization was a bitter, hollow ache in his chest, far sharper than the silver poisoning his blood. Whatever had happened to his mind during his captivity had left his memories in ruins. He couldn't picture the exact shape of her face, the color of her hair, or the sound of her laughter. Every time he reached for something solid, there was nothing but ash.

But his soul hadn’t forgotten.

His soul still supplied the baseline facts, etched into his core like runes of a forgotten time. There is a woman. He thought the words because it hurt too much to speak them aloud. Her name is Sydney. She is my Mate. I would set the world ablaze to keep her safe.