Page 22 of Waking Her Dragon

It wasn't an outward sound. Leviathan heard nothing in the physical room. But inside Garrett’s mind, the Dragon King let out a deep, rolling, seismic rumble of pure, unadulterated amusement. The tectonic laughter shook the foundations of the internal vault, washing away Garrett's rising panic with a wave of ancient, arrogant confidence.

Garrett’s mind fractured with confusion. “What in the hell is so funny?” He demanded, mentally staring at the shadow of the Dragon King. “He’s going to trap her!”

The Dragon King’s laughter slowly subsided, smoothing out into a terrifyingly calm, razor-sharp focus. Aodhan’s shimmering gray presence flared slightly behind the vault doors, projecting a sudden, crystalline thought directly into Garrett’s awareness.

“He believes she is predictable,” Aodhan explained, the telepathic words dripping with a god's disdain for a lesser monster. “He thinks he has built a trap for a frightened bird.”

Garrett stilled.

“And he hasn't? Leviathan does not know her,” the Dragon King whispered, an ageless pride humming through the bond. “You do not remember her. But I do. Let Leviathan build his cage. He has no idea what, and more importantly, who he is actually inviting inside.”

Garrett stared up at Leviathan’s smug, smiling face, the ice in his veins suddenly turning to liquid fire. He still didn't have his memories. He still didn't know her name or the shape of her smile. But as Han’s unqualified certainty echoed through his soul, Garrett forced a bloody, jagged grin of his own.

Leviathan thought he was baiting a trap. He didn't realize he was just ringing the dinner bell for a hunter unlike any other.

Leviathan’s smile remained fixed, but his eyes narrowed slightly, tracking the faint, bloody grin spreading across Garrett’s split lips. The Demon Lord’s lack of understanding at Garrett’s sudden defiance was apparent. But it was also obvious that he didn’t care enough to investigate.

Stepping back into the shifting shadows of the doorway, Leviathan’s form began to dissolve into the thick, freezing mist.

“Rest, Guardsman,” Leviathan’s smooth voice echoed through the chamber one final time, the words dripping with a chilling promise. “I need your heart beating when she opens the door.”

With that, the shadows swallowed him whole. The frost-slicked door slammed shut, and the dead, suffocating silence returned to the cell.

Lying perfectly still, Garrett listened as the Demon Lord’s parting threat rang like a siren through the empty corridors of his mind. When she opens the door.

The phrasing cracked open a terrifyingly logical realization. Sydney wasn't just incidental to Leviathan’s trap. She wasn't just a secondary prize being lured in for torture. Somehow, she was part of whatever the Demon Lord intended to do. Why else would he need Garrett's heart beating when she opened the door?

Was her Light the key? Was Garrett the lock? Or was the truth something even worse?

A cold, tactical clarity settled in Garrett’s mind. The path forward was suddenly apparent, dark, and uncompromising.

“If she needs me alive to open it... then I change the rules of the game.”

He didn't hesitate. He closed his eyes, his consciousness retreating inward, locking onto the raw, vibrating energy of the cosmic tether. He gathered the remaining fragments of his White Dragon Magic, wrapping it around his own life force like a noose. He didn't care about survival anymore. He didn't care about the Clan, or his future, or the memories he had lost. If his cessation was the only thing standing between his Mate and a sorcerous cage, he would gladly tear his own soul away from his flesh.

He braced himself to sever the link, to consciously force his own heart to stop beating. But before he could pull the trigger, a golden, momentous wall of Divine Force slammed down, pinning his consciousness to the floor of his mind. It wasn't a violent assault. It was a firm, complete lockdown.

King Aodhan stepped out of the mental shadows. His colossal Dragon form radiated a solemn, inescapable gravity.

“No,” the King commanded.

“Get off me, Aodhan!” Garrett screamed back, mentally thrashing against the Dragon's grip. “You heard him! She’s the key! If my death breaks the anchor and keeps her away from this place, I am ending it right now! Let me go!”

The Dragon King didn't yield. He leaned down, his massive silver eyes reflecting the abject horror of the cosmic architecture they were trapped in.

“Your death does not break the anchor, Garrett. I know this Magic,” Aodhan whispered, the telepathic words carrying the weight of a dying star. “Your death opens the door.”

The revelation hit Garrett with a sickening, catastrophic force. His mental resistance collapsed instantly into a stunned, hollow void.

The nightmare was finally completely unmasked. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together. The cracking black stones, the pressure of the primordial waters, and Leviathan’s careful preservation of Garrett’s failing body were all locked together in one horrifying truth.

He wasn't just a prisoner waiting for rescue. He was a living seal.

The raw, bleeding energy of a Dragon King and the Guardsman with whom he shared his soul, forced to stay alive inside a mutilated more-than-mortal shell, was the only thing currently jamming the gates of The Abyss shut. If Garrett died, the lock would shatter, and whatever archaic monstrosity was churning behind those weeping walls would break free into all the Realms. So, if Sydney arrived to save him, she would walk straight into a contrivance designed to use her Light to turn the key.

He couldn't die. She couldn't come.

Garrett stared blankly at the pitch-black ceiling of his cell. The slow, rhythmic thump-thump of his failing heart sounded less like a lifeline and more like a ticking time bomb holding back the end of the world.