Page 32 of Waking Her Dragon

“No,” Garrett interrupted, a weak but unyielding authority vibrating in his chest. “Look at me.”

Sydney froze. She stopped staring at the glowing sigils on the stone floor and looked directly into his bloodshot lavender eyes.

The realization hit her like a thunderclap, vibrating through every nerve ending in her body. Leviathan hadn’t just bound Garrett to an ancient, preexisting anchor point. He had built one around and within Garrett. He was the anchor. More specifically, Aodhan– the Dragon King sharing his soul– formed the living, breathing foundation of the threshold. And if Kara was the corresponding Queen… Sydney’s breath hitched as the entire paradigm flipped.

They had been playing Leviathan's game, trying to figure out how to pick his unholy lock. But they didn't need to manipulate his dark mechanism at all. The lock didn't belong to Leviathan. King and Queen were the fundamental fabric of the Dragon Realms. If they aligned their Magic directly, bypassing the stone entirely, they could rewrite the entire structure of the threshold together.

But Garrett's more-than-mortal mind was fractured from the torture. He didn't remember the incantations of old. He didn't remember how.

But Aodhan did. And Kara did.

Sydney looked across the blood-slicked stone at her Mate. For the first time since she had stepped through the door of The Abyss, Garrett wasn’t shouting at her to run. He wasn't trying to push her away to save her life.

He was asking her to trust him.

“Can you do this?” she whispered, her voice trembling but her gaze unwavering.

Garrett’s bruised, bleeding mouth twitched– not quite a smile, but a shadow of the fierce Guardsman he used to be. “No idea.”

Then, a sudden, staggering pressure flooded the cavern. The fading lavender in Garrett's eyes flared into a brilliant, blinding, incandescent white. The rattling wheeze in his chest vanished, replaced by a deep, resonant resonance that shook the dead air of The Abyss.

Aodhan’s deep, rumbling voice rolled through both of their souls, fierce and eternal: “I do.”

8

For the first time since the dark walls of The Abyss had slammed shut around him, Garrett felt the crushing cage inside his mind completely disintegrate.

Aodhan surged forward. The Dragon King didn’t slink through the shadows or use a masked presence to hide from their captors anymore. He fully, magnificently unfurled. The sheer, staggering scale of the presence expanding inside Garrett’s consciousness nearly stole what little breath he had left. Garrett’s human memories remained locked behind a heavy veil of trauma, but the muffled, static-filled connection to his Dragon was gone. Aodhan’s mind was suddenly as clear as ice, and twice as sharp.

“We cannot break Leviathan’s spell, my boy,” Aodhan’s voice rumbled deep in Garrett's chest, vibrating against his broken ribs.

Garrett’s stomach dropped into a cold, dark pit. “We can't?”

“We do not have to,” the King added, a fierce, primeval current of Power thrumming beneath the words.

Through their reestablished link, the Dragon King flooded Garrett’s mind with raw understanding, explaining only what was necessary. Leviathan’s complex trap was built entirely on stolen, bastardized Dragon Magic. The Demon Lord had bound them here, forcing King Magic into the role of an immobile anchor and drawing Queen Magic to act as the triggering key.

But those roles were unnatural. They were a violent distortion imposed by a lesser creature.

“If Kara and I willingly reconnect our ancient Dragon Magic,” Aodhan explained, his Light flaring behind Garrett’s eyes, “We can change the fundamental command of this room. We will not destroy the lock. We will rewrite what it does.”

Garrett looked across the blood-stained floor at the blond woman holding his gaze, her hand still hovering in the air. He trusted her, even if his mind couldn't remember why.

“And what does that cost us?” Garrett asked inwardly.

Silence was the only answer he got.

Dragging his chin up another inch, Garrett forced his unfocused, bloodshot vision to clear. Before the primordial Magic of the Dragons completely consumed his consciousness, he needed to look at her. Really look at her.

His human brain still couldn't unlock the specific memories of their past, if they even had one in the physical world. It remained trapped behind a wall of inky, black trauma. But now that she was physically standing less than ten feet away from him, the fragments that had haunted his fever dreams during his worst nights of torture suddenly aligned.

The halo of untamed blond curls, pinned up in a messy pile atop her head. The striking, fiercely protective blue eyes. Both were there.

His gaze drifted lower. He took in the muscles and curves of her shapely legs, looked past her jeans, to the very bottom of her frame. There were the light blue tennis shoes with the white toes.

Garrett’s breath hitched in his chest, a sharp gasp that made his broken ribs protest. They hadn't been hallucinations. The strange, vibrant splashes of canvas color that had flickered through his mind while Leviathan tore at his soul hadn't been a dying mind's tricks. Those stubborn, beautiful fragments had been her.

“You,” he breathed, the word scraping past his raw throat.