Page 38 of Saving Her Dragon

Reaching over, he clicked off the bedside lamp, plunging the bedroom into a calm, moonlit dark. They closed their eyes, preparing to slide into the deep, deep structures of sleep.

“Lad.”

The mental voice of the Dragon King, with whom Garrett had shared his soul, resonated through the Mating Bond Sydney shared with her Mate. It was incredibly quiet. It didn't rumble, and it didn't command. Han was speaking from the absolute center of Garrett’s psyche.

Hovering at the edge of sleep, her Mate asked, “What is it, Han?”

The Dragon King hesitated. There was a strange flicker of uncertainty. It was very strange. A Dragon King did not hesitate. He did not doubt.

“When you vanished last night... at 3:42,” Han rumbled, his mental voice dropping into a ghostly whisper. “I dreamed.”

Garrett’s entire mind went completely, terrifyingly still. Sydney opened her eyes to be sure he was okay.

The darkness behind her Mate’s eyelids suddenly felt vast and hostile as he asked, “What did you dream about, Han?”

Han was quiet for one long, agonizing second. Then he breathed, “I don't remember.”

9

The Space Between

Garrett didn’t move.

The darkness behind his eyelids felt wider. It was as if it was expanding into a vast, empty canyon that threatened to swallow him whole. Inside his mind, the silence that followed Han's admission was deafening. A Dragon King’s soul did not lose its grip on reality. It did not forget.

“Nothing?” Garrett pushed, dropping his consciousness deep into the hidden, fiery structures of his psyche. “Think, Han. Dig for it.”

He could feel the Winged Warrior trying. Truly trying. Trying with all his might and Magic. Through their shared Bond, Garrett experienced the internal phantom sensation of a massive predator clawing at a smooth, unyielding wall. It didn't feel like the hazy, fleeting frustration of a human simply forgetting the details of a morning dream.

The memory was there. Access to it wasn't.

There was no shimmering barrier of Sorcery visible in his head, and no foreign runes scripted across his thoughts, but the obstruction was absolute. There was an invisible, impenetrable wall standing between the Ancient Dragon King and what he desperately needed to see.

“There is a memory, lad,” Han rumbled, his voice rough, vibrating with a rare, frustrated vulnerability that made Garrett’s chest tighten. “I can feel the physical shape of it resting in the dark. I simply cannot reach it.”

Garrett’s tactical mind immediately began cataloging the variables, trying to find a defensible perimeter. “Did you dream during the thirty seconds Sydney felt the void? At 3:42 AM?”

“I do not know,” Han admitted heavily. “I remember the descent into sleep. Then... something. It was as if there was a fracture in the quiet that left a scar. Then I recall waking the exact second your eyes opened to see Sydney standing over us.”

“Did you feel afraid?” Garrett questioned, his mental voice sharp. “Was there pain? Were we threatened?” He was in full integration mode.

The Dragon King hesitated. His great golden eyes blinked slowly in the center of Garrett’s Mind’s Eye, processing a phantom sensation. “No. There was no pain, nor any threat.” The Winged Warrior paused, a deep, uneasy tremor rippling through the Bond. “It was cold.”

Garrett’s breath hitched in his throat. “Cold?”

“Impossibly cold,” Han whispered, his huge head slowly nodding up and down.

The word settled into the pit of Garrett’s stomach like a stone. It was a familiar anchor. His mind instantly flashed back to the sterile, freezing concrete of the Leviathan research facility, the numbing chill of the containment cells where they had pumped the air full of chemical sedatives. And he couldn’t forget the years submerged in freezing water. It was a perfect, logical explanation. The trauma was finally surfacing. Maybe Han wasn't experiencing anything supernatural at all. Maybe he'd simply had a nightmare rooted in their captivity. The memories were simply bleeding through the cracks of their Bond. Maybe this was simply another stage of Healing—their broken psyche finally knitting itself back together.

"Garrett?"

A soft, sleepy voice shattered their internal dialogue. Sydney shifted beside him. Under the blankets, her fingers gently tightened around his arm. Garrett and Han hadn't been communicating out loud, but the sheer, turbulent energy roaring through the Mating Bond was far from quiet. It was like a radio broadcasting a static storm into her head – and Garrett felt bad for waking his Mate.

"What's cold?" she murmured, rubbing her eyes as she propped herself up on one elbow in the moonlit bedroom.

Letting out a slow, steady breath, Garrett turned his head to meet Sydney’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I should have…”

“No worries.” She smiled. “Go ahead. Fill me in on what’s got y’all up.”