Page 60 of Saving Her Dragon

Leviathan’s smooth amusement instantly faded. His emerald eyes narrowed into a cold, dangerous slit. “You find his suffering amusing, girl?”

"No," Sydney said, stepping across the threshold into the room, her boots steady against the concrete. Her White Dragon Magic flared around her hands, not in a defensive shield, but in a blinding, aggressive aura of absolute certainty. "I find you hilarious. You spent years torturing him, analyzing his biology, building a road through his mind... and you really don't understand him at all."

She didn't look at the chains, and she didn't look at the blood. She walked directly toward the restraint table. Her eyes locked entirely on the flickering lavender of her Mate's gaze and nowhere else.

"Syd," Garrett choked out, his cracked lips barely moving as he stared at her through the green smoke. The hollow look in his eyes fractured, replaced by a sudden, spiking terror as he truly realized she was standing inside the belly of the beast. "Get out. You have to leave. Now."

"No," Sydney said smoothly, the heels of her boots clicking against the concrete as she closed the distance.

“Leviathan wants something from you– from Kara,” Garrett argued, his voice turning raw as the iron chains rattled violently against the restraint table. “We don't know why your anchor was stronger. If you stay in here…”

"Yeah. We've already established that, Dragon Man," Sydney interrupted, her tone defiantly casual, refusing to let the horror of the room dictate the energy.

"SYDNEY."

"Garrett." She stopped right at the edge of the rusted table. The fierce, burning white light of her Magic illuminated the dark circles under his eyes, the blood on his shirt, and the thick, blood-caked lines of his trauma. Her voice dropped its sharp edge, turning incredibly soft, saturated with an unshakeable love that echoed through the Bond. "I am not leaving you in here."

Garrett looked down at his own wrists, at the heavy iron cuffs biting into his skin. "Look at me, Syd. This isn't real. This is just a memory. I'm already out. I'm safe in bed."

"The pain was real," Sydney said firmly, her eyes locking onto his. She didn't minimize what he had survived. She didn't try to sweep the horrors of his captivity under a rug of easy platitudes. She knew they had to face it all, and they had to do it together. "The cells were real. What they did to you was real, Garrett."

Reaching down, her warm palms instantly cupped his face, ignoring the illusion of grime and blood. "But this room? This broken, chained version of you? This isn't who you are."

Garrett let out a ragged, trembling breath, turning his face into her touch. "You don't know what I was in here, Syd. You don't know how small I felt. How much I wanted it to just stop."

"I know exactly who you were," Sydney whispered fiercely, her thumb tracing the line of his jaw. "You were surviving. You were holding the line when anyone else would've broken. That is not weakness, Garrett. That is an unstoppable, iron will."

While Sydney worked toward the heart of the man, the Dragon Queen with whom she shared her soul went to war.

Kara didn't look at the rusted table or the chains. Her golden presence flared behind Sydney's eyes. Her well-honed senses expanded outward, scanning the thick stone blocks and the shifting metal walls of the hidden compartment.

Han wasn't chained beside Garrett. Kara's senses drove deeper into the stone, following the faint trace of the Dragon King's frequency.

There. Inside the walls.

The same artificial separation they'd been fighting all along wasn't merely represented by the architecture. It was built into it.

Throwing her head back within the spiritual plane, Kara let out a deafening, reality-shattering roar. “KING AODHAN!"

Deep from within the very foundation of the stone walls, a distant, muffled, but absolutely colossal roar answered her. The sound shook the entire chamber, rattling the chains and sending cracks racing across the concrete floor. The Dragon King had been clawing at the parameters of this prison for years, waiting for someone to realize he was there.

"There you are, King," Kara growled, her Dragon pride flaring with a dangerous, golden heat.

"ABOUT BLOODY TIME, WOMAN!" Han's voice rumbled back through the masonry, raw, furious, and thick with centuries of unspent rage.

"Keep talking to me in that tone, and I may just leave you in there," Kara shot back, her need for a brief, majestic flash of humor rearing its gorgeous head.

"Break the damned wall!" Han roared.

Sydney felt the architecture shuddering beneath her feet. She couldn't simply snap Garrett's chains with brute force, and Kara couldn't melt the stone boundaries alone. The prison was built upon the illusion of their separation. To destroy the layout, they had to move in absolute alignment. Woman to man. Dragon Queen to Dragon King.

Through the thin, warm, golden thread attached to her ankle, a sudden pulse of energy flared. Ginnie’s Magical tether was working perfectly, transmitting a rapid succession of words from the waking world straight into Sydney's consciousness: Stable. Hold. We're here.

Knowing Carrick, Grey, Ginnie, Star, and Darcy held the physical perimeter gave Sydney an unbreakable foundation. She didn’t have to worry and could keep her focus entirely inside the breach.

The moment Sydney's thumbs wiped the illusion of blood from Garrett's cheek, something changed. Leviathan's expression hardened. The smug certainty vanished from his emerald eyes.

Sydney felt the shift through the architecture beneath her feet. Whatever reaction he'd expected from her, this wasn't it. The Demon Lord stopped playing psychological games.