Page 39 of Mating Her Dragon

But Sydney was the Special One. Sydney could see the seams between Realms. Sydney could deny a piece of foreign Magic the right to exist with a single word. Sydney could look at the oldest, most sacred Bond in Dragon history and read its architecture like a page.

What could Leviathan do if he ever got a door that led to her?

Neither of them knew. That was the part that made her stomach turn over slowly, again and again. But she knew, with absolute certainty, that he wanted to find out.

"We're not opening that Mating Bond," Garrett said.

Not a question. Not a suggestion. A door slammed shut with the same finality he'd used on the Mating Bond itself thirty seconds earlier.

"Garrett…"

"No."

"You realize you're doing the thing again."

"I am aware."

She almost smiled, except this time he wasn't being irrational, and she wasn't going to pretend he was just to make a point. They had evidence now. A scar, a reaction, a presence turning its head from somewhere she couldn't name. This wasn't fear dressed up as strategy.

This was strategy in its purest form.

"We don't perform the Mating Ceremony," Sydney agreed, "until we know exactly what we're dealing with, and exactly how to close that door before it ever opens."

Garrett's shoulders eased, fractionally, at hearing her say it without a fight. But Sydney was already thinking, and Garrett, damn him, knew that face by now too.

"No," he said.

"I haven't said anything."

"You are thinking something reckless."

"I prefer innovative."

Because here was the thing nobody on the other side of that torn seam understood yet. Leviathan thought the scar was a vulnerability– a weak point he could eventually widen, a door he could eventually force open on his own terms, in his own time.

But Sydney could see the path he thought he was building. And he had no idea yet how much of it she could see.

They called Carrick that afternoon.

Sydney walked him through it as plainly as she could. She explained the Mating Bond's structure, the braid, the doors, the scar sitting just beside Garrett's side of it, and the reaction when Garrett had cracked it open even slightly.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

"Let me make sure I understand this correctly," Carrick said finally. "You looked inside your own Mating Bond?"

"Yes."

"Because apparently that's a thing you can do now?"

"Apparently."

Carrick exhaled, long and heavy, the sound of a man recalibrating an already generous estimate of how strange his week was about to get. He pulled Ginnie into the call a few minutes later. Necromancy dealt in souls, after all, and if anyone in Southern Texas had a useful frame for something shaped like this, it was her.

Ginnie listened to the whole thing without interrupting. When she finally spoke, her voice was careful and measured. It was the voice of someone choosing her words with real precision.

"A scar is not an open door," she said. "I want to be clear about that distinction, because I think it matters enormously. Garrett is not compromised. Leviathan cannot simply walk back into him whenever it suits him. If he could, he'd have done it already, and none of us would be having this conversation."

Sydney felt something in her chest loosen, just slightly.