Page 49 of Mating Her Dragon

Instead, New Garrett asked, "What can happen to you?"

Sydney answered honestly, which he appreciated more than he let on. She didn't know everything– nobody did, not yet, not about any of this. But she believed the filament was smaller, far less dangerous, than the Abyssal threshold sitting beside his own scar. She wasn't crossing it. Wasn't opening the Mating Bond. Wasn't touching the scar at all.

"I'm basically sending a pulse down a wire," she said.

"Basically."

"You really do latch onto the least comforting word in every sentence I say."

He did. He wasn't going to apologize for it.

But she acknowledged the actual risk without him having to drag it out of her. “Keevandrie might pull back, hard, and if she does, I could lose sense of which way was home for a moment. I believe it would be the same disorientation I felt while tracing the architecture around your scar.

So, Garrett set conditions. Not commands. Conditions Sydney agreed to, laid out plainly between them before either of them moved another step.

The Mating Bond stayed closed, fully guarded, untouched. Garrett held her hand for the entirety of it. One pulse, and only one. She did not follow anything she felt reaching back from the other end, no matter what it was. If either Han or Kara said stop, they stopped, no argument, no negotiation. And if Garrett felt her lose her sense of direction even slightly, he pulled her back immediately, whether she'd finished or not.

"Three Dragons and one Special One all get veto power?" Sydney said, tilting her head and raising both eyebrows.

"Correct."

"I approve," Kara said.

"So do I," Han added.

"Traitors," Sydney said. "Every one of you."

She agreed anyway. Garrett understood, watching her nod, that this– exactly this, the building of a safety plan together instead of one of them simply overriding the other– was what partnership actually looked like. Not stopping her. Not surrendering every ounce of caution he possessed just because she asked. Building the thing together, piece by piece, until both of them could live with it was a true partnership, the kind he wanted with Sydney.

They returned to the marker with the Council this time, properly, with people monitoring every known Keevandrie signature they had access to. Carrick stayed on speakerphone for the whole thing, because there was no version of this circus he was willing to miss.

"For the record," Carrick said, "I hate this plan."

"Duly noted," Sydney said.

"So do I," Garrett said.

"I am surrounded by negativity," Sydney announced to no one in particular.

The filament was still there. It was thin, patient, waiting exactly where they'd left it. Garrett couldn't see it, not the way Sydney could, but he felt her focus narrow through the Mating Bond, her attention sharpening to something precise and deliberate.

She explained it to him while she worked. The filament carried grammar too, same as everything else she'd learned to read– not enough to transport a being, or move a Spell of any real size, but enough for something smaller.

Recognition. Acknowledgment.

Maybe, Sydney said, that was exactly what Keevandrie had built it for in the first place. A little Magical I found you, waiting patiently for someone capable of saying it back.

Sydney smiled.

Garrett deeply disliked that smile.

She didn't send anything down the filament– not a blast, not a command, nothing that resembled the authority she'd used on the beacon. She simply let it recognize her. Gave it the smallest possible sample of exactly what it had been built to detect.

Sydney Kavanaugh was here.

Then she withdrew.

One pulse, exactly as agreed. Nothing happened.