Page 50 of Mating Her Dragon

One second. Two. Three.

Garrett started to breathe again.

Then the filament went taut.

Keevandrie pulled back. Hard.

Sydney swayed. Garrett had her hand before the sway finished, gripping tightly, watching her eyes lose focus for one terrible half-second.

"Home," Garrett said. One word, low and certain.

Sydney's attention snapped to him. He felt it happen through the Mating Bond. He felt her orient herself around him the way she had at the coast, around his scar. Earth. Ocean. Airstream. Garrett.

Home.

She stabilized instantly. Not an accident this time, not something that had worked once by chance. A technique now. Something they could use on purpose, together, whenever the ground under her Magic went uncertain.

Then the Council started reporting, one voice overlapping the next. A second marker had activated. Then a third, farther north. Then a fourth, further inland.

The whole network was waking up.

"Sydney, disconnect," Carrick said, his tone sharp and direct through the phone.

Garrett felt her hesitate– one half-second of resistance, the pull of curiosity fighting against the agreement she'd made.

"Sydney."

She disconnected, immediately, cleanly. The filament snapped loose from her sight the instant she chose to let it go.

Garrett felt something in his chest ease at that more than he expected to. She'd kept the agreement. Every piece of it. That mattered more than he had words for right now.

With multiple markers responding, the Council finally had something to plot. They had a map, directions, and an activation sequence that wasn't random at all.

All of it pointed toward the same general region. Northern California, well inland from the coast, deep into old-growth forest with almost no modern population to speak of. Somewhere Keevandrie had clearly chosen because very few humans would ever wander close enough to notice anything wrong.

One of the Council team went quiet, studying the coordinates. They recognized the area.

An old Elven sanctuary, buried beneath an abandoned logging settlement, forgotten by most modern Magical record-keeping centuries ago. Not Keevandrie's personal territory, as far as anyone knew. However, it was a place where Ancient Elves had once studied the boundaries between Realms directly.

Threshold history.

"That cannot be a coincidence," Carrick said.

"There are no coincidences," Sydney said.

Garrett felt something grim settle into his chest at hearing a line of the Dragon Guard's own credo turned back against exactly the kind of enemy it had been built to warn them about. Then Garrett looked at the sequence itself, and something about its shape started bothering him.

The markers hadn't simply reacted at random. They'd woken in order. One. Two. Three. Each one closer to the old Elven site than the last.

He'd led Forces long enough to recognize intentional movement when he saw it laid out on a map. It was all part of Keevandrie’s plan.

"She's giving us breadcrumbs," Garrett said.

"I know," Sydney said.

"Then we've learned nothing."

Sydney shook her head. "No. We learned where she wants us."