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“Let me guess,” I huffed. “Something on the other end just jerked his chain?”

Neysa didn't answer. She didn't have to.

“Well, shit.”

4

The heavy silence of the wasteland didn't just return. It congealed.

Maisie stood with her arms crossed over her chest, her dark brown eyes narrowed as she watched me stare down at the bare skin of my forearm. The atmosphere between us was still dangerously charged after the discovery of the Hellmark on my arm.

“You felt that, didn't you?” Maisie murmured under her breath, her voice barely carrying over the low whistle of the desert wind.

I didn't answer immediately. I couldn't.

Deep within my chest, a sensation I hadn't experienced since escaping the Pit flared to life. It wasn’t a physical ache, and it certainly wasn't the agonizing burn of Mammon’s whips. It was a cold, inexorable tug. A ghostly pressure seating itself directly into the fabric of my soul, pulling outward toward the shimmering, purple geometry of the Wards.

Inside our shared psyche, Sullevan went entirely rigid, his emerald eyes blazing with sudden, dangerous clarity. “Lad… I feel it,” Sully thought in my direction, his huge jaw locking until his teeth ground together. “I know exactly what it is.”

I recognized the sensation with sickening familiarity. During my brutal, century-long sentence as Mammon’s unwilling instrument of war, there had been moments when this exact, icy tether would tighten through my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. Whenever it happened, a primal, inescapable awareness would bloom in my mind. I was being summoned.

In the dark trenches of the Underworld, I had assumed it was simply part of Mammon’s absolute, terrifying power over his Enforcers. I believed it was the price of a broken spirit, but standing on the mortal plane, whole and restored, with my Dragon King’s heartbeat thundering alongside mine, the ugly truth finally clicked into place.

That fucking bastard hadn't just tortured me. He had marked me. Like a fucking cow, I was branded.

The realization sent a wave of icy fury through my veins, but beneath the anger, a cold comfort took root. The Hellmark was a tracking beacon, a psychic leash, but it could no longer control me. The chains of Mammon were broken. Sully was back. I was a Dragon Guardsman once more, and no creature from the dark could force my knees to the dirt.

But I knew exactly what a leash was used for, and that pissed me off even more.

The shimmering purple Wards suddenly breathed, a violent, luminous pulse rippling across the geometric patterns as the ghostly tether gave another sharp, demanding yank.

My survival instincts took over. Dropping into a protective stance, my armor of bronze Dragon scales clinking loudly, I stepped directly between Maisie and the boundary line.

"Get back," I ordered, my voice dropping into a low, uncompromising military growl.

Maisie didn't take a single step backward. Instead, she lifted her chin, her eyes flashing with instant irritation. "We have already discussed your charming habit of giving me orders, Dead Guy."

I didn't turn around. My gaze remained locked on the pulsing barrier. "This isn’t a discussion."

"Then you’re doing a terrible job of talking to yourself," Maisie snapped back, shaking her head with such gusto that the bun atop her head swayed from side to side.

Inside my mind, a massive bronze head fell back. Sullevan’s deep, rumbling laughter echoed through my mind, rich and thoroughly delighted. “I like her, Lad. I like her a lot.”

“Of course you do,” I grumbled internally, my brows knitting so closely together that I wondered if I would have a unibrow for the rest of my life.

“Our Mate has spirit,” Sully purred, settling into his thoughts with absolute satisfaction. “She does not fear a Dragon.”

“Our Mate has a death wish,” I corrected grimly.

Maisie eyed me. I was pretty sure she could tell I was talking to Sully. There was a fire in her eyes that said she was about to tear into me.

And that was exactly what happened next…

"Are you two talking about me in there?"

I kept my face entirely expressionless.

"No."