Page 53 of Saving Her Dragon

For the first time since his rescue, a voice drifted through the gap from the other side of the seal. It wasn't a memory, and it wasn't an echo from his past. It was smooth, perfectly lucid, and deeply, terribly amused.

“There you are.”

12

Behind the Door

The smooth, amused voice echoing from the open doorway of his mind did not break Garrett.

After decades of suffocating fear, blind confusion, and the paralyzing shame of believing he was a lethal liability to the woman he loved, the truth brought an absolute, crystal-clear clarity. It wasn't a structural neurological failure. It wasn't a broken mind fracturing under the weight of trauma.

It was Leviathan.

The clinical terror that had gripped Garrett’s throat for days evaporated, replaced instantly by blinding, white-hot rage. He didn't flinch, and he damn sure didn't retreat. He locked his jaw, his mental presence straightening within the smoky dark of his mind’s eye until he stood like iron against the threshold.

“Get. Out,” Garrett commanded, his voice dropping into a flat, lethal register.

Deep inside, the Dragon King with whom he shared his soul awoke with a vengeance. “GET OUT!” A massive wave of Dragon Fire slammed against the open stone door, the sheer force of their shared anger rattling the very foundations of Garrett's consciousness.

For the first time since his rescue, the entity on the other side of the seal answered him while he was wide awake. The sound was terrifyingly fluid, cutting through his conscious mind with the effortless arrogance of a master thief entering a house he had already broken into.

“You were always such an obedient little doorway, Garrett,” Leviathan murmured, the voice dripping with an elegant, sickening amusement.

The insult hit Garrett like a physical blow. The soldier in him surged forward, his instincts demanding he charge straight through the stone door to tear the emerald fire out of the Demon Lord's face.

“No, lad,” Han intervened instantly, a massive, heavy claw extending within their shared mind to pin Garrett back from the threshold. The Winged Warrior’s pride was bleeding, but the strategist was wide awake. “We do not enter a battlefield we cannot see. The bastard wants you furious. He wants you impulsive. Do not give him the terrain.”

Outside the confines of his skull, everyone in the room had gone completely still.

Sydney stared directly into his face, her fingers dug tightly into the fabric of his sleeve. Through the raw, exposed channels of the Mating Bond, he knew she felt the turbulent, radiating heat of his fury, and beneath it, the unmistakable static of a foreign frequency vibrating against his soul.

"He's talking to you," Sydney said, her voice a sharp, definitive statement.

Garrett nodded once, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall.

Carrick stepped into the Guardsman’s line of sight. His heavy hand settled onto Garrett's shoulder, scanning the room for a physical manifestation. "Garrett. Can the bastard hear us?"

Garrett took a shallow breath, his jaw tight. "I don't know." He shrugged, his mind still listening to the low, pulsing hum behind the stone door.

"Let's test the parameters," Carrick commanded. Turning his face toward the empty air of the room, his deep voice dripped with deliberate, mocking contempt. "Leviathan is a pathetic, broken coward who can't execute a single tactical maneuver without hiding behind another's skirts. He’s an absolute embarrassment even to Lucifer’s court."

Garrett listened internally. There was no shift in the hum. No ripple of anger from the other side of the door.

Ginnie stepped up beside her husband, her sharp vision tracking the ambient Magic. "Yeah, schoolyard taunts are about all that bag of hollow bones deserves anyway. He’s a non-variable."

Still nothing. The baseline behind the seal remained perfectly smooth, entirely deaf to the physical sounds bouncing off the cottage walls. Leviathan wasn't tapping into Garrett's ears. He was tapping into his energetic architecture.

Then, Sydney closed her eyes. She didn't speak aloud. Instead, she gathered the full, brilliant weight of her conscious energy and fired it directly through the Mating Bond straight into Garrett’s heart. “Get away from my Mate, Monster.”

Instantly, the hum behind the stone door shattered.

“Ah,” Leviathan chuckled inside Garrett’s mind, the smooth tone rippling with a sudden, sharp interest. “The little Dragon Queen finally learned how to roar. And she is significantly stronger than before. I am intrigued.”

The reaction was instantaneous. Leviathan didn't sound surprised to find her there. After all, he had spent years monitoring them, but her specific frequency intersected the road perfectly.

Through the Mating Bond, Garrett felt Kara lose her absolute damn mind.

A blinding, explosive flare of pure White Dragon Magic erupted from Sydney's hands, its raw heat so intense it left a localized smell of ozone and scorched air in the bedroom. Garrett felt the massive weight of the Dragon Queen slam against the internal barriers of the bond, ready to tear the spiritual road to shreds.