I slump in the chair, every muscle shaking. My mind races, trying to find an angle, a plan, anything.
They know what I am. They’re going to kill Luke. And I’m being handed to the people who want hybrids extinct.
I’ve hidden my whole life. Stayed small. Stayed quiet. Let my mother protect me because I didn’t know how to protect myself.
But if I don’t fight now, we’re both dead.
I close my eyes, forcing myself to breathe through the panic. I reach inward past the suppression field, searching for any thread of magic, any crack in the dampening.
For a moment, nothing. Just hollow silence.
Then—faint, distant—I feel it.
The pulse.
That steady heartbeat from the caves, the rhythm that’s followed us through stone and darkness. It’s stronger now. Closer. Not just background noise but something responding to my desperation.
The mountain isn’t just alive.
It’s listening.
Oh God, can it hear me?
I don’t know what you are.But if you’re going to wake up, now would be a really good time.
The pulse answers; one slow, thunderous beat that I feel in my bones, in my blood, in the concrete beneath my feet.
And somewhere deep below the facility, something ancient and vast begins to stir.
Chapter 17
Luke
Six hours. Maybe eight. Hard to track time accurately when you’re locked in a concrete box carved from mountain stone, breathing recycled air that tastes like rust and fear. My own fear… for her.
What are they doing to her?
I sit in semi-darkness, the single lightbulb bolted to the ceiling casting harsh shadows that turn the walls into something alive. Watchful. The metal bench digs into my spine, cold enough to leech warmth straight through the thick fabric of my pants and into bone.
My hands rest on my thighs. Energy restraints gleam dull amber around my wrists, dragon-specific suppression tech humming with steady pressure that makes my teeth ache. The frequency is designed to interfere with the connection between human form and dragon soul, like static on a radio, drowning out the signal.
Except there’s no signal left to drown.
Body inventory: two cracked ribs that catch with every breath, split knuckles still weeping, shoulder wound reopened and soaking through my ruined vest. Concussion making the edges of my vision swim whenever I move too fast. Exhaustion settled bone-deep, the kind that comes from burning through adrenaline with nothing left to fuel it.
But physical damage isn’t what’s killing me.
It’s the absence.
The hollow space where my dragon should be—where fire and power and centuries of identity used to burn—is just empty now. A void that echoes.
I never understood how fragile being human really feels until this moment. How vulnerable. How breakable. The weight of my own mortality pressing down on my chest with every breath.
Dragons don’t think about death. We’re too old, too strong, too certain of our place in the world.
Humans die every day.
And right now, I’m just human. Flesh and bone and failing systems trapped in a cell that doesn’t care how many centuries I’ve survived.
