I’ve tested the restraints methodically over the last few hours, yanking, twisting, searching for structural weaknesses that don’t exist. The cuffs are Syndicate engineering at its finest: redundant fail-safes, stable energy signatures, metal alloys designed to withstand dragon strength I don’t have anymore.
Without my fire, I’m just a man with bloody knuckles hitting walls that won’t move.
It’s pointless.
But I force myself to think strategically anyway. Identify exits I can’t reach. Map corridors I can’t navigate. Itemize weapons I don’t have.
It’s what I do when hope runs thin and the alternative is admitting I’m going to die in this concrete tomb.
The facility hums around me with its own form of life; distant machinery cycling through routines, boots on concrete marking patrol rotations, the occasional rumble of vehicles in loading areas. All normal. All proceeding according to whatever schedule they maintain in this carved-out mountain fortress.
Time passes. Could be minutes. Could be an hour. My internal clock’s shot to hell along with everything else.
Then footsteps approach in the corridor outside.
I go still. Every muscle locking down. Listening.
Two guards stop near my door, voices muffled but audible through the gap at the bottom where concrete meets steel.
“Transport’s confirmed for 0600.” The first voice is male, bored. “Command wants the hybrid moved to headquarters before dawn. They’ll have use for her there.”
The word sucks the wind from me, damaged ribs screaming as I pull in air.
Hybrid.
My chest locks. Breath stops halfway up my throat.
They know.
Ember’s secret—the one Vanya protected for twenty-one years, the one that kept her daughter alive and hidden—is exposed. Laid bare. Weaponized.
“What about the male?” The second guard sounds younger. Less certain.
“Execution scheduled at first light. Standard protocol. Single round, incinerator after. Clean.”
The words make bile rise in my throat.
Single round. Clinical. Efficient.
They’re going to put a bullet in my skull at dawn and burn what’s left of me.
“Shame,” the first guard continues. “Heard he took down five operatives single-handed before they got the dampeners on him.”
“Doesn’t matter now. Let’s go. Shift rotation in ten.”
Their footsteps fade down the corridor, boots echoing until silence swallows the sound.
I sit motionless. Letting the information process through the fog of concussion and exhaustion.
They’re transporting Ember to Syndicate headquarters. To the Ivory League. To people who’ve spent decades hunting hybrids, studying them, finding new and creative ways to prove they shouldn’t exist.
I know what happens to hybrids in their custody.
Research first: genetic analysis, magical testing, documentation of every abnormality. Then experimentation. Then public execution broadcast as a warning to anyone else who might be hiding mixed blood.
They’ll parade her death like a trophy. Proof that their ideology is righteous. That dragons and other species were never meant to mix.
And I’ll be dead before she ever reaches headquarters.
