I tried to speak. What came out wasn’t words. It was a gust of steam, hot enough to fog the glass of the framed certification on the wall.
The dragon pushed harder, ramming itself against the remnants of the old binding. Something tore. For a heartbeat, my vision went double: the room overlaid with another place, another time—a childhood hallway, wallpaper peeling, flames licking along the ceiling as I screamed.
No.
Not this time. I grabbed onto the only solid thing in the maelstrom—Phoenix’s scent in my memory, smoky and sharp, the way he said my name like it mattered. The heat sharpened. The metal bands around my wrists glowed, then bent, warping outward. The sigils etched into them flared and then ran like molten wax.
Hartshorne staggered back another step. “He shouldn’t be able to do this,” he cried. Panic had leached the professional calm from his voice. “Not with the first binding still intact—”
“It’s not intact,” I rasped, voice shredded.
The floor under the bed creaked. My father glanced down. "Sedate him," he yelled.
The polished vinyl was buckling slightly, as if something beneath it had expanded. “Another sedative might stop his heart,” Hartshorne shot back. Sweat stood out on his forehead. “The lattice is in flux—I told you we needed more time to map it—”
“I pay you tofixhim, not make excuses,” Wells snarled.
“Then stop provoking him,” Hartshorne snapped.
Wells opened his mouth, furious, and that was when he made the final mistake. “If you don’t calm down this instant,” he said, pointing a shaking finger at me like I was eight years old again, “I will personally make sure that boy of yours disappears. Do you understand? I will bury him so deep evenyouwon’t remember his name.”
The dragon reared up, enormous inside the too-small cage of my bones.
Mine,it roared.Mate. Not yours. Not yours.
Heat tore through me like someone had ripped my chest open and poured lava into the cavity. The remaining sigils on my skin blistered, then peeled, flaking away as ash that vanished before it hit the sheets. The band at my throat snapped completely and flew across the room, hitting the wall with a denting crack.
The bed frame groaned. Metal warped. The IV stand toppled, clattering to the floor, lines tearing free from my arm. Blood spattered the sheet in bright drops, instantly hissing into steam.
My father stumbled back, for once honestly afraid. “Cole!”
Hartshorne threw an arm up to shield his face, stumbling toward the door. “We need containment wards,” he shouted. “Now. Before—”
The door flew inward.
Not opening.Buckling.
The reinforced wood bowed like cheap plastic, then shattered inwards in a burst of splinters and warped metal. The corridor beyond filled with smoke—not choking, not black fire-smoke, but a thin, shimmering haze that smelled like ozone and dragon-scent and…something else.
Two figures stood in the wrecked doorway.
Ignatius first—broad shoulders, suit jacket singed at the edges, eyes burning a deep, furious gold. His jaw was set in a way I’d never seen before, a promise of ruin aimed squarely at my father. And behind him, half a step to the side, chest heaving, hair a wild mess, eyes wide and blazing—
“Cole,” Phoenix whispered.
My dragon stilled. The heat didn’t vanish; it rerouted, slamming sideways toward him, curling around his scent like it had been looking for him the whole time. My vision tunneled. The edges of the room blurred until all I could see was Phoenix.
“Hey,” he said, voice shaking but steady enough to cross the distance between us. “Hey, sweetheart. You with me?”
Sweetheart.He called me that like it meantmine.
My father recovered first. Of course he did.
“You have no right—” he began, stepping in front of the bed like he could physically block their view, like he still owned the ground he was standing on.
Ignatius didn’t even look at him. He brushed past, one big hand landing hard on my father’s shoulder and shoving him sideways into the wall with enough force to knock the breath from him. “Touch him again and I will end you,” he said calmly, like he was commenting on the weather.
Phoenix was already moving. He stumbled once—the floor underfoot softening, refreezing, reacting to my wild temperature spikes—but he didn’t stop until he was right there, at the side of the bed, fingers hovering over my arm like he wanted to grab me and didn’t know where it was safe.
