Page 8 of Mating Her Dragon

Waking up with the sun, needing to finish his research, Garrett picked up the tablet and got to work. Hours passed. Rays of the morning sun shone through the blinds, and the birds were singing outside as the small town traffic started to hum below.

From one beat of his heart to the next, Sydney woke the way she always did lately– all at once, no gentle drift, just eyes open and alert like a switch had been flipped. Garrett suspected that particular habit predated him by years. Some instincts, once installed, never fully powered down.

"Morning," he said, barely looking up from the tablet.

"You're still doing that?"

"I found a superior generator."

"Of course you did." She stretched, yawned, and reached across him to steal the tablet directly out of his hands with the shameless confidence of a woman who knew he'd let her get away with it. "Oh, by the way," she said, scrolling through his spreadsheet with an expression of deep, personal betrayal at how thorough it was, "apparently Magic listens to me now."

Garrett went very still. "What?"

"Yeah. Meant to mention that." She said it lightly, the way she said most things that terrified her, which was how he'd learned to catch the ones that actually mattered. "There's a Ward at Two Wolves. It’s protecting the front doors. I noticed a thread of it was frayed– just hanging there, kind of sparkling– and I thought, that shouldn't be like that." She shrugged. "And then it wasn't. Just... fixed itself… while I was looking at it."

"You cast something."

"That's the thing. I didn't. No Spell. No Incantation. Kara didn't do it either. She said so herself, and she'd have heard it if I had." Sydney tilted her head. "The Ward just... listened to my thoughts."

She shrugged again. It was cute, but it didn’t negate the warning bells going off in his head.

Garrett set the coffee he hadn't realized he was holding down onto the nightstand with the careful precision of a man deliberately not letting his hands shake. Then he turned fully toward her, every ounce of the Guardsman he'd spent centuries becoming rising up within him.

"Did it hurt?"

"No."

"Did you feel drained afterward? Tired? Anything pulled from you?"

"No, Garrett…"

"Did anything touch you? Physically? Before or during?"

"No."

"Did you hear anything? A voice? A presence? Anything at all?"

"Garrett."

"Did Kara sense another presence nearby when it happened?"

"Garrett." Sydney set the tablet down on the blanket covering her lap and put both hands on either side of his face, forcing his eyes to hers. "You know, most people start with huh, that's interesting."

"Most people aren't Mated to the Special One."

"Technically, we're not…"

"Do not start."

She grinned at him, unrepentant, and for just a moment the tight coil of alarm in his chest loosened. If she could still tease him, whatever had happened hadn't cost her anything she couldn't afford.

Then her expression shifted, and Garrett felt the change land in his gut before she'd said a single word.

"There's something else," she said quietly. "From yesterday. When we were walking back– when you took my hand." She hesitated. "I felt something. Through you. Not Leviathan. Something else. Far away." Her fingers tightened slightly against his jaw. "And whatever it was, Garrett– it knew I was there."

Every instinct Garrett owned went to war with itself in the blink of an eye. His mind went into overdrive. Thoughts swirled like water going down a drain. Cancel everything. Stay. Call Carrick. Fortify the room. Set a perimeter. Do not let her out of arm's reach until the variable is identified and neutralized.

He felt the words assembling themselves, felt his whole body angling toward the shape of a man about to build a cage out of love and call it protection. Then he caught himself. Caught the exact shape of what he was about to do– recreate, with his own hands, the very prison Sydney had spent yesterday morning declaring they were finished with. We're done going somewhere because somebody else needs us there. He was one sentence away from making that somebody himself.