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.
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.
The rage that forms in my chest is cold. Hard. Sharp enough to cut.
I’m failing Ember.
Because I wasn’t fast enough. Smart enough. Strong enough to protect her.
Because I let something sap my strength and couldn’t get her out of these godforsaken mountains.
The fury sharpens into something harder than desperation. Colder than panic.
Determination.
I need to get out of here. Need to save her. Need—
Then I feel it.
A faint vibration through the concrete beneath me, rhythmic, deliberate. Not machinery. Not the rumble of vehicles or the cycling of air systems.
A heartbeat. Slow. Deep. Impossibly vast.
The same pulse from the caves, the one that followed us through stone and shadow, that made the walls hum with unseen power.
I press my palm flat against the floor.
The beat answers: three deliberate thuds that ripple through my sternum, through the hollow where my dragon used to burn, through ribs that creak with the strain of holding too much.
The air shifts. Turns sharp, metallic on my tongue. Electric. Ancient. The kind of age that makes modern magic feel like a child’s trick.
I taste something familiar in it. Dragon. But not mine. Not any I’ve ever known.
This is older. Vast in a way that makes even the oldest clans feel young.
I close my eyes and reach inward for my own fire. Find only the void, the absence where my dragon should be coiled and waiting.
But beneath that emptiness, something stirs.
Warmth that isn’t mine. Immense. Waking.
Dragon essence, yes. But stretched beyond mortal scale, like standing at the base of a mountain and feeling the summit breathe above the clouds.
The power buried here. The one the Syndicate tried to rouse with their rituals and their arrogance.
The Sleeping King.
I don’t understand it. Don’t know if it’s ally or threat or something beyond those categories entirely.
But desperation makes strange bargains.
And right now, I’m desperate enough to bargain with anything.
I don’t pray; haven’t in centuries. Not since I stopped believing that gods or Fate or anything else gave a damn about what happened to creatures like me.
But I reach toward that presence with pure intent anyway:
I need out. Please. She needs me.
For long seconds, nothing.
Just the pulse. Steady. Implacable. Ancient enough that my three hundred years feel like a blink.
Then heat floods my veins—sudden, shocking, impossible.
Not my dragonfire. The frequency’s wrong, the flavor different. This is older. Rawer. Power from before dragons learned to shape themselves into something civilized.
It burns through me without consuming. Fills the empty spaces without replacing what I lost.
The restraints around my wrists flicker, circuits struggling against something they weren’t designed to suppress.
My eyes snap open.
The dampeners were calibrated for modern dragon magic. Specific frequency. Known parameters. Centuries of Syndicate research condensed into energy fields that can shut down any registered dragon signature.
But whatever this ancient power is, it operates differently enough that the tech can’t fully contain it.
Like trying to cage sunlight with chicken wire.
I don’t waste the opportunity.
I grab the restraint housing with both hands and pull. Borrowed strength surges through muscle and bone; not my dragon exactly, but dragon power, nonetheless. Foreign and familiar all at once.
Metal groans. Circuits spark and smoke, acrid smell filling the small cell.
The left cuff shatters with a crack like breaking ice.
I freeze. Listening for alarms. For the automated systems that should be screaming through every corridor.
Silence.
Just the hum of machinery. The pulse of the ancient thing beneath the mountain. My own ragged breathing.
I work the right cuff loose; slower, more methodical, using leverage and the brief strength while it lasts. Fingers finding purchase on metal still hot from shorting circuits.
It releases with a hiss of depressurizing energy fields.
The ancient power fades as quickly as it came, warmth draining out of my veins and leaving me purely human again. Weak. Mortal. Alone in my own skin.
But free.
I flex my hands. Wrists raw where the cuffs sat, skin burned and blistered from suppression energy. But functional.
Whatever you are, I think toward the power still thrumming beneath me. I don’t know if you’re helping or using me. But thank you.
We’ll settle accounts later.
I move to the cell door. Electronic lock, biometric backup, reinforced frame designed to withstand dragon strength. The kind of security that requires either proper credentials or enough firepower to bring down a building.
No tools. No explosives. No dragon strength anymore.
I test the handle anyway, habit more than hope. A lifetime of breaking out of places I’m not supposed to be.
It clicks.
Not forced. Not broken.
Simply… unlocked.
As if the mountain itself reached into circuits and wiring and quietly opened the path.