8. Watching the Dark #2
Sydney’s entire body went completely, utterly still. The words on her screen blurred. The number seemed to burn itself into the back of her retinas as the memory of the leather-bound notebook rushed back into her mind.
3:42 AM.
The exact timestamp Garrett's hand had written on the page while he was dead to the world.
She held her breath, her eyes locking onto Garrett’s face. He didn't move. He didn't rise. He didn't even twitch. The sheets remained perfectly flat across his broad chest.
3:43 AM.
The clock shifted. Garrett remained completely undisturbed, his breathing deep and even. Sydney let out a slow, cautious breath, a wave of relief washing over her.
“See?” she thought fiercely, trying to force her racing heart to slow down. “It’s just a coincidence. A meaningless number. Everything is fine.”
And then, the universe went entirely wrong.
It didn't start with a physical movement or a sudden drop in temperature. It started within the sacred space of the Mating Bond.
Garrett was physically right there in front of her. She could see the steady rise and fall of his chest. She could hear the quiet murmur of his breath. But through the deep metaphysical channel that bound their souls, Garrett simply vanished.
The Bond didn't break. It didn't sever, and there was no blinding flash of agony that usually accompanied a damaged connection. It was infinitely worse. For one horrifying, breathless second, the space where Garrett’s vibrant, fiercely protective soul usually resided went entirely, completely empty.
It was like reaching out to hold someone's hand and finding nothing but a freezing, endless void.
Sydney’s stomach dropped into a bottomless pit of ice. She blinked, shaking her head as she tried to force her consciousness deeper into the Bond.
“I’m just distracted,” she lied to herself, her mind panicking as she concentrated all of her energy on the link. “I’m just tired.”
Nothing. There was no warmth. No draconic heat. No Garrett.
“Sydney.” The voice echoed inside her head, stark and flat.
It was Kara. The Dragon Queen sounded grim.
There was none of her usual dry humor or protective snark.
There was no teasing banter about public indecency.
It was just her name, spoken with a heavy, cold gravity that made the hairs on Sydney's arms stand on end.
Kara felt it too. The Dragon Queen with whom she shared her soul was staring into the exact same empty void.
Sydney bolted from the chair, her tablet clattering to the floorboards, forgotten as she rushed to the side of the bed.
Reaching out, her hands trembled as she pressed her palm directly against Garrett’s bare shoulder.
His skin was warm. The pulse fluttering against his neck was perfectly steady, perfectly normal.
"Garrett?" she whispered, her voice cracking with a rising, uncontainable terror. "Garrett, please."
His eyes remained tightly closed, his face completely peaceful in the dim moonlight.
She slid her fingers down his arm, gripping his large hand, squeezing it with everything she had, desperately screaming for him through the empty channel of the Bond.
There was no answer. Nothing but a quiet, hollow echo.
And then… Garrett’s fingers moved.
His hand shifted against hers. Slowly, deliberately, his large fingers closed around her palm, giving her a gentle, reassuring squeeze. Three fingers wrapped around her knuckles, pressing twice in a specific, rhythmic cadence.
It was the exact, familiar squeeze he gave her every single day when he wanted to tell her he loved her without saying the words aloud.
Sydney’s chest heaved, a sob of pure, overwhelming relief rising in her throat. She nearly collapsed against his chest, her mind instantly screaming that he was back, that he was okay…
Then, she looked down at his face.
Garrett’s features were entirely slack. His jaw was relaxed, his breathing deep, rhythmic, and slow. The absolute, unshakeable reality slammed into her like a physical blow.
He hadn't woken up. He was still completely, deeply asleep.
The hand squeeze was almost enough to reassure her.
Sydney clung to the feeling of his fingers around hers, her mind frantically assembling defensive logic. Reflex. Muscle memory. Some unconscious response to her touch.
There were explanations. There had to be.
Except the terrifying void in her soul hadn't closed. Garrett was physically touching her, but spiritually, he was still completely gone.
Then, the strangest thing happened.
Right before her eyes, Garrett’s face changed. It didn't twist into an evil smirk, and his features didn't turn sinister. It wasn’t some horror movie. It was infinitely worse. The natural relaxation of deep sleep vanished, replaced by an absolute, terrifying blankness.
His jaw wasn't tense, but it wasn't loose either. His features became a smooth, expressionless mask. It didn't look like her Mate was sleeping. It looked like his body was a completely empty house, the lights turned off and the owner gone.
Sydney felt a cold, numbing dread wash over her skin, freezing the blood in her veins.
“That is Garrett's body,” Kara whispered inside her mind. The Dragon Queen’s voice was hollow, stripped of all its usual majesty and sass, sounding entirely unmoored. “But I cannot feel Garrett.”
The physical evidence told her Garrett was right there. Her Bond told her something entirely different. Profound dissociation. Some psychological defense mechanism. An unmapped quirk of a fractured human-Dragon Bond.
Then, the anomaly simply ended.
Less than a minute after it had begun, Garrett suddenly inhaled a sharp, deep pocket of air. His chest heaved violently beneath her hand. His fingers instantly tightened around hers. His grip turned hard and solid.
The Mating Bond didn't just open… it slammed back into place with the force of a localized shockwave. Pure warmth, fierce protection, and the unmistakable, bright resonance of Garrett’s soul flooded back into her consciousness, instantly vaporizing the freezing void.
Sydney gasped aloud, stumbling back a half-step against the edge of the bedside table.
Garrett’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked against the dim moonlight, his expression soft, sleepy, and entirely, beautifully normal. He looked up at her, his brow furrowing as he noticed her standing over him in the dark.
"Syd?" he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.
A hot, emotional tear escaped Sydney's eye, tracking down her cheek. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she pressed them against his jaw.
The soldier bolted upright in the bed, his blanket falling away as his hands locked onto her shoulders. "What's wrong? What happened? Did the bell go off? Did I move?"
Sydney swallowed the lump in her throat, shaking her head. "No. You didn't move a muscle."
Garrett immediately went into tactical investigation mode. He swung his legs out of bed, grabbing his phone from the nightstand to check the live security feed. He flicked his eyes to the mudroom door downstairs… No change. He checked the notebook… Untouched.
"Everything is secure, Sydney," Garrett said, his tactical brain trying to find the baseline. "The camera shows I've been flat on my back since midnight. I never left the bed."
"Garrett, listen to me," Sydney interrupted, her voice tight as she climbed onto the mattress beside him, forcing him to look at her. "Your body didn't move. But you weren't here."
In quiet, terrifying detail, she laid out exactly what she and Kara had experienced. She told him about the sudden, absolute void in the Mating Bond. She described the chilling, empty blankness that had settled over his features while his physical hand gave her the familiar squeeze.
The color drained from Garrett’s face. He set the phone down on the nightstand with a slow, deliberate movement, his fingers locking into tight fists. He didn't look at the camera feed anymore.
He went entirely inward, dropping his consciousness into the dark spaces of his mind– Han.
Inside him, the Dragon King was completely shaken. Han wasn't roaring with fury, and he hadn't witnessed an external threat breaching their sanctuary. The Winged Warrior was vibrating with a deep, systemic shock because he had just experienced the exact same terrifying void from the inside out.
“I remember us drifting off, Lad,” Han admitted, his deep mental voice trembling with a rare, raw vulnerability. “Then... the darkness came. Not a dreamless sleep. A void. A complete absence of existence. And then I woke up the exact second your eyes opened just now.”
Garrett’s chest tightened. A cold trickle of sweat ran down his spine.
This time, his body hadn't physically moved. He hadn't marched a quarter mile to a creek bed, and he hadn't stolen anything. He had stayed perfectly still under the covers.
And that made it infinitely more terrifying. Whatever happened during those thirty seconds had happened entirely inside him. His body had remained exactly where it belonged while both he and Han lost the same piece of time.
"Maybe I'm dissociating," Garrett said quietly, his eyes fixed on the blank notebook page. Shaking his head, he kept going, “I hate that word. It’s a sterile piece of medical vocabulary I picked up from the doctors during rehab. Never made any sense, and here I am using it.”
“If you don’t like that explanation, what do you think it is?”
“I don’t know,” he instantly countered. “But I am making my tactical brain map the parameters of this goofy theory.” Narrowing his eyes, he nodded. "Maybe my conscious mind just drops offline during some stage of deep sleep.”
Was he right? Was her Mate's soul drifting into a clinical void, but remaining grounded?
It was plausible. Or so she thought.
Later that morning, when they laid out the timeline for Carrick, he agreed without hesitation. "We're out of our depth on the psychological front, Garrett. We need someone more qualified to examine the structure of your mind. I'll handle finding the right person."