14. Just Us #2
Carrick caught him looking and simply tapped the gold with a thick finger. "It's mine."
That was all. No complex explanations of sympathetic Magic, no deep breakdowns of the Law of Correspondence. The words were a powerful, definitive boundary.
Through the open window behind them, Garrett could hear the quiet, rhythmic scratching of metal against paper as Ginnie sat at the dining table, using her engraved silver fountain pen to make notes.
Down by the truck, Grey was already sliding his brass knife back into his pocket, and on the front porch, Sydney reached up, her fingers looping the vibrant blue silk ribbon securely through the loose curls of her blond hair.
Every single stolen anchor had been reclaimed through ordinary, everyday use.
The Demon Lord of Envy had spent weeks trying to turn the family's personal histories and loves into a weaponized road to destroy them from the inside out.
But the Demon Lord had never understood what gave those objects their power in the first place.
The family didn't lock them away in a safe; they simply turned them right back into the things they loved.
Garrett slid his arm around Sydney's waist as she stepped up beside him on the porch, her head resting effortlessly against his shoulder. He looked out over the wide, sunny expanse of the Texas ranch, feeling the unbroken, roaring heat of the Mating Bond humming between them.
The doorway was closed. The road was gone. And for the first time in his life, the silence ahead of them felt absolutely, beautifully endless. It was time to be alone with his Mate.
The heavy oak front door of the cottage closed with a solid, definitive click.
Finally, the rest of the world faded away.
The rumble of Grey’s truck had disappeared down the gravel drive, and the bustling, hyper-vigilant energy of the main homestead had completely receded, leaving the small cottage in absolute, unbroken silence.
Sydney stepped up to the entryway, flipped the heavy brass latch, and deliberately turned the deadbolt until it locked.
Garrett watched her from the center of the living room, his arms crossed over his chest, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Expecting company?"
"Preventing it," Sydney replied smoothly.
Turning around, she leaned her hips against the wood, her blue eyes locking onto his.
"I have had entirely enough emergencies, tactical briefings, and security protocols to last me the next three centuries.
For the rest of the day, this perimeter belongs exclusively to us. "
The room grew very still. The sunlight filtered through the blinds, painting long, lazy slashes of gold across the hardwood floor.
No electrodes were glued to his temples.
No surveillance camera blinking its tiny green eye from the molding.
No brother sitting in heavy wooden chairs in the hallway, guarding the house from his own hands.
It was the first time they had been truly, entirely alone since the nightmare had begun.
Garrett looked down at his own palms, then back up at her face. The sudden absence of the threat left a strange, heavy vacuum in his chest. "Syd."
Without hesitation, she crossed the floorboards with soft, unhurried steps until she stood right before him, her shoulder brushing his chest. "You okay, Dragon Man?"
Garrett let out a slow, ragged breath, his hands sliding down to wrap loosely around her waist. "I think so."
He swallowed hard, forcing his tongue to shape the raw, vulnerable truth he hadn't even admitted to his brothers. "I just... I don't think I know what to do with safe yet."
Sydney reached up, her warm palms cupping his jawline, her touch an absolute, grounding anchor. "Then we practice."
Leaning in, she tilted her chin up to press her lips gently against his.
The contact wasn't frantic, and it wasn't driven by the explosive adrenaline of their recent survival.
It was slow, deliberate, and deep. Garrett closed his eyes, instantly reaching inward to check on the Mating Bond.
It was wide open, pulsing with a pure, radiant heat, entirely clear of foreign static.
As the kiss began to deepen, a low, tectonic chuckle vibrated from the absolute floor of his soul. “I believe this is where I stop paying attention, lad,” Han rumbled wisely, his massive Dragon consciousness beginning to step back into the quietest, most restful shadows of their shared soul.
“Smart dragon,” Garrett thought back, a wave of profound gratitude passing through the link.
“Coward,” Kara’s golden voice echoed playfully from Sydney's side of the Bond, though her presence moved to match his.
“Privacy, woman,” Han grumbled fondly. “Let the humans have their terrain.”
With quiet, respectful finality, both ancient entities retreated deep into the foundational structures of their mated souls, pulling an absolute veil of privacy over the connection and leaving the humans entirely to themselves.
Garrett's hands tightened on her hips, pulling her flush against his frame as the heat between them flared.
He broke the kiss, trailing his lips down the elegant slope of her neck, his breath hitching as Sydney let out a soft, breathless gasp against his shoulder.
He reached for the hem of her shirt, his fingers brushing the warm skin of her waist…
He froze.
The movement wasn't a visual flash of moonlight, and it wasn't a Demonic manipulation from the Abyss.
It was an internal, systemic hesitation.
His muscles simply stalled. His fingers locked against her skin as a sudden, heavy shadow of memory brushed his ribs.
Leviathan had used his body without his consent.
The Demon Lord had hijacked his hands, his boots, and his voice while he was dead to the world, turning his own physical frame into a weapon against the people he loved.
The profound violation of that didn't just vanish because the stone door had been destroyed.
Sydney stopped instantly. She didn't apply a single ounce of pressure, and she didn't launch into a long, analytical therapy speech to fix his armor. She simply remained perfectly still in his arms, her blue eyes soft, searching, and entirely steady as she looked up into his face.
"Garrett?" she whispered gently.
Garrett swallowed the bitter lump in his throat, his eyes hollow with vulnerability as he forced the words out. "I need to know... I need to be entirely certain that everything I do next is mine, Syd. Every touch. Every choice."
Sydney’s expression softened with an overwhelming, protective tenderness. She didn't try to dismiss the fear. Instead, she handed him the battlefield.
"Then choose," she said softly, her voice striking the quiet cottage like a bell.
She didn't demand an action, and she didn't push him toward the mattress.
She simply stood there, entirely his. "Touch me if you want to, Garrett.
Kiss me if you want to. Stop right now if you need to. There is no script here. You choose."
The words settled deep inside him. They didn't erase what Leviathan had done or magically silence every instinct the Demon Lord had left behind. But they gave Garrett something infinitely more powerful.
Choice.
His choice.
"I choose you," Garrett whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "Always."
Sydney smiled, a brilliant, beautiful spark lighting up her face as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "Good answer."
The shift in the room was instantaneous, the slow hesitation of their first tie together melting away into a deep, fiercely passionate hunger. Garrett swept her up into his arms, carrying her up the steps and the short distance to the bedroom where the morning sun painted the sheets in gold.
The lovemaking that followed wasn't a desperate reaction to danger or survival.
It was an absolute, systemic reclamation of their bodies and their souls.
Garrett initiated every movement with a slow, worshipful precision, his hands tracing every curve of her skin as if he were learning by touch the woman who had chosen him as surely as he had chosen her.
Sydney responded to every touch with fierce, unyielding devotion, matching his heat but never forcing his pace, letting him dictate the boundaries of his own freedom.
Through it all, the Mating Bond remained wide open, a pure, blinding current of light that carried no static, no green smoke, and no lingering echoes of the Abyss.
Garrett felt Han peacefully withdrawn, resting in a deep, healing torpor, while Sydney felt Kara's quiet contentment.
Their physical frames, their minds, and their spiritual links were entirely, unreservedly theirs.
In the middle of the quiet heat, Garrett suddenly paused, his upper body propped up on his forearms as he looked down at his Mate. He hadn't stopped in fear. He stopped in pure, unadulterated awe.
Sydney lay beneath him, her curls scattered across the pillows, her skin flushed, her blue eyes looking up at him with an intensity that took his breath away.
Through the openness of the Mating Bond, Garrett realized he could feel everything with absolute, crystalline precision.
Her profound trust. Her bottomless love.
Her fierce, consuming desire for him. There was nothing else out there.
No hidden compartments. No background anomalies running scripts in his brain.
"It's quiet," Garrett whispered, the word sounding strange in his own ears. For weeks, his mind had associated the word quiet with the freezing, terrifying absence of the blackout voids.
Sydney reached up, her warm fingers gently tracing the hard line of his cheekbone. "No, Dragon Man. It's us."
Garrett stared down at her, another hard knot inside his chest finally loosening against the warmth of her skin. She was right. The silence wasn't a void waiting to steal his time. It was the absolute absence of anything standing between them. No doors remained to break.