Chapter 93 When the Dragon Answers
Maverick didn’t tell him to stay. Jonah wouldn’t have listened, and he needed him. As much as he hated that, it was true.
“You’re going to hit the main gate,” Jonah said. “Aren’t you.”
Maverick’s lips curled in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Loudly.”
Jonah looked at him, at the bandaged arms, at the eyes that were starting to burn gold at the edges. “You know,” he said, “if I were them, I’d be terrified right now.”
“Good,” Maverick said.
They hashed out the basics fast. Jonah would circle right, hike along the canyon wall until he reached the vent access. Maverick would give him five minutes to get into position. Then all subtlety went out the window.
“Try not to die,” Jonah said as he adjusted his pack.
“Likewise,” Maverick said.
Jonah hesitated, then stuck out a hand. “For the record, this is a very bad idea. And I’m in.”
Maverick clasped his forearm. The grip was solid. Real. “For the record,” he said, “thanks.”
Jonah flashed a quick, crooked grin, then took off at a jog along the rocks, ducking low.
Maverick watched him for a beat, then turned back to the canyon.
His arms throbbed under the bandages. His muscles ached. But when he drew in a breath, the air tasted clearer than it had in years.
For a moment, he let himself feel it.
The pain. The loss. The raw, aching absence where Lyra should have been—where her presence had started to feel like gravity, subtle but constant. The bond tugged at him now, faint and wrong, like a line stretched too far, humming with strain instead of warmth.
She was alive.
He knew that the way dragons knew things—deep, instinctive, carved into bone. Hurt. Collared. Taken.
But alive.
The memory of her voice rose unbidden: You don’t get to look at me like that and expect me to pretend none of this matters.
His jaw tightened.
“I’m not pretending,” he murmured to the empty canyon. “I’m choosing.”
He rolled his shoulders once, feeling muscle protest, bandages pull. The sigils that remained burned low and furious, like they knew their days were numbered. For the first time since the Syndicate had carved their control into his skin, the power underneath didn’t feel like a weapon pointed at someone else.
It felt like a promise.
He stepped fully into the open.
The canyon answered immediately.
Shouts rang out from the towers. Targeting systems whined as they locked onto him, red lights skittering across his chest and arms. Someone yelled an order—too late, already panicking.
Good.
“Come on then,” he muttered under his breath. “You wanted a weapon. Here I am.”
He let go.
Fire didn’t just rise—it detonated.
It tore through him in a rush of heat and pressure, snapping the last careful restraints he’d kept wrapped around it for years. The shift slammed into him hard enough to steal his breath. Bones cracked and reformed. Muscle stretched past human limits. His spine arched as wings forced their way into existence, the pain white-hot and glorious all at once.
The world sharpened.
He could hear heartbeats now—fast, terrified, scattered across the towers. Smell the ozone from charging weapons. Taste the fear in the air like metal.
He roared.
The sound ripped through the canyon, vibrating stone, shaking dust loose from ancient ledges. Birds exploded into the sky in a black cloud as alarms screamed to life below.
Weapons fired.
Energy blasts slammed into his scales, stinging, skidding off hardened plates. Bullets sparked and flattened. One struck near his shoulder hard enough to make him snarl—but it didn’t stop him.
Nothing was going to stop him.
“Maverick.”
Vale’s voice ghosted through his mind, calm and commanding, like it had any right to be there. “Stand down.”
Maverick bared his teeth, fire rolling low in his chest.
Not this time.
He beat his wings once.
The ground vanished beneath him as he launched forward, straight at the gate.
Flame gathered in his chest, hot and heavy and eager.
He let it go.
Fire slammed into steel.
The gate glowed, then warped, metal buckling under the heat. Concrete cracked around the frame. The towers lit up in response, bullets and energy blasts streaking the air. Some pinged off his scales. Some burned like stinging insects. None of it mattered.
He drew in more fire.
Somewhere below, inside, Lyra sat in a metal box with a collar around her neck, listening to the same alarms.
He slammed into the gate again.
This time, it broke.
Steel tore free of its housing, blown inward like a kicked door. Smoke billowed. Sirens howled. The canyon filled with the echo of his roar and the shriek of failing systems.
Smoke rolled thick and black through the shattered gate, heat rippling the air until the canyon itself seemed to recoil. Maverick stepped through it like something forged instead of born, claws cracking stone with each step, wings half-furled to shield his flanks as weapons fire rained down.
Energy bolts streaked past his head. One struck his shoulder and exploded in a spray of sparks. He barely felt it.
The towers were still firing—too slow, too panicked. He could smell their fear now, sharp and acrid beneath the tang of burning steel. Humans. Shifters. Mages. All of them scrambling because the thing they’d built their walls for had just walked straight through them.
A second barrage hit the ground in front of him, forcing him to plant his claws and brace. The impact cratered the stone. Dust and debris flew.
He lifted his head and roared again—closer this time, louder, the sound tearing through corridors and ventilation shafts and every reinforced hallway buried in the rock.
Hear me, the roar said. Run.
Inside the facility, alarms layered over each other—containment breach, perimeter failure, internal lockdown. Doors slammed shut somewhere deeper in the structure. He felt it in the vibration under his claws, the way the place tried to seal itself like a wounded animal curling inward.
Too late.
Maverick drew in a breath, deeper this time, fire pooling heavy and molten in his chest. He didn’t release it all at once. He shaped it—short, brutal bursts—melting cameras, severing automated turrets before they could recalibrate, reducing a security barricade to glowing slag.
Movement flickered on an upper walkway. A squad of operatives scrambled into position, rifles braced, faces tight with discipline they didn’t quite trust anymore.
“Fall back!” someone shouted.
They didn’t fall back fast enough.
He surged forward, wings snapping open fully now, the downdraft knocking two of them flat. He didn’t crush them. Didn’t incinerate them. Not yet.
Save it, he told the dragon. She’s in here.
Something tugged low in his chest—not fire this time, not rage.
A pull.
Faint. Muffled. Like a voice trapped underwater.
Lyra.
His steps slowed for half a heartbeat as he turned his head, listening with something that wasn’t ears. The bond—strained, dimmed, but not gone—pulled him deeper into the facility, down and left, past the scorched entry hall and toward the heart of the mountain.
Good.
He pivoted, tail lashing once as a final blast took out the nearest tower. The structure groaned, then collapsed inward, stone and metal folding like paper.
Behind him, the canyon echoed with chaos.
Ahead of him, the Syndicate’s fortress burned.
Maverick landed hard on the shattered threshold, claws digging into scorched stone.
The Syndicate facility lay open in front of him.
“Hold on, Sparkles,” he thought, fire rolling off him in waves as he stepped through the ruin.
“I’m here.”