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"Why would you tell me the battle was coming?" I snarled.

The sound was surprisingly animalistic for a human face, and body.

"And then not allow me to go to them?" I was incredibly angry as I paced back, and forth in the shrinking space.

She just stared at me with mild interest. That mild interest angered me. I snarled. I'd been doing that a lot lately. Time didn't move the same here as it did in the real world.

She'd told me that. My tail would have been lashing back, and forth violently if I had one at the moment. I kind of wished I had a tail to lash at the moment. I hissed through my teeth. I think I managed to reach Ethan, but it didn't help with my agitation much.

"Gathering your power won't help you get out of here," she spoke to me again.

Everything she said sounded like she was telling me to give up. I snarled at her. My vision shifted. Sharpening, and becoming more focused. I huffed out a breath.

I hadn't realized my vision was so much worse. She practically glowed now that I could see her with a dragon's eyesight. She was indescribably beautiful. Human eyes just didn't do her justice. My eyes snapped to the darkness.

The all consuming darkness that was slowly closing around us. I wanted to sharpen my claws on her face, but I hadn't managed to touch her even once this entire time. She just sat there, and allowed me to do whatever I wanted. That was irritating as well. She just wanted to keep me here until we both died.

I sat down cross legged in front of her, and focused on gathering my power. I wasn't going to go down without some sort of fight. If I couldn't hit her then I'd find my own way to get out of here. I knew that it took a massive amount of power to get out of here. The will of the world told me so.

If I could gather enough power to get out of here on my own then I wouldn't have to rely on her getting me out of here. I could just do it myself. That relied heavily on me being able to control enough mana to get out of here in the first place. What I'd gathered up until now wasn't nearly enough, and yet it was making it hard for me to breath already. My chest hurt, and my head was pounding.

I wouldn't stop until I got out of here. I didn't care how long it would take. I didn't care if it made me feel like I was going to die. I would get out of this useless room. I would get back to the real world.

I would get back to my bonded. I would make sure that we all survived this no matter how much it hurt. No matter how much it cost me. I didn't have the systems help to do it, but so fucking what.

*****

The pulse stopped just before the first of our enemies cleared the trees. I stood on the barricade proudly waiting for them to come. Yet none approached us at first. Many were wounded, and we were clearly outnumbered. The unicorn defended us from their arial attacks.

Gaia kept them from teleporting in. She wouldn't be able to block abilities, but just blocking the spatial element was enough. Night was falling, and we'd been bombarded non stop by magical attacks since the first enemy broke through the threes. Gunfire in rapid bursts of three pelleted the barrier. I was tense despite my confident appearance.

I'd sensed my father's mana over an hour ago, and I'd seen a large portion of the forest go up in flames, but I hadn't seen him yet. A part of me still wished he would see reason. That he would see how valuable dragons could be to our world. I knew that my father hated beasts. I'd never seen his flame of hate dim even once in my entire life.

He stopped talking to anyone that wasn't in the military after my mother died. He'd discouraged me from speaking to any of my mother's old work colleagues because they didn't know what it was like. They didn't know how much our family had suffered, and they didn't deserve to. They would have jumped into the war effort just like we had if they were worth anything at all. I understood that my father hated beasts, but as a child I was more afraid of them then anything else.

I never knew my older brothers, or my mother. They were just pictures to me. I just tried not to think of them because I saw what living in the past did to my father. The anger. The obsessive training.

All those times he pushed himself until he'd sweat blood. I didn't want to be like that. I wanted to see the whole picture. It was impulsive of me to bond with Wyatt the way I had, but he'd protected me. The way he threatened me instead of just killing me off.

After he killed the Basilisk it was clear that he could have very easily killed me the first time we met. His story was so unbelievable, but the more I learned. The more it lined up with what I'd observed. He didn't want to be treated like a weakling or bullied into submission, and he was willing to kill if it meant surviving or saving one of us. As his confidence grew he starting taking less shit from everyone around him.

Yet it didn't even cross his mind to go on a rampage, and kill everyone that was getting in his way. It made me wonder what he would be like when he had enough power to put the world in it's place. He was already strong enough to decimate small armies. I'd feel a lot more confident if he could fight beside us right now. I glanced back to look at the ridge along Wyatt's back.