“Turn the light down.” There’s that same voice, smooth and booming. Harsh and gentle all at once.
The light dims immediately, and I’m left wondering why I can’t see the man the voice belongs to. Who is he, and how can he get in my head?
“Your thoughts are very loud right now, Carina.” There he goes again. “You need to calm down, and we’ll explain everything to you.”
“We should wait until the nurses move her to the other room,” Bamba speaks up, ever so gently.
I shift my gaze in the direction of her voice and find her just to one side of me, near the end. “Who’s in here with us?” I croak out, asking her.
Bamba gives me a sad smile and moves up to cup my cheek. “We’ll explain everything, sweetheart, but it was the only way to heal you and bring you back to us.”
“No, tell her the whole truth. It was what brought her back faster than it would have been. Sped up the process.” A shiver rushes along my spine at the sound of his gravelly voice.
“He’s right. It would have taken a lot longer to bring you back to us,” Baba mutters, coming up behind my grandmother, his hands wrap around her, eyes on me. “Call it selfish, but we refused to let you suffer and be in pain longer than was necessary.”
“What? What did you do?” I feel my heart beginning to race, and the beeping noise starts to get faster.
Suddenly, the man, who the voice belongs to, appears right out of thin air. “Calm down, Sweets, you don’t want the nurses running in here. They’ll kick everyone out of this room.”
“What? How? Who?” Why in the world do I feel so connected to him? I mean, he’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life and his eyes . . . they remind me . . . oh no.
No. No. No.
He’s the dragon from the sky.
The one I felt.
“Why are you here?” I ask him, not taking my eyes off him.
His eyes shift to my grandparents. “Give us a minute?”
Bamba reaches up to cup the side of my face. “Listen with your heart and not your mind, sweetheart.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I nod. Well, I have an idea of what they’re all talking about, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I mean if what I think they did is real, it’s . . . I don’t even want to think about it.
With my grandparents out of the room, I’m now left alone with a man who is a total stranger to me.
“Look at me, Carina,” he commands as he sits on the edge of the bed next to where my leg is up in a sling.
I want to ask him about my leg, about everything, but I don’t. All I can do is look at him. I can feel him in my mind, and I don’t like it.
“You have put the shield up as you’ve done with your family. But it’s a bit trickier when it comes to mates.”
“So, you what? Mated me against my will?” I blurt out.
“I didn’t mate you as you make it sound,” he growls, eyes flashing. “I did mate you, though. You’re mine, and I’m yours. It was at the request of your family. They didn’t want to take the chance of losing you. They were haunted by the memories of your parents, I suppose.” He shrugs.
“What’s your name?” Why did I ask that?
“Pyro.”
“Is that your real name, or what they call you at the club like they do with Cason and him being Inferno?” He might be that name to everyone else, but he’s always been Cason to me. I could never see him as Inferno.
Pyro smirks and cocks a brow. “Club gave me the name a long time ago.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Magnus,” he answers before clearing his throat.
