I did whimper then, unable to stop myself. He needed me, and I wouldn’t let anyone come between us.
“We would never part the two of you. I actually believe Nolen might be the reason you survived getting your magic.”
“Survived?! He could’vedied?!” I almost flew up from the ground in anger had it not been for Derek’s body next to me. Anchoring me to him and the ground below us.
“Remi seemed to heal a part of himself when he finally got his magic. But Derek’s core has been through something we’ve yet to figure out. Too much pressure on an already broken core could have killed him. We didn’t know that his core was damaged until now. Had we known we would’ve helped before letting him touch the ground.”
“I hear all of that, but how? Shouldn’t his magic help heal him?”
“Think of your core as a bowl of water,” Henriette began. “Then think of the bowl having tiny holes in it. That is what happened to Derek. Hiscore is the bowl filled with holes. It was an empty bowl, and his magic is the water that just got added. The bowl can’t hold onto the magic because it leaks out of the holes too quickly for his magic to heal. But the earth helped him close the holes, making the magic stay. I think I speak for all of us when I say that his core needs more healing to keep the magic inside. Had all the magic run out, he would’ve died.”
Derek said nothing as we were told how close to death he’d come. I was focusing on what to do now, not wanting to feel the fear of losing him.
I eyed all of the rulers, then asked. “What do we do now?”
Alec spoke first. “Now, we scan him. Then, we’ll help get him to a house you can stay in and focus on his healing. I think he needs to lay on the grass a little every day, and he needs to touch you as much as possible. You and the earth are the key to healing him.”
I could only nod. It seemed simple. “We are getting a house? Not the apartment?”
Trise shook her head. “You need a closed-in garden for his every day healing time with the earth. We have one that’s empty you can use until he’s healed enough for the trip to your own home.”
“Home,” Derek whispered.
I leaned up so I could kiss his forehead. “Home,” I agreed.
Chapter Eleven
Derek
“Ready?” Alec asked.
I gave them a nod, knowing I had to trust them when they said it wouldn’t hurt.
I was still resting on the grass, snuggled into Nolen’s right side, as they all surrounded us. Trise, Henriette, and Grovar, all touched some part of me, while Alec and Mia held their hands, connecting them all as they closed their eyes and began scanning me. They’d been right about it feeling like wind against my skin. It wasn’t unpleasant, but foreign.
I let them work and enjoyed having a few seconds alone with my messy thoughts. These people were the rulers of this world, and they were touching me. Acting like I mattered. This being a dream would be so much more believable than the truth. But I had to admit to myself how right it felt coming here. Until the pain, of course. That had been awful. I only remembered the darkness, the pain, the fear. I wasn’t able to stop screaming.My heart felt like it was tearing apart, until a soothing calm came over me. I was floating around in a pool of weightlessness, until I finally opened my eyes and found myself on the grass with strangers surrounding me. That had been such a scary experience.
“Derek?” Trise’s voice behind me startled me out of my processing thoughts. “We’re done scanning you.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Nolen asked.
“We did,” she replied. “Derek, your father is from our world.”
“Huh?” I questioned, hoping they would elaborate.
“It seems your father impregnated a woman from your world. We would have to believe it was his mate. Or he could have donated his sperm to try and see if his DNA would mix with the people of your world. We simply do not know what happened, only that half of your DNA is from here.”
“Did you find something else?” I dared ask.
“A little. But we need to look through your memories to know if what we found is true or not.”
I knew that meant it wouldn’t be good and they had to make sure before telling me about it. I wasn’t looking forward to it.
“My mother told me she used a sperm donor to conceive me,” I informed them, suddenly remembering that. So much from my childhood was lost to my trauma, but this I remembered.
“We figured as much. Remi also has the same DNA,” Alec told us.
“Wait, what? Does that mean that Remi is my brother?” I was fully present now.
