My mouth dropped open, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak. I had to be dreaming.Please tell me I’m not dreaming.Tears welled in my eyes, and when Asher peered over at me and gave me a lopsided smile, I scrambled from the bed and barreled into him. He barely had time to drop the tray onto the bed before I was in his arms, running my hands over his face and body.
“You fucker!” I growled. “How dare you!”
Before I could say anything more, he lifted me into the air and smashed his lips against mine.
The anger fizzed out of me as I kissed him back, and he held me like he was never planning to let me go again. When I finally pulled back, he set me down on my feet again reluctantly.
“Nowthat’sa greetin’ I could get used to. I should almost die all the time,” Asher said with a massive grin, and I punched his arm.
“Do it again, and next time I’ll be the one that kills you,” I threatened.
The others chuckled behind us, but Asher’s cocky grin just grew wider.
He’s alive.I repeated the words in my head as my hands ran up and down his arms over and over. The skin was as smooth as I remembered, without a single scar or mark to show he’d been burned.
“How?” I asked in disbelief.
Asher’s expression sobered, and he stared at me intensely. “Well, that would be because of you, sweetheart.”
“But you were onfire,” I said. “Magic fire.I watched you burn.”
Asher cringed as if remembering the pain of the fire, but then he said, “I passed out before your chat with Warrick, so Locke and Darian will have to explain.”
Nodding, I turned my attention to where Darian stood near the table. He’d placed the plates down and stood watching me with a relieved smile.
“Same goes for you, you know,” I said, my expression becoming serious. “Try to sacrifice yourself for me again, and you’ll regret it.”
Darian simply arched a brow as if he had no intention of listening to me. “You aren’t one to talk, lovely. And it’s a good thing you finally woke up. Locke has barely left this room since we brought you here, and he’s been more irritable than usual.”
I snorted and choked on a laugh at Darian’s insinuation.Locke?When no one else laughed with me, I frowned at the vampire. He was still watching me with an intense expression, and he said nothing. I found it hard to believe that he had been worried about me, but then I thought of how he’d lifted me into the air, saving me from the outlier. I could still hear him shouting in my face before the world went dark.
I was suddenly not sure what to say to Darian’s comment, and I climbed onto the bed again and settled back into Kade’s arms. A part of me wanted to go to Locke instead. To have his cold palms resting on my skin, and his steady presence next to me.Did he really stay in the room the whole time while he waited for me to wake?
“I remember you lifting me into the air,” I said slowly as I kept watching Locke’s face. “And there was water.”
Asher moved the tray of food from the bed to the table and began loading up a plate.
Locke’s expression remained neutral. “You must have used a significant amount of magic,” he said with a dip of his head. “You flooded the ballroom, and I could feel the magic radiating from you.”
“Flooded?” I asked, my brows shooting upward. I remembered the water streaming through the windows and the shuddering of the mountain, but had I reallyfloodedit?
“You must have called upon all the water sources in and around the mountain that still had traces of magic, and the water combined with the magic was able to douse the fires of the outliers,” Locke added.
I stared in disbelief. “Idid that?” I had felt the energy and magic leaving my body, but it was still hard to grasp. I tried to think back to the fight with the outliers. I’d intended to turn the floor to sand, but the stifling heat kept making me think of the red fire. I vaguely remembered wishing I had something to douse the flames.All right, that’s great. First, I could turn rock to sand, then I created a vortex of wind, and now I’m flooding caverns.
“Yes, it was quite the sight,” Darian said as he poured himself a drink from the jug on the table. “The Katakin monsters were tossed around rather brutally, but they all obtained injuries they could heal from. I don’t think anyone was complaining.”
I scrunched my face as I thought of how badly some of the alphas and other monsters were likely hurt.
At that moment, Asher strode over and handed me the plate piled high with different cheeses and meats, then he stretched out on the bed beside Kade and me. “And when I was no longer on fuckin’ fire, my body was finally able to heal. I’m lucky I’m a demon. None of the other monsters who caught fire had my healing ability and were able to survive.”
I swallowed then as I pictured Asher’s burning body, and my stomach roiled, but I forced myself to nibble on a hunk of cheese. Eating was the last thing on my mind, but my body felt weak, and I knew I had to get some food into me.
Darian swirled the wine in his goblet. “Thankfully, there was only enough water to extinguish the fire, and then when you passed out, the water started flowing back to where it had come from. The outliers were weakened by then and tried to escape, but we finished them off with a little help from the other alphas.”
“And Warrick?” I asked apprehensively.
“He wasn’t there when I arrived,” Kade answered as he grabbed a rolled up piece of meat from the plate and popped it into his mouth.
