How dare he! It’s my body. I will treat it as I please.
“Please continue,” I say sweetly to Bion, pointedly ignoring Eirik.
“Explain the pain to me. Is it centralized only to your back or does it shoot across your body when you move?” Bion too ignores the interruption as he continues with his questioning.
“It comes from my back to whichever body part I’m moving, but I am less stiff now.” I can’t wait to be moving around again with no stiffness and no pain. Hopefully, that will be possible in the future, because living like this after I have always been an active person is depressing.
“That is good,” Bion says as he points. “Can I have a look at your back now?”
“You will have to help me pull the T-shirt off Sorry but one of the others still help me slip them on.”
I see Bion looking at Eirik, his eyes moving behind me. This tells me that Eirik is now behind me. When I feel his fingers gently pull up the back of my T-shirt, I close my eyes. Feeling the warmth of his skin touching mine warms me.
I hear what sounds like a growl emitting from him when my T-shirt is bunched at the top of my shoulders. Only now remembering that he has never actually seen what they have done to my back. He definitely won’t want anything to do with me now. How do I compare to his precious wife?
“Motherfuckers!” The word is expelled with such rage that I feel tears filling my eyes.
Bion moves behind me, and then I feel fingers gently prodding the area on my back, gasping when he touches an especially sensitive place. The growl comes again from Eirik, but this time louder. “Don’t fucking hurt her!” His words are filled with anger—an anger for what was done to me—an anger for the pain that I am feeling.
Eirik does care if I’m in pain or not, that’s why he was upset that I’m not taking the painkillers. “Well, the good news is that this mechanism they have placed on your back has been imputed into five other women that I have already seen since Qatar. I wasn’t sure if it was the same, but it seems like it is. Therefore, I will be able to extract it, and if it’s anything like the others, you should be moving around with no pain in no time and back to normal in a month or so.”
His words are like a ray of sunshine. I’m going to be fine. I will be able to do everything I did before. “When can you take it out?” I ask, wanting this thing out of me as soon as possible.
“In about an hour or so, if you are okay with that?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“I’m going to have to put you to sleep to extract the item, but it shouldn’t take too long,” he explains as he comes to stand once again before me.
“Do you know what it does?” I have been curious to know what the purpose of this little piece of metal is on my back.
“I’ve been told that your gift is conducting electricity. The other women that had the same done to them also had similar gifts. I’m thinking that they were measuring the pulsations running through your body to try to replicate it.” All this because of what I can do. “What they don’t know is that we have found that women’s gifts become more powerful when they mate. The same as us Elementals.”
“Is it true that I can’t electrocute the Elementals?” I don’t want to ever hurt anyone unconsciously, and knowing that they are somehow immune to it will calm my mind.
Bion suddenly grins as his eyes raise to where Eirik is standing behind me. He has now pulled down my T-shirt, but his hands are on my shoulders, possessively.
“Wanting to electrocute anyone I know?” he asks with a wink, which has me smiling as I think that just a few days ago I did try to shock Eirik. “But it’s true, your gift won’t work on us.” The way he says it makes me think that there is a possibility that it could, though, but he’s reluctant to tell me.
“What about the women? They aren’t elementals?”
He shakes his head. “When we bond and share blood with our women, their DNA transforms enough to protect them against most gifts, but if I were you, I wouldn’t go out and try it, as it might just give someone a new hairstyle.”
What does he mean by share blood? Eirik and I didn’t share blood. Does that mean that we are in fact not bonded? “Well, if there are no more questions, I will go prepare an area where I can do this procedure.” He looks at Eirik. “You okay with this?”
Why is he asking him?
“Is there any danger to her having it removed?” Good question, I never thought about that.
“Not if it’s like the others, which by appearance it seems to be.”
“I will bring her through when it’s time,” Eirik’s reply has Bion nodding before he turns and takes his leave.
“I thought you said I was your mate?” I ask the minute Bion is out the door and Eirik is standing before me.
“You are!”
“Okay. So we are mates, but we’re not bonded?”
His eyebrow rises in question. “What are you trying to get at?” he asks as he folds his arms across his chest.
“Bion said that once blood is shared that our DNA changes, and we are bonded, but we haven’t shared any blood, so that means that we aren’t bonded.”
“We did share blood. When I first took you from that place, you were unconscious, and I knew that my blood would help you heal faster.” His confession has me gasping in surprise. How did I not know that? “So whatever ideas you have of us not being bonded, you can forget them. You are mine.” His words are forceful and angry as he glares at me, but he doesn’t know is that it’s completely the opposite of what I want.
I do want to be Eirik’s mate. I want that family life I always dreamed of. But my worry is that he doesn’t want that, that he is still hung up on his dead wife. How can I ever compete with that? How can I ever compete with a memory?
“It’s not as if you want this, is it?” I mutter once I see that he is halfway to the door.
My words have him stopping and slowly turning, his eyes flashing with anger. “Is it?” he growls before leaving with his back tense as he walks out of the room and down the corridor. I watch him until he turns, an imposing figure to anyone that wants to stand in his way. What kind of answer was that?