Free Chained To The Alpha: A Paranormal Shifter Romance Standalone by JJ Jones

hurt?” I asked the question.
    To be honest I hadn’t worried about it until then. My mind had been still wrapping itself around all of the memories that I had willingly forgotten.
    “I don’t know. We can go and check on them.” He offered me his hand and we rose off of the bed. It was then that I noticed the scar. I reached out to touch it. “You saved my life.” He reminded me. “You gave a piece of yourself to save my life.”
    “Do you remember that?” I asked the question.
    “I was watching you. I could barely see, but I heard everything. I know what you did. You didn’t even hesitate. You would have sacrificed yourself for me.”
    “Well I couldn’t let you be the only hero.” I laughed, but I wasn’t feeling it.
    The pain of his near-death was still raw and bleeding in my heart. I could still feel his blood on my body and on my hands as I began to look down. Someone had cleaned me up, but I didn’t remember that. I was wearing a nightshirt now, with nothing underneath it. I didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t one of mine. In fact, it looked like we were in some sort of hotel room. I didn’t know where we were.
    “Where are we? Do you know?”
    “No, when I woke up they had already brought us here. I helped them get you changed. You needed more time than me to recover from the spell. You had given so much.”
    “Do you know what’s going to happen now?”
    It was starting to bother me. What had I signed up for anyway? I knew that no matter what I was doing, I would never take it back. I couldn’t force myself to regret the actions that I had taken. Still, I worried about the consequences. He had been saved from powerful magic and spells like that always come with a price.
    “No, but we can go and find out.” He held my hand and walked to the door.
    Opening it and looking outside, we could see that there was someone at the door. We were being guarded. Our guard motioned for someone, indicating that we needed someone to explain things to us. I began to listen to the consequences for the spell when the witch arrived along with the Beta that had supervised the trial.
    I learned about the trial. We had passed; we were eligible to become mates now. We had proven ourselves compatible. I don’t know how we could have failed that test short of trying to kill each other, but the way that the Beta put it, lightning struck twice and that meant that we would work well together in the long run.
    We were told that everyone had survived and that there had been a few injuries, but there weren’t any as severe as Devin’s had been. Everyone had made it through the fight and I had saved his life. I held my breath after getting this reassurance and waited to find out what I had signed myself in for. She told us that we would be connected for the rest of our lives. Devin and I would feel the strong emotions of the other person. We could foster this bond and make it stronger by spending time together, but we could also weaken it by being apart.
    She had wanted to make sure that we knew these things. Devin’s and my life forces were bound now, intertwined together to make them into something different. We were going to do things differently. There was a chance that some habits could change as we adjusted being so closely connected. The more time we spent together, the closer we would become. We might even be able to send thoughts across the bond eventually. She couldn’t give us a bunch of specifics because everyone reacted differently to spells like this. We would be connected and there isn’t really anything that we could do. The only way to end this was for us to die. If one of us died, the other one would die too. It was the nature of his new life. He was bound to me. I would be weak for a while.
    I was to expect to sleep a lot and need more to eat. I had sacrificed myself to save his life. I would be tired while my soul started to recover from the wound that had been inflicted upon it. My life had healed his