Book 2: The Wedding Is Already Planned

Estrella

I float for a long time in darkness. Not exactly here or absent. Not exactly comfortable or in pain. Not very much at all.

Then, my whole body flames back to screaming, torturous life at once. I am the heart of an inferno, consuming everything that I am to produce the flame. A hoarse, ragged scream tears from my throat. I lurch forward, trying to curl in on myself.

Something restrains me. I lash out, swinging wildly, and someone catches my hand.

“…strella,” someone says. “Estrella, it’s me. Anwen.”

I blink. Tears slip down my cheeks instead of collecting in my eyes, and a few shafts of green-tinted light make it into my mind.

Leaning over me, blood smeared on his cheek, is a blond man. My shoulder pulses. No, not just any blond man. Pieces of myself slide together underneath the pain. He is Anwen. My mate.

I burble something meaningless.

“Hi.” He sits, rests his chin on the edge of the painfully uncomfortable