Page 119 of Caelum

Her eyes flared at that. “But I don't—” Her bottom lip wobbled, and she pressed a hand to her belly. The move was strangely compelling, like she was quenching something she didn't understand as she tried to communicate with her body in a language that was alien to her. “Is it about reproduction?”

Dre snorted. “Fornication leads to reproduction, so yeah.”

“It’s about both,” I retorted, glaring at him, and trying to think in words she'd understand, I explained, “Your cult… people got married, didn't they?”

“Yes.”

“It wasn't an interesting cult,” Dre inserted. “Not a sex-fest one. Of course, you had to be boring, Eve, didn't you?”

Smacking him in the arm without looking at him, I turned back to her and saw that her focus was on me. One hundred percent. That was something about her I'd noticed before. She gave you all of her attention like a vacuum sucked at her focus until all she saw was you and nothing else.

“Your soul wishes to marry me. That’s about the long and the short of it. But…” I bit the inside of my cheek here because there was no God. To Eve, however, she'd been raised to believe there was. “Humans decide on who they want. Or, usually, they do. I assume things were arranged in your world?” At her nod, I murmured, “Well, there’s no arrangement. Choosing me has nothing to do with politics or anything like that. Your Sin Eater recognizes me as hers because…” I hesitated again. “God willed it to be so.”

“He touched upon our union?”

“And the one you have with Stefan,” Dre barked out—like any of us could forget that. Or the link she had with Reed.

I ignored him, though, and just carried on staring at her, willing her to understand.

“So, we get married?” she asked hesitantly.

Amusement sparked, but I only pointed at my shoulder, dipping it south so she knew I meant my back. “That’s the equivalent of marriage vows, Eve.”

“But I didn't do anything!” she argued once more, and though her words were redundant, I heard her panic. Her fear. And it fucking killed me.

Needing to soothe her, I reached out to grab her hands, but she shoved them away. The move stung, and I fought hard not to lose my temper because it wasn’t anyone’s fault here that she didn’t understand. That she didn’t get how our race worked.

Still, I had no choice but to tell her the complete, unadulterated truth. “You didn't have to. Your soul did.”

THREE

REED

As I flowed into downward dog, I tilted my tailbone to the sky and pressed the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet into the earth.

It felt good.

In fact, it felt better than good. Yoga grounded me in a way that very little else did. My temper was difficult to control at the best of times, the Hell Hound demanding that it be allowed a free reign over me, but of all the things I'd learned here at Caelum, one of them was that yoga was better than most things the faculty had taught me.

The actions of having to control my breathing by pressing my body into a pretzel actually helped.

I didn't know why, just knew that it worked, and some days, I really fucking needed it to work.

There was no rhythm or rhyme as to why my Hell Hound would surge to the fore. I couldn't even explain it. Every day, until I graduated, a different soul would overtake me, be at the forefront of my being as I went about my business. That was the way for all creatures.

Until we were of age, the seven souls played with us as if we were their toys, and the older we became, the nearer graduation approached, it became more and more difficult to control them. To have control over ourselves.

My Hell Hound was a little different than most though. I'd known from the very beginning what I'd become, unlike other students here. The day I'd facilitated my mum’s death, I'd known I was a monster, and when I'd cometo Caelum and had learned I had six other monsters living inside me, I'd known which was which, and which one I was—I was a Hell Hound.

Yoga wouldn't make me a better man, nor would it make me a kinder person, but at least it tempered the aggression flowing through me on a minute-to-minute basis. And after Eve had Chosen me, seemingly unknowingly, I needed that calmness more than I needed my next meal.

With the African sun beating down on my back, warming me through, my spine tingled as I pushed and pulled my limbs and joints into the varied positions that somehow worked their magic on me. Even my skin prickled with the heat, and after a lifetime of living under such intense, desert sun, the sensation made it a pleasure to be out on the beach.

We’d never lived near a beach back when I was a kid in Oz, so to be at Caelum was actually a privilege. Not a day went by where I didn't work out on the beach, go surfing, or run on the shore. They were the three activities that helped me control myself, helped me contain this monstrous beast living inside me.

As I inhaled and exhaled, closing one nostril off with my thumb, breathing in through the left nostril, I used my fourth finger, my ring finger, to press the left nostril closed so I could breathe through the right. Practicing breath control helped ground me further, and it was the reason I didn't throw my cell phone into the approaching tide when it began to buzz.

I ceased the one nostril breathing exercise, choosing instead to blow out a grunt. As I stared ahead at the rippling shore, letting the pure white bubbles at the tips of the surf soothe me, I reached for my cell and groused, “What?”

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