Page 138 of Caelum

I grabbed a tight hold on Reed because he was at his most dangerous like this, and when he snarled at me, his head whipping around so he could snap his teeth in my face, I leaped at him—my Vampire urging me to contain the threat.

Reed was Pack, no threat to me, but with Eve wandering around fucking shit up, he was on edge in a way that needed controlling.

Frazer must have agreed with the danger because he was there next, helping me pin Reed to the ground. Stefan stood over us, tense and evidently unsure how to help. Hell Hounds were motherfuckers in this mood, so I didn’t blame him for being wary.

There was only one way to stop him, to control him, and that was something which had my Vampire purring.

Although Reed thrashed against our hold, I managed to pin his arm down so I could maneuver my way to his throat. The second my blunt teeth raked his flesh, he froze before doubling his efforts. His body bucked like he was having a seizure or something, and then, pain be damned, I tore into his throat. He’d want to beat the shit out of me later on, but I’d let him.

The second blood flowed into my mouth, I calmed down, and so did Reed. Since he’d already fed me this morning, I was relying on the blood loss to exacerbate his drowsiness, to help lull him into unconsciousness. If that didn’t work, I wasn’t sure what would.

Could Reed’s Hell Hound take Dre’s bear as a threat? Misconstrue what was happening and…

Fuck.

No way was my new Pack being massacred because Eve and Eren had done something weird.

Weird was the new black, and we just had to move with that, adapt or die.

It took a few minutes for me to hear the silence, and even then, I only did because I heard the gasp first. It was feminine and soft, telling me Eve was here. The song had stopped. Did that mean…? God, I hoped Dre was human again. The last thing we needed was to have to hide a fucking grizzly bear from the faculty. We had enough secrets to hold.

Releasing my clasp on Reed’s throat, I turned and saw Eren holding up a woozy Dre. When his knees buckled, Stefan rushed over and tucked him under his shoulder.

He looked wrecked, almost like he’d gone ten rounds with a grizzly bear.

When my lips twitched at the thought, Eve gasped again, and I turned to shoot her a look and saw that her gaze was focused on my mouth, on the blood that would be around my chin from having torn into Reed’s throat.

For a second, Dre wasn’t the only one who looked like he was going to keel over. And though I tried to rub my chin, tried to clean up, it was too late.

Face white, cheeks pinched, Eve ran off. No one stopped her.

“She’s getting faster,” I commented, unable to stop myself from watching her ass muscles shift with each step she took.

“Thank fuck for that,” Stefan retorted. “She needs to be in shape if she’s going to fit in here.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Peering down at Reed, I saw his eyes were dazed from blood loss, so I rolled off him and used the hem of my polo to try to clean up some more.

“You could have warned me she was coming,” I grunted at my brothers.

“We didn’t realize,” Frazer excused, scrubbing a hand over his face. “The song just seemed to stop and they were there.”

“She’s going to be even more scared of me,” I said on a sigh, which totally fucked with things. Trying to protect her and my Pack kept backfiring on me in a huge way.

“She has to get used to the sight of blood-taking,” Stefan argued, and I was surprised the support came from him. “It’s a part of our world, and fuck, if she comes across a Ghoul, that’s the least of what she’ll see.”

Because he was right, I dipped my chin. But being right didn’t mean the only woman in the Pack was going to warm up to me any time soon.

That meant things were going to be bloody shit between us until she calmed down some.

Rubbing the back of my neck with bloodied fingers, I asked Eren, “What happened?”

He shrugged. “I sang, she did something, my song changed, then Dre shifted back. It was very anticlimactic.” His eyes said that was a lie.

“How did she change your song?” Those initial notes had been powerful, but maybe if Eve had morphed Eren’s song, that was why Reed had gone mental?

“I’m not sure. But one minute I was singing, the next Dre was shiftingand falling back on his ass.” He cleared his throat. “He hit his head on a rock. That’s why he’s woozy.”

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