Page 15 of Caelum

Nicholas shook his head. “I’m not sure you do. You’ve been indoctrinated, Eve. That will take some time to break.”

“I’m not sure what indoctrination means in this sense,” Eve admitted, “but I know I’ve been taught certain things that have become a habit, but habits can be broken, can’t they?”

“Yes, they can,” Nicholas told her, his voice oozing sympathy.

“I-I’m not like some of the girls. They believed every word Father Bryan said. I didn’t want to marry him, but I would have because there was no point in fighting it. Some of his wives cried in happiness when he chose them. I wouldn’t have done that. I’d have endured.” Her smile was tight. “I’m good at that.”

“You’ve had to be. Your control is remarkable,” Merinda praised, surprising me because Merry didn’t seem to like anyone, and she was a bitch, more likely to give out shade than a compliment.

Eve’s brow puckered slightly, but she murmured, “Thank you.”

I cleared my throat. “What year will she be in?” Girls started here at thirteen, and there was no way she was that. Even underneath the shroud, I could see her tits, and they belonged to a woman, not some snot-nosed teenager.

“Junior year.”

The three of us blew out surprised breaths, yet I was the one who sputtered, “But?—”

“But nothing. She’s seventeen. She needs to be among her peers.” Merinda’s look was cutting. “You have a problem with that,boys?”

I almost winced at the insult. “No. Of course not. I was… we were just surprised.”

“Well, take your surprise elsewhere,” she chided sharply, her words like knives. To Eve, she murmured, “Try to settle in today. You won’t start lessons until the day after tomorrow.”

Eve didn’t reply; she just looked at Nicholas who nodded at her in encouragement. Like that was all she needed, she got to her feet and took a hesitant step toward us before she started to lower herself to the ground. Merinda was there in a second, her hand grabbing Eve’s and jerking her upright. “You curtsey to no man now, Eve,” she bit off. Her anger wasn’t aimed at Eve, I knew, but once more at the compound the girl had left behind.

Eve jolted at Merry’s rough touch, but she simply nodded. “If you say so, Merinda.”

“I do,” the older woman grated out. “I do.”

I wasn’t sure why I did it, wasn’t sure what made me think she’d even want my touch, but when I held out my hand for her, Eve shot me a surprised look and she slipped her fingers into mine.

The second she did, I felt the bolt of power that was our connection deep inside me, and I knew from her startled exhalation that she experienced it too. Only, she didn’t know what the hell had just happened between us.

I felt everyone’s eyes on us, but I wasn’t certain if they recognized what had happened or if they were waiting on Eve’s reaction to holding hands with another of her kind. It didn’t matter if Nestor or Eren figured it out, but Nicholas and Merinda would keep us apart until we were twenty-one if they realized what I just had.

Eve was my mate.

THREE

EVE

The warmth that unfurled inside me was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was the exact opposite of what I’d endured when I’d walked through the gates. There, I’d been tossed around in a whirlwind inside my head. Here, I was drawn like a magnet to this boy who stared at me with eyes that were the brightest blue, and I was certain no gemstone could begin to compete.

He was beautiful. That I’d seen from the start. As were the boys with him. They couldn’t have been more different, though. Stefan was pale like me, but he had a golden tinge to his skin that came from working outside in the sun. He had a sharp jaw, a Roman nose, and lips that made me wonder what they would feel like against mine.

“Eve?”

Nicholas’s voice was easily pushed aside as I felt the mood stir to life inside me, but then I realized it wasn’t a mood, but what he had claimed to be a soul. I wondered if that was why my response to the stranger was so intense—the soul was reacting to the touch of a male of its kind for the first time in forever.

I wasn’t clueless enough to misunderstand that the souls would respond differently to women and men.

Merry’s touch hadn’t done anything other than make me flinch when she pinched too hard while she lugged me around. But the boy’s? It made me feel warm inside when, until now, I’d always been cold unless I’d experienced one of the many attacks of anxiety that surged inside me at random parts of the day.

“I’d like you to go with Stefan,” Nicholas was saying, and because I didn’t want him to realize I was too busy staring at the boys before me, I nodded along, aware from its response to them which soul was in charge today.

In my experience, this particular one was even more dangerous than the one I’d had yesterday. The two usually tussled around inside me, fighting for power. It would have been easier if I experienced them separately, without experiencing the two back-to-back, but if I prayed to God for anything, it was to stop the strange things that overtook me. It wasn’t to argue about how the ‘moods’ had scheduled themselves to manifest. But I’d long since stopped praying. Nothing worked, and nothing ever would if what I was learning was correct.

Unlike the other soul, which had men leaning toward me if I so much as whispered a word, this one seemed to overtake my body, making me aware of the blood flowing through my veins, highlighting the heaviness of my breasts and the warmth in my belly. Even worse than this, however, it made me more aware of every part a man had.

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