Page 156 of Caelum

“Did you do that?” I growled at her. My bear had, but I knew she could do things to him. Knew she had some control over him.

Her eyes were wide, and she shook her head rapidly, side to side, swinging like she was utterly petrified of me.

I knew it made me a bastard that I liked it, and I loomed over her, wanting her fear becausethatI could handle. Her terror was easy to deal with, her dislike a boon. I didn’t need her to like me, didn’t even need her to Choose or Claim me, but she’d taken that away from me, and I was the only guy who seemed to mind that.

Males had no choice, but if I had, I’d never have picked someone like her. She was weak, too fragile. Ghouls could hurt her, and through her, I could be destroyed.

No.

I could never let someone hurt me like that again.

Never.

“Why do you hate me so much?” she rasped, the words emitted through chattering teeth.

My top lip curled, and though I was on the brink of telling her that Ididn’t give enough of a fuck about her to hate her, the words that spilled from my mouth were different. They weren’t intended. It was like my brain was rebelling. “Because you make me feel,” I ground out.

Her eyes rounded at that, and her shoulders dropped with surprise. With those five words, the fear seemed to drift away from her, and that was the last thing I needed or wanted.

When she hurled herself at me, I anticipated her attack, but what I couldn’t have anticipated was her throwing herself into my chest as one hand came up to grip the back of my head. With a firm hold on my hair, she forced my head down, down until our faces were inches away from each other.

For a second, I froze. Everything inside me turned to ice, but when she bridged the gap, molten heat replaced the deep freeze.

I gasped, opening my mouth wide as the bizarre sensation coursed through me, and she took advantage.

Someone had taught her to kiss. Stefan? It figured.

She kissed like a dream. Making thoughts that didn’t belong in my head surge to life as my body conspired against me. My cock hardened as her tits rubbed against my chest, the taut nipples delicious buds I wanted to feel in the palms of my hands, between my lips.

I wanted nothing more than to thrust her to the ground, to fuck her in the soil. In the earth I’d claimed as mine when I came to Caelum, in the dirt I tended, where all that remained of my heritage lay.

Her tongue thrust into my mouth, rubbing against mine as she rubbed her body over my form. She taunted me, tempted me,torturedme with her lips, teeth, and tongue. Giving me what she wanted, not what I needed from her.

And even as the thought crossed my mind, I pulled back and yelled, “Get the fuck out of here. I don’t want you!”

Her pale cheeks blanched, and the promise of arousal in her body dampened as she tensed up, going from fluid and warm to cold and rigid. She stared at me, her eyes pleading with me to take it back, to accept her and everything she represented.

When I turned around, ignoring her, I heard her choked sob and the slam of the gate as she rushed out.

My teeth gritted as guilt filled me, but I didn’t need her. She was a complication, someone who had brought more problems into my world.

I was a soldier, and she’d just robbed me of my cause.

The second I forgot that, the second I forgot my purpose, she killed Alexandre and turned me into her puppet, just like all the others.

FOURTEEN

EVE

“To understand Ghouls, you have to understand how they’re formed,” Jenny Justiss—that was her real name, even if it did sound like it belonged to a Marvel character—told us, her voice earnest as she gave the class their first lesson in Ghoul Theory. “So, tell me. How do they come into being?”

I was sitting among a twenty-strong group of fourteen-year-olds, since my private tutors, Merinda and Damon, had been sent on a mission somewhere, the faculty—read Nicholas, the principal—had decided it was an opportunity to introduce me to the rest of the curriculum.

I’d gathered a few odd looks, but nothing too outrageous considering most people knew me as the odd old girl who had been rescued late in the game. Well,thatand the girl who’d tossed one of the students into a glass coffee table.

Though it hadn’t been my fault, I was certain I’d never live that down.

Seated at the back so I didn’t obstruct the smaller kids’ view of the blackboard, I was listening eagerly, trying to understand the ‘things’ we believed were enemies.

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