Page 164 of Caelum

“What did you do?” she asked softly, her eyes gentle as they looked at me. I saw no judgment, no hatred, no fear. Just acceptance.

She knew what I’d done.

“Ended him before he ended me.” I pulled a face. “People say they want peace, but they don’t realize you have to go to war to experience it.” Ishrugged. “I’ve gone to war, Eve. I know what peace is, and this? When I’m with you, and my heart feels full, and my body feels heavy with contentment? This is peace.”

She grew tense in my arms before she released a shaky sigh. “I thought I was the only one who felt that.”

Inside, I felt like roaring with my delight. Mygouillewas so close to the surface I had to hold him back. A part of me wondered if she’d done that to Dre, if he’d felt like this seconds before his first shift, because only the knowledge that she could draw our souls to the fore before our twenty-first birthday prepared me for that to potentially happen.

At that moment, I could have imagined mygouille’s wings bursting forth, springing free in delight at what she’d admitted, and if there was one way to kill the mood, it was turning into a fugly monster with gray skin and bony wings—gouilleswere many things, but pretty wasn’t one of them.

Grinning into her hair, I told her, “We all feel that, Eve. All of us.”

“Dre doesn’t,” she argued. “Samuel doesn’t either.”

“Well, they’re the misery guts of our Pack. We have to have them. If everyone was happy all the time, it would get boring.”

She snorted. “I doubt that.”

We fell silent for a second, and I knew I wasn’t the only one relishing our proximity. I knew for a fact she’d never lain with anyone like this, had never cuddled so deeply into one of the other’s arms.

“Why me, Eve?”

“Huh?” she asked, and I heard the sleepy overtone to the mumble.

It made me feel stupid, made me wonder if I was overthinking this intimacy…

“Why you? In what sense?” she inquired, breaking into my thoughts.

“Why are you lying here like this with me?”

“Because I needed to.”

I blinked. “Why?”

“Because I’m eighteen, and until two months ago, I was supposed to be marrying a man in his dotage. Instead, I’m somehow joined to five guys—or seven, depending on how you look at it. It just feels surreal. I was trying not to freak out on the sofa but I was failing, and I knew you’d make me feel better. You and Eren always do.”

Her matter-of-fact words had me smiling faintly. “Wealwaysdo?”

“Yes. You’re both very patient with me. I know you’ll help reason things out with me. If I want to be mad at someone, be it the world or a book, then I talk to Dre. He puts things into perspective because he irritates me more than anything or anyone else can.”

I bit back a snicker. “And Stefan?”

She chuckled, and the faint tinkle of her amusement made my heart warm. “He makes me laugh. Oh, and he has good snacks.”

I snickered. “That he does. He tell you about them?”

“That he has them?” she queried.

“No. Why he has them.”

“Not yet.”

I hummed in response and didn’t even contemplate for a second whether it was wise to tell her or not. Some stories we couldn’t share. I was surprised I’d managed to tell her about Joan, to be honest.

“You know he grew up in an orphanage, don’t you? He ran away when the souls revealed themselves after they beat him for acting out. He lived on the streets for a while. If any of us knows true hunger, it’s Stefan.” The hoarding was a direct result of that.

Snacks, money, clothes. Stefan kept it all.

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