Page 204 of Caelum

I hauled Eve closer to me, while Reed did the same with Nestor. My brother wouldn’t appreciate Reed hauling him around, but Nestor was a heavy motherfucker, and as strong as I was,gouilleswere just as heavy as Hell Hounds. It only fit that Reed hoisted him around.

When Reed crossed through the gates, there was no visible sign of reaction. Nor for Nestor either. No electrical zapping sounds as they were fried by the portal, which was the reason for Caelum’s existence in the first place.

Licking my lips, I headed through the portal, and even though I didn’t feel it myself, that didn’t mean I didn’t sense it secondhand.

Eve’s body felt as though it were charged with a lightning bolt. Against me, she stiffened so quickly and so rigidly, I almost dropped her. Clinging to her to spare her from a nasty and unnecessary fall to the ground, I dragged her across the threshold. It was a matter of taking two steps, and yet it felt like I had to run a ten-mile race.

By the time I made it to the other side, I was out of breath and panting. My Pack looked at me, but I shook my head. We could talk about this later after Reed guided us to a cave he knew where we were going to hide out until a boat came for us.

Though I was exhausted after being drugged and then going through the gate, I maintained the same pace as the others. We hauled ass to the other side of the island with only Nestor and Eve passed out.

Slipping down the cliff face was dangerous with our burdens, but Reed and I were limber, and we descended to the shoreline like the mountain goats we weren’t.

By the time we made it into the damp cave, the sun was rising. Samuel,upon awakening, had contacted his boat, and they were sending a smaller dinghy to come and grab us from the coordinates he sent just before he came and hid in the cave with us.

We had a long day ahead of us just hanging around in here, wondering what the fuck was happening back at Caelum, and if anyone had woken up yet to figure out what had gone down.

But Caelum wasn’t our priority anymore.

With our seven wishes granted, and her eight souls, Eve had just saved hundreds of lives.

That kind of power?

It was ripe for manipulation.

She needed us to protect her, to guard her against those who would want to use and abuse her gifts, and for the first time since I’d met her, I was ready for the task.

She’d brought my bear to me years ahead of schedule, and I’d yet to thank her for that. Truth was, it was nearly two weeks now since she’d done that, and I was still processing what had happened.

The bear was changing me. Shaping me into a better man. One who might, one day, deserve Eve as a Chosen.

The cave stank of dank water and seaweed. There was a sandy base so we could get slightly comfortable, but it wasn’t like sinking back onto our sofas in the common room as we ought to be doing right about now.

Everything had changed and only we were aware of it.

With Samuel having hauled his ass back inside now that the coordinates were with the captain of his ship, Frazer rasped, “What the fuck happened at the portal?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “It was like she got struck with a cattle prod.”

The six of us—Nestor was still out for the count—frowned down at the woman slumped in my arms. As we watched, I saw something begin to shimmer to life on her hand.

At first, I thought it was a play of light, a bug on her hand that the faint rays of the sun was making iridescent.

But then I saw it and my nostrils flared.

I grabbed her jacket and began hauling the sleeves down her arms, revealing branches loaded with leaves that swirled around and around: first, one hand, then up her forearm and along her bicep before it streamed over her chest, meeting at her collarbone, then taking off down her other arm. But where the ‘light’ coalesced on her torso, it burst out, wider and wider until a canopy was formed.

It was wrong when she was unconscious, but I grabbed her shirt and opened the buttons so we could see what was happening to her.

By the time her flesh was revealed to us, creamy mounds my hands itched to shape, they were covered by a tree.

“A fucking tree?” I rasped and saw everyone else looked just as confused.

The light pulsed for a handful of seconds, as though determined for us to remember it, and then it blinked out of existence. Her hands and arms, however, remained inked. As I peered down at them, I saw that each leaf was made up of a word. Tiny letters marked her intongues, but I didn’t understand them, not a single word.

After that, most of us just fell silent. We didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on, and there was no point in even trying to gather our thoughts when we were on borrowed time.

Once we were on the boat, once Eve was away from Caelum, we’d be able to breathe easier, regroup, and then settle on our next step.

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