Page 249 of Caelum

The heat, and the flies, and the stench assailed my senses next. They were so powerful. So strong. My hands ached again with the need to free myself, and yet, the weight above me was so incredibly overwhelming, I was going nowhere.

Then, the sound came next. My mother weeping. Her pain evident, and her distress making her plead with Allah—not for her safety, but my own. She never seemed to hear me when I called to her, was in some kind of daze that told me she was badly injured. My father didn’t speak, didn’t whisper a word, but I heard the low keening sounds that told me he was hurting too, just without the energy to release a single word.

Tears came next. Flooding me, drowning me. I was submerged in them. Covered in rocks, suffocating on tears. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t?—

“Eren.”

The whisper, the soft, gentle lullaby of my name had me tensing, but it stopped my thrashing.

“Sleep, Eren. Rest. For me.”

It was so quiet, and the words were so simple and beautifully uttered that something inside me reacted like a cat would to a gentle stroke by its owner. I wanted to nuzzle that voice. Embrace it. Because it represented everything I’d lost. Home. Love. Warmth.

Inwardly, I shuddered as my subconscious fought the ease I felt. How could I trust the words, trust the sentiment when I’d never had peace before now? And yet, it came. As those feelings were stirred by a song that was almost soundless, a gentle hum made everything inside me soften and gentle. Relaxing into the sheets, into a woman’s arms like the demon slayer she was, I slept.

For the second night in a run, I sank into her, my haven.

My peace.

FOURTEEN

STEFAN

I stared into the darkness, hearing the soft lullaby my woman gave my brother. He was huddled against her, sleeping as fitfully as a child, even though he’d calmed to the extent that he just looked as though he was in a deep REM sleep.

Eren only rested when he was exhausted, and I knew we’d pushed his reserves because I wasn’t sure if he’d done anything other than mess around on his phone while the rest of us had been catching some Zs, and even though he’d managed to get some shuteye last night, that wasn’t enough to make up for every other sleepless night, was it?

He was a huge concern to the Pack, and he didn’t even know it. His sleep deprivation was a major issue. It never seemed to affect him during a mission, but it mattered because all our welfare did. I wished there was something we could do to make him sleep, but as the situation at Caelum had proven, not even powerful narcotics—enough to fell aschool, for fuck’s sake—had downed him.

He’d not only built a chemical tolerance, I’d come to believe, but one that was forged with his mind too. He refused to let the drugs into his system, and while that sounded like it was impossible, creatures themselves were impossible, weren’t they? Possessed souls that were spawned from Adam and Eve themselves.

The day had been beyond insane, the revelations on the brink of ridiculousness. It was no wonder Eren finally succumbed to sleep because I knew we all felt like we’d been put through the wringer. It was a testamentto our exhaustion that we were all in bed before eight PM, but the markings on Eve’s body, what they meant—literally—as well as the position they put us in, were ramifications that were hit home with a goddamn mallet.

And yet, as complicated as the future was because of our attachment to Eve, how could I not love the woman who cradled my brother through his nightmares? Who sang to him like a mother to a babe so he’d sleep?

I wasn’t sure my heart could be more full of love than it was at this second, and to be honest, it scared me. I was torn. So torn. Most of us had been taught not to love. Had been shown by example that it was an unwise emotion. I’d been dumped in an orphanage. Nestor had been handed off to a batshit priest. Eren’s brother-in-law was a bully and a tyrant who’d abused him, and Dre had been left with a cruel grandmother who’d worked him to the bone on their tequila plantation.

We were fucked up.

So, while Eve’s level of fucked up was a tad unusual, it wasn’t anything we weren’t used to. Not when she was who she was. And I wasn’t even talking about thisJannahcrap. I meant as a person.

The person who could switch from Pollyanna to Bloody Mary if she felt sure she, or one of us, was being threatened. The woman who could accept seven men into her life, even though it went against everything she’d ever learned as a child, and had embraced them and learned about them all equally. She hadn’t Claimed us all, and I wasn’t angered by that. Truly. She represented more than just sex, and that knowledge alone was what had made me realize she was different.

I wanted her for more than that.

I wanted her heart when I’d never given a damn before now.

When the final notes of her song drifted off, the sheets rustled, and she carefully twisted onto her back. I didn’t move from my position, not wanting to disturb her or Eren, even though I knew from experience that when he did eventually sleep, he’d go under deeply until another nightmare woke him when his body had recharged to the point it could function normally.

I hoped, for his sake, that Eve could soothe him out of that too.

“Are you asleep?”

Her whisper had my lips twitching. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I woke up when Eren fell asleep.”

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