Page 47 of Caelum

Eve wiggled at my side and, in a flustered tone of voice, said, “Stefan, I really do have to go.”

Dre, whose eyes were on her as she flushed, didn’t argue with that, and even though I didn’t want her to go, I just murmured, “I’ll meet you in the library later?”

Her cheeks remained red as she nodded, and I let her scurry away. The minute she was out the door, I let loose a punch to Dre’s shoulder that had him wincing—it was the one Reed had dislocated.

“What the fuck did you do that for?”

“For being a dipshit,” Nestor countered, and I was relieved that his usually clinical tone was loaded with anger.

“There was no need to make her feel like crap, Dre. Not cool, man,” Eren ground out.

Though I was pleased at their defense of my mate, it came as a surprise.Their words weren’t token, but heartfelt. They’d come to care for her, and I was relieved about that.

When Dre formed our Pack, when I claimed her as my mate, she’d be enveloped into our fold.

“Since when did you guys give a fuck about any of the girls here?” Dre hissed, reaching up and rubbing his shoulder.

“Since Eve came.” I sent him a measured look. “I need to show you something. Later.”

Dre grumbled, “Sure.”

Eren and Nestor glanced at me, but I stayed focused on Dre. “You want to grab something to eat?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m fucking starving.”

“Okay. Well, we’ll get you something to eat and then you can go back to your room and get some rest. We can tell you what’s been going down since you’ve been down for the count.”

I knew Dre wasn’t happy about being ordered around, but tough shit. That was on him.

THIRTEEN

EVE

The force of Reed’s punches had me flinching as I watched him beating on one of the other boys in their year.

I hated this room. The gym. I was slowly coming to accept that each machine in here was actually a torture device, and it made me long for the days when I’d had to sweep the church or wash a hundred dishes. Anything was better than the elliptical, which had to have been made by Satan.

Rubbing the towel over my face as I tried not to die on the machine that Stefan insisted would help me build some stamina, I watched the fight over by the corner.

The gym was the size of the New Order compound. There were all kinds of workout machines, ones that Stefan had explained were for cardio and others were for gaining strength. While those machines took up a grand portion of the room, there were several squares which Eren called boxing rings. How a square could be a ring, I didn’t know, but I didn’t argue either.

A lot didn’t make sense in this world, and I was gradually coming to realize that as backward as I was, I was a heck of a lot more advanced than they.

Instead of using a hundred adjectives, they’d use one word: ‘fuck.’ That seemed to fit every situation. Slotting into a sentence as an adjective, a verb, or even an adverb. I’d never known a word to have such broad usage, but even though I told them it was limiting, they ignored me. In fact, I was sure they used it all the more.

There were eight rings in all. Each of them filled with boys. The girlsfought in there too, but I noticed there were fewer fights. Not only because there weren’t as many girls here than boys, but because the girls didn’t seem to want to fight. I wasn’t about to complain about that. The notion that I could cause such damage to someone with my fists made me feel physically ill.

Just watching Reed’s knuckles pound into the other boy’s flesh, seeing the spray of blood, and the splatter of snot and saliva and sweat as he ground the man into dust on the boxing ring’s floor broke me out into a cold sweat.

“Don’t like violence?”

I jerked in surprise at the question and turned my head to see that someone had moved onto the machine beside me.

It was one of Reed’s friends, and one of the boys that was usually snarling with Nestor or Stefan.

“I’m not used to it,” I countered, flicking through my memory banks and reminding myself that this one was called Samuel. Frazer was in another ring, and he was the one Stefan truly loathed.

“Everyone’s used to it.”

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