Page 69 of Caelum

I figured she’d had a basic education at best, and even though she’d been reading up a storm, her understanding of not only that, but other topics, led me to believe my earlier suppositions were concrete fact.

Eve was fucking smart.

While I wouldn’t always be able to answer her questions—that was what Google was for though, right?—this time, I could. “They’re a special kind of cactus.”

“Why does he grow them?”

“Back home, he was ajimador. A tequila farmer.” Before she could ask, I carried on, “Tequila is a kind of alcohol.”

“Like wine?” she queried.

“You know what that is?”

Her smile was faint but evident nonetheless at my surprise. “Yes. We had it for sacrament.”

I tipped my chin in understanding and watched as she looked at the small rows of blue agave that had a hue of that part where the ocean morphed into the sand. Blue and green, not quite turquoise, but richer somehow.

There weren’t many plants because each one took up a shit ton of space. The area was around twenty by twenty feet, and the rows of plants were curved in a way that obviously made each square foot count. The spiky leaves were nearly six feet long at some points, and they kissed the skywith a pride that came from Dre’s hard-earned tending. The soil was dusty and close to orange-brown, and whenever I came down here, I always wanted to sneeze from the dust in the air.

It wasn’t my favorite place in the world even if it was Dre’s. Still…

“It always amazes me when I come down here,” I told her softly, and though I was trying to color her opinion of Dre, I was being honest. I wouldn’t lie to her. She was Pack. That meant being truthful, even if it would hurt our cause in the long run.

“Why?” she questioned.

“Because I remember when Dre first planted these. They were small. Just like him.”

“How old was he?”

“He planted them the first year he was here. When he was thirteen. We both got here at the same time.”

Nicholas had pulled some strings to get us both in a couple of years ahead of schedule. Me because I wouldn’t have survived another of my brother-in-law’s beatings, and Dre? Because he’d almost killed his grandmother. That was how he’d come to be recruited—a creature had sensed him in the town jail.

Her mouth fell. “He’s been growing these for nearly seven years?”

“Yep,” I confirmed.

“What’s he waiting for?”

I snickered at that. “Well, it depends on why you’re growing them. He does this because it’s what he was raised doing. It was all he knew, and when he moved here, and he was given his credit card like we all get, the first thing he bought were these tiny one-year shoots. Next, he asked Nicholas for some garden plot, and Nicholas agreed.” I dug my heel into the soil. “This part of the yard isn’t optimal for growing things, so that’s why Nicholas agreed. The soil here is good, but we have to grow as much as we can, you know?”

“I like the gardens. They smell good.”

“They don’t when they’re spreading manure on everything,” I groused, my nose wrinkling.

She snickered at me, but though one of my brothers would have called me a wimp, she didn’t take her amusement out on me and asked, “Who looks after the vegetable gardens?”

My mouth tightened—I should have anticipated that question. “Staff.” It was a short and brisk answer, but she didn’t seem to think anything of it.

We weren’t ready to share the whole truth with her. Not when she was still so new to this world.

How could I tell her that injured soldiers were the ones who did the grunt work at Caelum? That, as part of their recuperation, they worked here. In the kitchens, in the gardens, teaching… It was considered therapy for them. A means of getting them back on track and healing.

“But Dre looks after this himself?”

“All by himself and he’s done a damn fine job of it.” I pointed to the large plants. “They’re almost ready to harvest. It normally takes eight years.”

“So they’ll be ready when it’s time for you to graduate?”

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