Page 127 of Caelum

Dre tapped his fingers against the armrest as he stared at me, skewering me with his glance. How he always made me feel so small, so pathetic was beyond me, but if his intention was to make me feel asuseless as a bag of potatoes, it worked. Every time. “What happened with Lewis?”

I blinked. “Lewis?”

“The kid you dangled by his throat?”

The room fell silent, and Stefan turned his gaze toward me. “Eve?”

Why I felt sheepish, I wasn’t sure. Lewis had tried to hurt me. Had tripped me up to humiliate me. He deserved no pity from me. I cleared my throat. “He tripped me up.”

Frazer’s scowl made an appearance then, and it darkened as he rumbled, “When?”

“Yesterday. Before you guys arrived. I was rushing out because I saw the plane was coming into land, and he just stuck his foot out to trip me up.” The sudden surge of emotions in the room was close to overpowering, but even though those emotions were distinctly negative and did not bode well for Lewis, it made me feel cosseted.

They were furious on my behalf.

And I loved it.

“What happened after?” Eren asked, his eyes flinty and his mouth drawn into a tight line as he cracked his knuckles—the sound came in tangent with Reed, whose knuckles popped so loudly I flinched.

Again, I cleared my throat. “I… well, it was my Hell Hound day yesterday. You know that.”

Stefan hissed out a curse. “Youwereamped up when we landed.”

Worrying my fingers, I nodded and admitted, “I picked him up and threw him into a coffee table.” Silence fell at my words. The guys looked at one another, then they began snickering. Huffing, I stacked my hands on my hips and ground out, “What’s so funny?”

Reed shook his head. “We’re not laughing at you, Eve.”

“No? It feels like it,” I groused.

“Well, we’re not.” He moved toward me, the warmth in his eyes close to unnerving if I hadn’t appreciated it so much. When his hand collided with my arm, the heat from his touch sank into me, so rich and deep that I almost shivered in response. Shivering was the body’s reaction to cold, but I was burning up. Because of him. Because of them. “We’re laughing because you won’t take any shit from anyone, and you just proved that yesterday.”

“And that’s a good thing?” I questioned, peering up into those soulful orbs of his.

“It’s the best. In a world of predators, it’s always good to remind them who’s top dog.”

I snorted. “I’m not top dog.”

“Maybe not, but you showed by example that you’re not about to be messed with. If that point hadn’t been hit home when you treated Samuel to a smackdown, then…”

“Nothing would prove it,” Stefan inserted, and his tone was loaded with satisfaction. “As it stands, they should leave you alone now.”

“Caelum is, essentially, a dog-eat-dog world,” Samuel explained, and though his tone was cool, somehow his calm expression soothed me in turn. “They waited until you were alone, converged on you to see how weak a target you were, and you proved you weren’t.”

“And that’s good?”

His top lip curled. “That’s the best thing you could have done.”

“Bastards waited until we were gone to start in on her,” Stefan spat, and I felt the surge in his aggression.

I shook my head. “No. They ignored me for the most part.”

That had Samuel grunting. “They isolated you, Eve. Isolated you when they knew full well your friends had gone, and that those friends might be in danger too… It’s a dominance thing.” He rubbed his chin. “This is proof that her strength goes beyond her looks. News will spread throughout the faculty.”

Eren shrugged. “Not necessarily a bad thing. We’ve absorbed her into our Pack so they have to know we wouldn’t have done that if she couldn’t match us.”

“They may just think you’re being kind,” Frazer countered.

I snorted. “Have you met Dre? He’s incapable of being kind.” As the others hooted at my words, Dre just shot me a narrow-eyed glare—but he didn’t argue. At least that meant he wasn’t a liar as well as a bully.

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