Page 128 of Caelum

“The faculty know but haven’t called her in,” Eren told Samuel. “If there was a problem, she’d have been hauled to Nicholas’s office.”

“True.” He rubbed his chin again, and this time, scraped his nails over his stubble which made a scratchy sound that was actually quite pleasant. “Still, this is further proof that we have to help her. Self-control here means the difference between us being discovered and staying under the radar. If that happens again…”

“We’re not leaving again,” Stefan retorted. “No one is going to pull that kind of shit with us around.”

Samuel conceded that with a nod. “True. But still, training is more imperative now than ever.”

“Whatever she is when she wakes up, that’s her day to train with whichever of us corresponds, yeah?” Frazer offered.

Everyone nodded at his suggestion, and I didn’t intrude because,while I felt the Angel of Death’s wings tickle my spine as they fluttered closer, it seemed like I’d found a way off this island that didn’t involve death.

My mouth worked, though, as I tried to figure out how to put my gratitude into words. Instead, when I couldn’t find the right thing to say, I blurted out, “You don’t have to do this.”

Frazer, Reed, and Stefan all narrowed their eyes at me, and even Dre, Eren, and Samuel looked perturbed.

“Why wouldn’t we? You’re ours,” Stefan grated out.

My chin trembled. “By a sleight of hand. You didn’t choose me.”

“That’s how it works for us, Eve,” Reed rasped, his biceps bulging in a way I was coming to sense was his temper monitor. “Males have no say in who Chooses them.”

Dre snorted. “You say that like females do.” He cut me a look. “As much as I think you’re a pain in the ass, Eve, you didn’t do this. You’re stuck with us as much as we’re stuck with you.”

And I had no idea why, but somehow? That made me feel a whole heck of a lot better.

Go figure.

FIVE

DRE

Have you ever met someone that just rubs you the wrong way, and not in a good way either, from the very first moment you met?

That was Eve for me.

She just irritated me. In fact, that was an understatement. She irritated the shit out of me.

With the sun beating down on my head, the ocean at my back, the wind whipping against me, and in my favorite place—the garden—I should have been happy, and I would have been if I were alone.

But I wasn’t.

Eve was here.

As I stared at her earnest features, I recognized her beauty. Maybe she wasn't a pinup model kind of gorgeous, and with her ass and tits, there was no way she'd be walking down a catwalk, but she was wholesome. The all-American girl, I figured.

With cheeks like apples, ripe with color even when she wasn't blushing—which seemed like all the fucking time—her skin was pale and creamy, contrasting beautifully with her chestnut hair. Auburn highlights burnished the dark brown, making it glimmer in the sunlight. Her eyes were like amber, and they glittered, sparkling gold whenever she was amused, then dappled with darker overtones of bronze when she was sad. She was beyond curvy, and in that, she wasn't to my taste. I far preferred the lithe and limber shapes of most of the girls at school, but I'd admit I could seewhy the guys liked her. Not just because three of them were her Chosen either.

But even though I could appreciate her physically, what went on inside her head disturbed me.

Not just because she was a freak either. But something in her stirred something in me, and after a lifetime’s lessons in control, I didn't appreciate that one little bit.

As she stared at me now, that same earnest expression did nothing but irk me. Maybe fastened on the others they'd have melted, but not me.

I wasn't there to like her. I was there to protect her. And I begrudged every fucking minute of it. We were a month away from declaring Pack. The second I hit twenty, I was about to make my friendships with Nestor, Eren, and Stefan public.

Official.

I wasn't about to change things just because of her. Our friendship had been years in the making, and though I wasn't as close to them as I could be, something in me had always made me hold myself back from them.

---