Page 155 of Caelum

It was instinctive to reach down inside myself and attempt to soothe him, and when he froze in the middle of stalking back and forth across Nestor’s room, I knew my actions had done something.

Whether they were for good or ill, I didn’t know.

“Don’t do that,” he grated out a few seconds later.

I ignored him. Maybe that was stupid, but what was he going to do when there were six other men around who felt it was their duty to keep me safe?

The bear was in charge, and it was the bear with whom I was connected with. The light in me attempted to appease and soothe the darkness in him, and when he turned to face me, glowering all the way, I stated, “Aren’t you mine? Aren’t I supposed to protect you, to care for you as you’re supposed to do the same for me?”

His eyes flashed, but before he could say a word, Nestor snorted out a chuckle. “She has you there, Dre.”

Alexandre tensed and his nostrils flared, so he looked more like a bull than a bear. “I don’t need to be appeased.”

“I’d say you do,” I replied unashamedly. “There’s no point in freaking out over this development. I’ve been dealing with it, hiding it, for a very long time. You wouldn’t have noticed it if you hadn’t known I was strange. It would have just been a happy coincidence.

“That’s how it’s always been. Always. There’s no need to fret?—”

“There’s every need.Madre de Dios, don’t you see, woman? You’re awalking weapon,” he grated out. “You’re exactly what Caelum needs to eradicate all Ghouls, and if you fell into their hands, you’re what they need to annihilate us.”

When he put it like that…

Goodness.

THIRTEEN

DRE

“What are you doing here?”

The sight of Eve in my garden should have irritated me more than it actually did. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t head over to her, grab her, and haul her out… but when her fingers curled on her palms, I was reminded why.

She stroked her marks with the tips of her fingers and the sensation, though impossible, whispered over my flesh like a caress.

Having leaped to her feet at my words, she stood there, shoulders rounded, and her hands now clenched into fists after she’d seen me watching her caress her palms. “I wanted to think,” she muttered.

My jaw clenched at her words then tightened further when I saw the empty bag of blood on the ground where she’d been sitting before I’d come inside my safe haven. That she was still refusing to take blood from the vein irked me, just like everything else about her. She had a Pack of seven hovering around her and she was still shy about taking from the vein?

Jesus wept.

Tone sharp from my irritation, I ground out, “Go and think somewhere else. I’m going to be busy.” I hadn’t been looking after the cacti since Eve had made an appearance at Caelum, and there were weeds starting to grow—to my shame.

This was my heritage. The one link I had to my past and to my family.

I didn’t like thinking about what was going to happen to them when I left Caelum. If things had proceeded like normal, they’d have been ready to harvest just as I was due to graduate. I could have made some tequila for therest of the student body, left it behind as a gift for them—the ‘only beer’ rule was a shit rule. Sometimes, after the stuff we did and saw, beer didn’t cut it.

But, because of this woman here, my plans had gone awry, and my cacti would probably be tossed on a scrap heap and burned. The thought alone triggered an acute pain deep inside me.

“I like it here,” she whispered, turning away so she looked over my cacti and toward the ocean, which blasted her with a gust of sea breeze. It rustled her hair, and Eren’s plaid shirt shifted against her body, revealing curves I didn’t want to find attractive but did.

“Tough. Fuck off, Eve,” I snarled. “I have shit to do and don’t have time to babysit you. Isn’t it time you fucked up one of the others’ lives?”

She stiffened at my words. “I didn’t mean to make you shift.”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” I ground out, and because she wasn’t moving, I decided I needed to make her.

The bear roared inside my head, fucking with my thoughts just as it had been since she’d made him pop out like she’d whispered, “Abracadabra.” He didn’t like my intentions, knew this female was his to love and to protect, but the man? He didn’t fucking agree.

My feet connected with the soil as I stormed her way, and when I grabbed her arm and began hauling her out of the yard, the bear rebelled by shooting searing pain through my nerve endings. The headache splintered out of nowhere, then disappeared when my hands shot up to cup my head.

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