Page 175 of Caelum

That was the noise we’d heard earlier. Brendan had shut the pantry door after he’d tried to mess with my head.

My jaw tightened as outrage swirled inside me. This was a petty power play. Trying to show me that I was weak like him too. I wished like fuck I could go and find the prick, show him just what it meant to mess with a soldier from an Alpha Unit, but instead, I just glared at the darkness beyond.

Crossing the threshold was beyond me.

Seriously beyond me, and the shame that hit me then was enough to make all my BS about being a soldier from an Alpha Unit disappear into dust.

I’d felt helpless for most of my life since I’d hit eleven. When the souls had converged on me en masse, and when the doctors had revealed my ‘sickness,’ my world had gone from bad to worse after the terror attack that had seen my home shatter into a million, tiny pieces like a glitter bomb had been let off in my face.

My mother’s whimpers and my father’s howls of pain rang in my ears like it was yesterday and not years before. They’d died in the rubble, waiting to be rescued. I’d heard them. Praying to Allah, begging for me to be safe. As each moment had passed, I’d slowly become numb until I was frozen. Even when they’d called my name, trying to find out if I was okay, I hadn’t been able to utter the words.

The souls had taken over me that day in a way nobody could understand. I’d shut down for survival until I’d realized no one would find us if I didn’t do something at all. So, I’d sung. For the first time in my life, I’d called upon the Lorelei’s powers, and within moments, a rescue team had been with us.

If I’d used my voice earlier, if I hadn’t locked down, I could have saved my parents, and that was something I’d never forgive myself for.

I knew the mental shutdown had been to save my sanity, to save me from dying. The imam from my mosque had told me that Allah had spared me, that my survival was a testament to a destiny that wasn’t completed. I didn’t know if I believed him, but it was the first time I’d beentrapped in the dark with no way out, and it wouldn’t have been the last before my brother-in-law was done with me.

My throat tightened and I began to croon a song to myself. It was an old one my mother had sung to me as a child, and I used both the Lorelei and the memories to calm me down.

The sound of my breathing almost swallowed the song, and as my heart began pounding in my ears, I tried to step forward, to step into the darkness, but I hovered on the threshold, unable to head farther away from the light.

The whooshing of air from my lungs didn’t seem to help me. I felt like I was oxygen starved, like I wasn’t actually breathing, even though my chest was billowing like a boat with a large sail on the open sea.

My fingers ached as I clutched the doorjamb, as I tried to use that to launch me into the pantry.

The irony was, of course, that I had good night vision. All creatures did. But it might as well have been a Stygian gloom for all I cared, for all my subconscious would let me into what was, essentially, a large cupboard.

“Eren?”

My eyes shuttered. Just what I needed.

Eve. Seeing me like this.

“Why are you singing?”

Shit, had the Lorelei’s song called to her?

I didn’t reply because I couldn’t. My throat felt tight, and I knew if I spoke my voice would be scratchy and raspy and would sound exactly unlike me. Only the Lorelei made the song escaping me sound smooth and unctuous, like spreading Nutella on warm toast.

A hand touched my arm, and the heat from her palm had me releasing a sigh and coming to a halt mid-song. The hand moved, trailing up and over my arm toward my shoulder where it squeezed then moved down, gently patting me before she curled into my side, curling her arm around my waist and pressing into me like she was born to be there.

Hell, if she wasn’t, then nobody was.

A shaky breath escaped me, and I realized her touch had broken the panic I’d fallen into. The cage in my mind that reminded me what I’d felt like trapped in the hundred-degree heat on a summer’s day in Istanbul, surrounded by flies that chased my parents’ corpses, with the pressure of a house weighing down on my body… it opened somewhat with her presence.

And then she sang.

I shuddered in response. It was a song I’d never heard before, but from its content, I knew it was a hymn. The words were soft, but the melody was harmonious, and it seemed to seep into my bones, making them feel liquid.

It made no sense because Nestor had commented on the fact she was Succubus today. After the evening meal, she and Stefan were supposed to train together so she could present a more ‘normal’ front to the faculty. But the way her voice was tuned? It was Lorelei through and through.

Another shudder whipped through me as the song reached a piercingly sweet, high note, and I shivered into her as she pressed her face into my arm. The action muffled the lyrics, but I heard them in my fucking soul.

Closing my eyes, I picked up on her song. Loreleis were pitch perfect and could pick up any instrument and play most songs on it as though they were prodigies—it came in handy when Nestor played on his guitar, and the two of us could have a chilled jam session together. Catching her melody and staying a few words behind so I could sing almost in tandem with her wasn’t difficult.

As our voices entwined, however, my body responded as though she’d grabbed a firm hold of my cock and had squeezed down—not with the intent to maim, but to entice me.

My singing turned garbled as arousal punched me square in the nose, robbing me of all panic and replacing the terror of moments before with a need so strong, I felt sure I was about to hyperventilate, but for a different reason entirely.

---