Page 35 of Caelum

TWO

FRAZER

Dre, as always, was being a fuckwit. And though I wanted to ram his head into the tiled bathroom wall, I couldn't.

He wasn't technically wrong.

Dealing with Eve was like talking to a six-year-old sometimes. She had the same vocabulary as a fucking kid, and yet, she wasn't. She was an adult. She was smart, mature in her own way, but she was of another time, a different era.

She wasn't aware of the nuances that were inherent in our world, to society these days, and having been reared in a cult, I understood all that. Hell, I even empathized. But now? At this minute? It would have been damn handy if she understood some of those nuances.

Not even about our world, but just the regular shit we all said. At our base, thanks to our formative years, we all spoke like kids from the twenty-first century. Eve? Not so much.

I ran a hand over my face, trying to figure this out, trying to understand what the fuck was going on here.

Until Dre had said we had a problem, I'd just been freaking out about the fact I had a mate period.

The mark had appeared a mere hour after I'd sat with her outside on the cliff one day. It had been a burning brand that was impossible to ignore, impossible to forget. Not just because of what it represented, but because it would carry on burning away like recently seared flesh until my Chosen claimed me.

I'd figured she'd understood what she'd done. I had been waiting on her to Choose me publicly, as all females of our species did, but Eve?

Well, she hadn't.

And I'd gotten mad.

Mad enough to give her the silent treatment last night.

I didn't even give a fuck that I should have been glad about her wanting to keep things on the down-low. The minute she claimed me publicly was the minute we’d be under watch from the faculty who never allowed a mated pair to be alone together until graduation. That alone was why Samuel had picked a fight with her—to protect Reed. Who, according to Samuel, was also her fucking mate.

But last night, I’d just been furious. Angry she'd Chosen me and was content to make me suffer. And after Aboh, when I'd needed her, she'd gone straight to Stefan and his cronies. Not me.

That had fucking hurt. Hurt so bad it was a thousand times worse than anything my parents had ever done to me. Through their neglect and lack of care, I’d suffered, but Eve? She’d decimated me when she hadn’t come to greet me, when she hadn’t rushed to hug me after I’d landed—childish, but I was just a man. Wanting a woman who’d Chosen him.

It should have been obvious to me that she hadn't realized what she'd done. She didn't know our ways, after all, but what my cousin had once called my ‘dick-face mode’ had ticked into being. I’d treated her like shit last night. Blanking her as though she didn’t exist to me, but she did.

She was mine.

And I was hers.

God help us both.

Guilt had me suffocating until I managed to rasp out, “I should have known you didn't understand what you did. You’re not like the others. They might have strung me along, but not you. I’m sorry I underestimated you.” I bridged my hands together and squeezed my knuckles tight. My control was close to being breached. I wanted to touch her like I wanted my next breath. Even this short distance between us was torture.

The fact that Stefan had been dealing with this from day one had me pitying him when I should have been loathing him for daring to be another of Eve’s Chosen.

“I don’t even know what I did, never mind understand it,” she countered, sounding miserable and confused. Shit, she more than sounded it. The way she was gnawing on her bottom lip, the force with which she was wringing her hands… it all made me want to wrap her up in my arms and protect her .

Even if that meant protecting her from herself.

“Females select their mates,” I told her softly instead. Taking away the need for her confusion with answers, not with my body—which I'd have much preferred—but with my words. “Usually, it’s a combination of the creature and her desires. When the two are in alignment, then that means you've Chosen someone.”

“That means you had the hots for Stefan and Frazer,” Dre inserted, and I elbowed him in the side.

“Shut up, jackass,” I growled, enjoying his wince as he rubbed at his side. Then, with a sigh, I murmured, “But he's kind of right. Unless you're attracted to someone, the mark won't form.”

I was used to seeing her cheeks turn red, but the crimson staining her face at my words? It was nothing like I'd ever seen. Her eyes turned glassy, and I wasn't sure if it was thanks to the feelings I inspired in her or what my words represented.

“How did I do it?” she whispered, her voice low and husky.

“You didn't really do anything,” I said with a sigh. “Your soul did. The Sin Eater in you Chose me.”

“While also Choosing Stefan?” Dre cocked a brow at me. “That makes no fucking sense.”

I shrugged rather than admit that, somehow, Eve had also chosen a Hell Hound. “Does he have the same mark I do?”

His nostrils flared with irritation, but he nodded. “He definitely does.” He cut Eve an exasperated look. “Trouble with a capital T.”

“I didn't do anything,” she argued waspishly.

“You didn't have to. Just by breathing, you’re a walking disaster area.”

“There’s no point fighting fate,” I reasoned, knowing I should defend her but shit, Dre, for all he was being a dick, did have a point. The impossible was happening between our Packs, and it was thanks to this one woman.

“No point? What the fuck do you think the faculty is going to do when they find out about this?” he growled, and I winced because he was right.

“What do you mean?” Eve murmured, any pinkness in her cheeks having disappeared in the face of his words. She was white as a sheet, so frail and sickly looking that I wanted to embrace her.

Fuck, I didn't even need that as an excuse to want to tuck her in my arms.

I'd never had these feelings before. Not even with Louise, who was the only person I had truly loved before Caelum. Loving Reed and Samuel was different, and technically with Louise too, since she was my cousin. But as hard as I'd wanted to protect Louise, and as badly as I failed, it didn't compare with the bone-deep, intrinsic need I felt to shelter and shield Eve from the harshness of our world.

Dre made a disgusted sound. “I mean,” he snapped, “that Caelum doesn't do freaks. If you don't fit in, then you're eradicated. That’s how it works. You’re no better than a Ghoul to them.”

I wished he were wrong, but he wasn't, and that terrified the fuck out of me. Even though I hadn’t known about the other Chosen, it was why I’d been contemplating escaping Caelum. Eve was odd, in more ways than I think most realized, but I did. To be more precise, my Sin Eater did.

I said nothing about that, though, instead focused my ire on Dre who was being a prick as per fucking usual.

“Are we going to have a problem?” I growled, flexing my fists.

He cut me a look. “No. She's Stefan’s, therefore, unfortunately , she's Pack,” he sneered. “I honor my Pack.”

“You disrespect her at every turn,” I pointed out, still on edge.

Dre shrugged. “Until she earns my respect, I'm not going to hand it out freely.”

“Is she safe with you?” I asked, needing to hit this home because Dre, through his dislike of her, could be the one who informed Nicholas about how peculiar Eve truly was.

“I told you already,” he ground out. “She's Stefan’s. He's marked. Whether I like it or not, she Chose him, and for whatever fucking reason, he wants her,” he growled. “Worse than that, the other dipshits in my Pack want her too. They’re all making moon eyes at her and jumping however high she asks them to?—”

“I've never asked any of them to jump!” Eve butted in, her tone indignant enough that, even in this shit show, I had to hide a laugh.

Dre narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you purposely dense? Or just fucking stupid?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “If you're going to malign me, then at least be accurate about it.” Her chin tipped up. “I'm not stupid. You all talk like ingrates. If you used words that were in the dictionary then I'd understand you. But you don't.”

“It’s called living in the twenty-first century,” Dre snapped.

“And we're getting off the point,” I cut in before this could turn into a fistfight. “Look, whatever the hell is going on here, we can't avoid the truth—Eve, you're in danger. If we want to keep you safe, then we’ll…”

Eve, shaking her head, whispered, “I've Chosen you… but what does that mean for us? ”

It was the first time she'd taken an active sort of ownership over what she'd done, inadvertently or not, and I gentled my voice as I repeated the truth to her, explaining, “The Sin Eater in you recognized me as hers.”

“But, what does that actually mean? I understand the words for once, just not the meaning,” she questioned, her brow puckering. “Mine for what?”

My lips twitched. “To do with as she wills.”

Her eyes flared at that. “But I don't—” Her bottom lip wobbled, and she pressed a hand to her belly. The move was strangely compelling, like she was quenching something she didn't understand as she tried to communicate with her body in a language that was alien to her. “Is it about reproduction?”

Dre snorted. “Fornication leads to reproduction, so yeah.”

“It’s about both,” I retorted, glaring at him, and trying to think in words she'd understand, I explained, “Your cult… people got married, didn't they?”

“Yes.”

“It wasn't an interesting cult,” Dre inserted. “Not a sex-fest one. Of course, you had to be boring, Eve, didn't you?”

Smacking him in the arm without looking at him, I turned back to her and saw that her focus was on me. One hundred percent. That was something about her I'd noticed before. She gave you all of her attention like a vacuum sucked at her focus until all she saw was you and nothing else.

“Your soul wishes to marry me. That’s about the long and the short of it. But…” I bit the inside of my cheek here because there was no God. To Eve, however, she'd been raised to believe there was. “Humans decide on who they want. Or, usually, they do. I assume things were arranged in your world?” At her nod, I murmured, “Well, there’s no arrangement. Choosing me has nothing to do with politics or anything like that. Your Sin Eater recognizes me as hers because…” I hesitated again. “God willed it to be so.”

“He touched upon our union?”

“And the one you have with Stefan,” Dre barked out—like any of us could forget that. Or the link she had with Reed.

I ignored him, though, and just carried on staring at her, willing her to understand.

“So, we get married?” she asked hesitantly.

Amusement sparked, but I only pointed at my shoulder, dipping it south so she knew I meant my back. “That’s the equivalent of marriage vows, Eve.”

“But I didn't do anything!” she argued once more, and though her words were redundant, I heard her panic. Her fear. And it fucking killed me .

Needing to soothe her, I reached out to grab her hands, but she shoved them away. The move stung, and I fought hard not to lose my temper because it wasn’t anyone’s fault here that she didn’t understand. That she didn’t get how our race worked.

Still, I had no choice but to tell her the complete, unadulterated truth. “You didn't have to. Your soul did.”