Page 50 of Caelum
SEVENTEEN
EREN
“I didn’t forget.”
Her eyes widened at the box I’d just presented to her.
Behind me, Stefan and Nestor mouthed, “Suck up,” but I just smirked at them while Eve’s attention was on my offering.
“What is it?”
A laugh escaped me. “Open it and find out.”
She peeked up at me, flashing those honey eyes my way. Every time she stared deeply into mine, I longed for her to claim me. To do what she’d done with Nestor and Dre, with the others too.
I wanted to ask her what was taking so long, wanted to know if I wasn’t good enough… but then the warmth in her eyes would reassure me. She’d cling to me like she had last night after class, touch me as though she couldn’t not touch me somewhere, and I’d breathe a little easier.
Though she nibbled her bottom lip, I watched as she untucked the ribbon that was haphazardly piled on top of the box. No amount of YouTube tutorials made the bow look pretty, but fuck, I’d tried. Her tongue peeped out from between her teeth as she meticulously pulled it apart then began to unwrap the paper covering it. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised. I’d imagined she’d tear into it, rip it to pieces, but she didn’t.
She was careful.
I watched with a smile on my face, one that probably made me look sappy, but I didn’t give a damn. She made me feel so much sometimes that it was like it was spilling all over me, and for so long, I’d forced myself not to feel for fear of what happened when I did.
The Lorelei in me never responded well to my emotions, but more than that, my sleeping patterns grew even more tumultuous. Ever since she’d come to Caelum, I couldn’t say I’d been sleeping better, but the Lorelei was more in control, that was for sure.
“Open it already,” Dre grumbled, and I shot him a glare.
The bastard totally didn’t deserve Eve, and he’d done nothing but give her even more crap ever since she’d claimed him.
It wasn’t fair, but very little in this life was.
Scowling harder at him, I growled, “Let her open her gift without you bitching at her.” Dre flipped me the bird, but I crooned, “Walk to the corner and stay there.”
The words held the lilt of my Lorelei who wasn’t in charge today but was hovering over things like he’d started doing ever since I’d hit nineteen. It was like he was the manager of my souls now.
In response, Dre lumbered to his feet then headed over to the corner and stood there dumbly.
“Face the wall,” I instructed, the words a singsong that had him obeying, and Stefan and Nestor began snickering.
When I looked at Eve, she gaped at Dre then at me. “Why didn’t you do that before?”
It was my turn to snicker as well. “Because I don’t like to manipulate people. But it’s your birthday. Consider it gift number two.”
She grinned at me then darted her gaze back down to the box. When she opened it, her grin faded, and her bottom lip trembled. When she looked at me next, I saw the tears in her eyes and felt my heart clutch at the sight of them.
I wasn’t sure if she liked it, and I was pretty sure she didn’t have a clue what it was.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, then quickly followed that up with, “What is it?”
Smiling at her, I dropped beside her on Nestor’s sofa. “It was my mother’s.” I didn’t want her to know that it had been on her body when she died because it might disturb her, but it was the only thing of hers I had, and I figured if anyone needed a talisman, it was my Eve. “It’s called the Hand of Hamsa.”
“The Hand of Hamsa?” she repeated. “What does it do?”
“It wards off evil. It’s a talisman too. For protection.”
Her lips twitched. “With seven of you hovering over me, I think I’m safe on the protection front.” Then her smile blossomed for real and she requested, “Put it on me, please?”
She twisted in her seat and reached behind her shoulder to scoop up her hair from the back of her neck. As I placed the delicate gold chain around her throat and fastened it, I inhaled her scent and reveled in our closeness. I longed to press a kiss to the back of her neck but wasn’t sure how she’d respond.
Things had changed since we’d learned she was djinn. The revelation had made her open up to us because, I knew, she had finally realized no matter how crazy she was, no matter what she could do, we weren’t going anywhere. For our loyalty, for our steadfastness, we were rewarded. She’d ceased avoiding us, had begun being affectionate again, but even that had a limit—I was well aware how traditional she was. Shit, she made my ultraconservative sister look modern.
“You should have reminded us,” Stefan grumbled, and I sensed his irritation with me, but this was on him. Not me.
I hadn’t done this to make them look bad. Genuinely. But they should have remembered without my reminding them. How fucking hard was it to set an alarm on their phone?
Ignoring them, I rubbed the gold with my fingers—using it as an excuse to touch the back of her delicate neck and loving the sudden surge of gooseflesh at my touch—and said, “There. It’s fastened. Are you ready for your second day of classes?”
“It figures that’s why they’ve taken her off private tutoring,” Nestor stated. “Her turning eighteen as well as whatever’s going down with Merry and Damon were the prompt.”
Stefan nodded. “Another reason it would have been useful if you kept us in the loop, Eren,” he groused. “Then we wouldn’t have worried something funky was going on with the faculty.”
I shrugged, ignoring him. Petty? Perhaps. But mostly I was just transfixed by the sight of the pendant nestling amid the slight protrusions of Eve’s collarbones.
“It looks beautiful, Eve,” I told her, my voice a soft rasp, and it wasn’t a lie. The bright twenty-two karat gold against her alabaster skin made me wish I had the right to press my hand to her throat so I could further study the contrasts between us, with me so dark and her so pale.
I licked my lips and whispered, “Happy birthday, habibati .”
Though she tilted her head to the side in question, I felt sure she knew the word was for the pair of us alone. She smiled and replied, “Thank you, Eren. ”
“I have another gift for you,” I teased.
“What is it?” Her grin was infectious and made me smile right back at her.
“A cake. One my mother used to make for me. After you’ve finished your classes, we can go to the kitchens and finish it up together.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“Why the fuck does she sound excited about that?” I heard Stefan mumble at Nestor.
“Because she obviously likes cooking, dumbass,” Nestor retorted with a huff, making my lips twitch with satisfaction.
I knew her well, better than the others, and though that was petty, it didn’t matter. Not really. We were Pack, and whatever I did strengthened our bonds and that was all that counted.
A few hours later, while I watched her struggle in the gym, Dre hustled over to my side. “Jerk. You could have let me out of there sooner.”
I smirked. “You were being an ass.” A few hours of corner time usually did most brats good, and if there was a walking, talking dictionary definition of the word ‘brat,’ it was Dre.
He grunted. “You get Nestor’s message?”
“Yeah. I’m glad she’s agreed to start up classes with us again. Stefan’s turn tonight.”
“Let’s be thankful he can’t shift into anything,” was his snarky retort, and though his tone made me want to smack him, I had to admit I was relieved too. But though Dre’s disdain was evident, I felt his tension grow as, attention averted for the moment, he watched Eve’s training with kids that were four years younger than her. He even hissed when one of the girls managed an uppercut that connected with Eve’s chin.
“Why isn’t she defending herself?”
“Because it’s ridiculous to put her with children younger than her and expect her not to hold back.”
I didn’t stiffen at the sound of Samuel’s voice, but I turned back to look at him. He wore a scowl too, and as was the way with Dre and me, we both looked on with unease as Eve had her ass handed to her.
“They’re not going to push her through the classes unless she shows more aptitude than that, and let’s face it, I know from experience she packs a mean punch,” Samuel noted with some disgust as Eve failed to cut off another uppercut to the chin.
It was like she was asking to be beaten on her birthday.
As far as I was aware, she wasn’t a masochist.
Before any of us could say another word, Samuel stalked off and headed over to Coach. A few bitten off retorts and Coach grunted but nodded, and Dre and I watched as Samuel walked over to Eve. They, too, spoke and the kid who’d been whipping our girl’s ass made herself scarce when Samuel glowered at her.
Eve tilted her head to the side in confusion when he raised his hands in a fighting stance, and her mouth worked before she shot me a look. It warmed me that she looked to me for confirmation when her Chosen was at my side.
Nodding at her, I tried to load my smile with some encouragement but wasn’t sure if it hit the mark because her taped hand immediately went to the necklace I’d gifted her that morning, and she began to fiddle with it as she turned back to Samuel.
“I’m surprised you gave that to her.”
Dre’s comment had me shrugging. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“It was your mother’s.”
“So?”
“So, I know you carried it with you all the time. If it wasn’t so girly, you’d have worn it.”
“It is girly though, and Eve can wear it for me.”
“You think she’ll Choose you?”
“Samuel and I think it’s likely, yes.” If I sounded formal, it was because I didn’t need Dre needling my ass over this.
If I didn’t hope that Eve would Choose me at some point, then I’d just be depressed, and I’d spent far too long being depressed over the circumstances life had a habit of throwing my way.
He hummed but didn’t say anything else, just watched as Samuel taunted Eve. There was no other way to describe it, and I shook my head. “What is it with you two? Why do you find it so easy to antagonize her?”
“We don’t all think she sweats perfection,” Dre grumbled, but I knew he was watching Samuel’s mouth move, and the words that tumbled from him edged up Eve’s temper until she was bouncing on her heels.
The boxing rings were filled with kids a year or two younger than us, and technically, we had other places to be, but shit wasn’t as strict for us now. Mostly, we had to train and study, learn as much as we could about strategy, research nests so we could handle whatever might come our way. There was a lot of theory to recall too. Past battles that we studied so we could understand how Ghouls worked.
But since it was so shortly after Aboh, there was a brief respite until the games began again—and games seemed like a childish word, but it was true nonetheless. Before the faculty began pitting Packs in our year against one another to ascertain who’d be going out on a mission, we had a chance to wind down and recuperate from any injuries we’d incurred on said mission.
That meant watching Eve and Samuel bicker wasn’t eating into our schedule any.
Her hair was in a taut bun that had to tug on the roots, and her face was a mixture of pink, white, and red from where the other girl had been hitting her. She wore an oversized shirt that could be used against her in a fight, and leggings that had my hands itching to shape her ass through them.
Against the other girls in the class she was training with, she looked like a woman, mostly because she was one, but also because she was all curves. All round and soft where they were edges.
Her feet were bare against the soft surface that took up a large chunk of space against one side of the gym. It was meant to make landings less painful, but in my opinion, it just made it harder to train. Unless you were in real-time conditions, it was hard to know how you’d respond in a fight. If someone smashed your face into the ground, there wouldn’t be a bounce or some padding to cushion the blow, now would there?
“He has a death wish,” Dre commented when Samuel said something that had Eve’s hands curling into fists.
“Like someone else I know,” I retorted, the barb aimed his way, but he didn’t bother replying because one of Samuel’s evidently hit home and Eve’s control broke as she charged Samuel.
Now her soul was in charge, her hesitance bled out, and the accuracy of her hits surprised everyone because most of the class stopped what they were doing to watch. I knew that was helped by the fact that Samuel was one of the top fighters in his year and a girl was slapping him hard, but Eve wasn’t as weak as my Pack seemed to think she was.
Her souls were strong. The woman might be vulnerable, fragile in some ways, but she wasn’t afraid to throw down when things went to shit.
Samuel worked hard not to hurt her while letting her practice on him. I had to applaud his control since the way he fought ensured she had a true workout, one that tested her instincts as well as her body’s reflexes, instead of having her stand there, allowing someone to elbow her in the face over and over.
Why Coach thought that was an appropriate way for her to learn, I’d never know, but there was no arguing with the asshat sometimes, and I’d been hoping he’d learn the error of his ways just by watching Eve.
No such luck.
Even as I thought about whether involving Nicholas was wise or not, a half-hour later, Eve was limping toward me. Her face was damp with sweat, her temples had beads of perspiration gathering on the hairline, and she was flushed all over. Her clothes stuck to her, and though she looked tired as she hobbled over to me, her words were bright when she asked, “Can we have the cake you made now?”
I grinned at her eagerness, and Dre snorted at her words, but she ignored him and focused fully on me.
“If you want,” I told her, inordinately pleased that she wanted to taste something I’d made for her but also delighted that I could share some of my culture with her. We tended to lose that at Caelum. Merging into the creature’s culture while losing our family’s heritage. Some kids were glad about that, but ones who’d loved their parents like Samuel and me didn’t want to dismiss everything from our pasts.
“Of course I do,” she retorted with a huff.
“As the lady commands,” I told her, smirking as she rolled her eyes at me. “Go get washed up and meet me in the kitchen, yeah?”
She nodded and took off. The second she did, Samuel took her place. He was armed with a towel he was using to wipe down his face, and he had a bottle of water in his other hand he was taking huge gulps of.
“She can fight,” he said, confirming what we pretty much knew. “But her soul needs to be engaged.”
“We figured that out already, pretty boy,” Dre snarked back, making Samuel’s top lip curl, revealing blunt fangs that were just waiting for his Vampire to mature.
“I’m curious how she knows some of those moves. It’s like her souls are?—”
He broke off, but where Eve was concerned, I wanted to know everything. “Like they’re what?”
Samuel shrugged. “Older than her somehow. Like what the human knows and what the souls know are two separate entities. It’s odd.”
That did sound odd, but fuck, Eve was weird.
Which was why I knew she’d appreciate the fact that the treat I’d prepared for her wasn’t completely done yet. And when she met me in the kitchen about twenty minutes later, her hair wet and body still stiff from fighting, her eyes gleamed with joy as she looked at the setup on the counter.
“What is this?” she questioned, staring at the dough I’d been rolling out for what felt like a lifetime.
“It’s going to be something called baklava.”
A door slammed shut and she jerked at the sound. The kitchen was industrial, meaning that every space inside was utilitarian without a hint of appeal. Stainless steel counters lined the walls, and several large islands armed with sinks and stovetops were dotted here and there. There were industrial-sized ovens and fridges and freezers, as well as a smaller refrigerator that was loaded down with snacks for kids to eat if they were hungry outside of mealtimes—creatures ate a shit ton. Our metabolisms burned fast and hot.
Because of the way the kitchen was designed, however, the slamming of the door echoed around the space, and her head whipped around to find its source.
I didn’t like Brendan, thought he was a prick even if he did make the best cookies this side of the Atlantic. The guy ran the kitchens, and though he didn’t like us being in here, there was no hard and fast rule about it. We were allowed to make ourselves snacks and to prepare food in here so long as we cleaned up after ourselves and weren’t wasteful.
When Brendan stalked into the kitchen with a glower on his face, I just nodded at him in greeting, hoping he’d move on by.
He didn’t.
Instead, he grumbled, “You’re making a mess.”
“You won’t know we were here when we’re done,” I countered, not bothering to argue with him. There was no point.
Some creatures were born to be warriors, and some were born to support the warriors. We all started off as soldiers, though, until Nicholas or someone else on the faculty decided we had better uses.
Brendan was exactly that.
He could feed an army, but he wasn’t built to be on the battlefield, and his attitude stank to high heaven because of it.
“See that you do,” he ground out, shooting Eve a nasty look before he flounced out of the kitchen.
“Who was he?” Eve asked when he disappeared, her eyes wide with surprise at the other man’s antagonism.
“He runs this place,” I explained, adding, “It’s only quiet at the minute because the evening service begins in a few hours.”
“I’m surprised it’s not more chaotic.”
I shrugged. “They have their schedules, and I wanted to fit this in beforehand.”
Her lips curved. “Before we were interrupted you were saying this is called baklava?”
Grinning at her curiosity, I murmured, “It’s a traditional pastry. Lots of Mediterranean countries have it, but this is my mother’s recipe.”
“You made it from scratch? ”
I lifted my arm, flexed my bicep, then with a grin, kissed it. “All with these muscles.”
“You’re too kind,” she retorted.
“A fish by any other name…”
Her nose crinkled. “A fish? Don’t you mean a rose?”
Laughing, I told her, “I meant something, that’s for sure. Didn’t realize you’d delved into Shakespeare by now…”
What the hell was the faculty thinking? They’d thrown her into Shakespeare but hadn’t loaded her up on Ghoul Theory? The most basic tenet of life at Caelum?
I wanted to ask when knowing Shakespeare had become an integral part to living in the twenty-first century, but instead, I just murmured, “I need to grab some sugar and pistachios from the pantry.”
She blinked at me. “Okay.”
Baklava was a pastry that consisted of fine layers of filo dough baked together with a stuffing of nuts. It was then loaded with sugar syrup tinged with rosewater and would blow any diet out of the water in one fell swoop. But it was her birthday, and I knew Eve liked tasting new foods. She was a bit like a toddler when it came to food. Hadn’t tried all that much but was willing to dive headfirst into anything that wasn’t green and came from the earth.
Having rolled the sheets of homemade dough into fine layers and placed half of them in a baking tray, I was ready to chop up the nuts and make the syrup. It would have been easier to grab everything and prep like my mom would have, but I’d had to make do in this kitchen.
When I’d been making the dough, I’d had to work hard not to get under the staff’s feet, so I’d used one of the tiniest countertops and tried to contain the madness when making baklava from scratch was a time-costly and effort-heavy feat.
Trudging over to the pantry that stored enough food to feed us for weeks at a time—Nicholas was a doomsdayer and had been before it was even a thing—I opened the door and glowered at the darkness beyond.
There was a master switch at the back of the room, the height of inefficiency, but Caelum was old, and inefficient was how it rolled. That was why my bedroom had one single plug point and about a thousand extension cords.
Only trouble was, this wasn’t my bedroom, and my phone was back on the counter with Eve.
Walking into the pantry shouldn’t have presented a problem. The light was on all day because staff trudged in and out… That dick Brendan, even knowing my issues, had turned the fucking thing off.
My neck popped as I jerked it to the side. Fisting my hands, I moved them to the doorjamb and gripped the wood. Feeling like the Hulk, I wanted to tear it off, rip into the wood and smash it to smithereens—better that than Brendan’s face.
Why the fuck had he switched off the light?
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 been trapped 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.
Eve’s song came to an abrupt halt, and her, “Eren?” was breathy and confused.
“Yes?” I rasped, unable to face her, unable to look at her. The mixture of shame from my inability to walk into a fucking dark cupboard blended with the shame at having a hard-on when she’d been trying to soothe me and take away the panic that robbed me whenever darkness fell.
“What’s happening?” she whimpered, and the words stunned me from my self-pitying thoughts. My head whipped around as I looked at her, and I saw her pupils were like pinpricks as she stared up at me as though I had the answers to the world in my hand.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded as I reached up to cup her face.
“I-I’m so hot,” she muttered, and her cheeks were flushed—a not too uncommon sight where she was concerned—but this wasn’t from embarrassment or discomfort. It looked like she was running a damn fever!
I pressed the back of my hand to her forehead and winced at the heat coming off her. What the fuck was happening?
Because I had no idea what to do and knew I couldn’t ask anyone because we were pretty much writing our own encyclopedia where Eve was concerned, I simply bowed my head and touched our foreheads together .
“Breathe with me, habibi ,” I whispered, and when she sighed, her breath brushed my lips and I sucked down the air that was tinted with her.
I blew out a breath when I felt the heat move from her and transfer into me. The second the heat hit me, I winced from the intensity.
I’d never expected this. Never anticipated this would happen today. Not in the kitchen, not after a panic attack. Not on her fucking birthday. And sure as hell not on a day when she was Succubus to the core.
But happen it did.
The heat pooled in my stomach, which was odd as shit. It was like when you ate too hot soup and it burned its way down your gullet and settled in your belly, an uneasy reminder that you were an impatient glutton. It settled there for a handful of seconds before dispersing again, and though my eyes flared wide as I felt the heat coalesce through my organs and approach my back, I accepted what was happening.
The pain came next.
It felt like a thousand needles were digging into my skin, rubbing over sensitive areas that were loaded with nerve endings. Down my spinal cord then over to the tender flesh of my hip. But I embraced it because it was her. Choosing me.
I didn’t have to look in a mirror, didn’t have to twist and turn to feel the mark settle into my bones. It was there, as it was always meant to be.
Only when the mark was complete did Eve sag against me, and I hauled her into my arms, holding her tightly in both gratitude and a need to keep her upright.
That had taken a lot out of her, and having seen how she’d claimed Nestor and Dre, I knew what she’d done was unusual. She hadn’t staggered forward when she’d Chosen them, and I’d seen the first touch between Stefan and her… they’d paused for a handful of seconds as the life-altering moment went down, but she hadn’t begun trembling like a leaf caught in a storm.
I wanted to ask her what she’d done, but there was no point. I was well aware she wouldn’t know, and that what had happened was based in instinct. Like the beat of our hearts, the expanding and release of our lungs—her Choosing me had been a visceral response. More than that, I was sure it was her souls’ reaction to my terror. Which, in turn, made me wonder how her souls were functioning, how they were making this happen.
Why did Stefan, Reed, Frazer, and I bear her mark, but she wore Dre and Nestor’s? How had she Chosen me today when her Succubus was in charge ?
Was the power of her souls blending? Taking us forward to a destination none of us knew, but that was as destined as our meeting?
Eve’s gifts, the way things were developing, it would be foolhardy not to think it was for a reason.
And though my days of following a religion were long gone, my father had often uttered a phrase in these moments: Insha’Allah.
If God wills.
She drew me away from my thoughts as her arms curled around my waist and she hugged me tightly, so tightly that my new mark twinged with delightful agony at the pressure. I didn’t bother wincing, didn’t do anything other than rejoice because she’d made me hers.
At long last.
I hadn’t been alone since I’d become Pack with Stefan, Nestor, and Dre, but now? I’d never be alone ever again. She was there. Filling up my empty places, shining a light on all the shadows in my soul, and I’d spend the rest of my life thanking her for Choosing me.
For making me hers.