Page 51 of Caelum

EIGHTEEN

SAMUEL

“When’s the boat arriving?”

I tilted my head to the side as I looked over at my Pack leader. “Two days ago.”

Frazer’s lips twitched. “You’re too efficient, Samuel. It’s creepy.”

I had to laugh at that. “You’d be bitching me out if it still hadn’t set off,” I pointed out.

“Of course.”

“So, basically, I can’t win?”

He winked as he took a seat next to me. “Yup. That’s about it.” His arm spread out over the back of the sofa as he relaxed. His gaze took in the news I had playing on my big screen before he cut a look at my laptop.

Reed and Frazer knew what I did on there, so I didn’t bother hiding it. Sometimes I did if I worried they’d think I was obsessing—and there were no bones about it, some days I did obsess—but today wasn’t one of them. I was busy, had a lot to do, and my body was aching from letting Eve at me.

It was kind of like inviting a terrier to bite you. The bites still stung like a motherfucker, but you didn’t lose an arm in the process.

“Heard about the sparring in the gym,” Fraze drawled after a few seconds, even though I knew he was watching me watch my folks as they shared a cup of afternoon tea together in the kitchen of my childhood home—funny how the longing to be there had waned now Eve and her chaos were filling up my days.

“Yeah? What about it?” I didn’t bother looking at him, knew his brow would be puckered as he tried to figure me out.

There was no point in telling him that he never would. Fraze didn’t work that way. If I didn’t love the bastard so much, I’d think he was bigheaded, but it wasn’t arrogance, just fear. Fraze feared losing people more than most did.

Even though I understood, empathized even, I wished that fear didn’t turn him into freakin’ Oprah when times were tough.

“Why did you spar with her?” he questioned. “Thought you didn’t like her.”

I snorted. “What’s not to like?”

“Dre finds it easy enough,” he pointed out, and I cut him a look, and we both broke out into grins.

“Dre’s a dick.”

“Won’t hear me arguing,” he countered.

“If you want to Winfrey someone, go fix him. I don’t need patching together with Pritt Stick.”

He snorted. “Who says I’m trying to fix shit? Just trying to understand you, bro. You constantly do shit that makes no sense.”

“Makes no sense to you,” I corrected, cocking a brow at him. “And if you’d seen her in the gym, you’d have waded into the mud as well.”

He scowled. “Explain.”

“They’d pitted her against a fourteen-year-old. A fourteen-year-old, Fraze,” I repeated, shaking my head. “Coach is a dick. He saw her attack me, saw what she has in her, and pitted her against a kid? Yeah, no way in fuck Eve was going to try to fight her. Not even to train.”

“So, you hurled yourself at her to help?”

“Of course. She needs to learn how to protect herself.” My mouth twisted as I stared at my mom who had just finished her tea and was back at work, making my favorite soup. She used to cook it for me when I was sick—chicken noodle. My brother Darian had shingles, which had to suck considering the kid was nearly eighteen. The sickness was going to mess up his final year, which royally sucked. “She wasn’t about to do that against a puny little girl.”

Frazer narrowed his eyes at me. “I didn’t think you liked her.”

It was my turn to snort. “I don’t have to like her. She’s Pack.” And that was it as far as I was concerned. He didn’t need to know that I’d taken to thinking of her last thing at night. Not just the crazy shit either, but the way her hair fell into her eyes, how her cheeks blossomed with heat when she was embarrassed… I felt ridiculous but it wasn’t like I could control where my thoughts took me in those moments before sleep.

Frazer fell silent at that, then he hummed under his breath. “Which sibling is ill?”

I shot him a look. “How do you know someone’s sick?”

“Your mom only makes that soup when one of her kiddos has the lurg.”

Fuck, I loved that he knew that.

Frazer, to many at Caelum, might have come across as a douche-face, jerk off jock, but he totally wasn’t. He rocked the boat when it came to being our leader.

“Darian. Had another flare-up of shingles.”

He cringed. “Shit. Isn’t that like chickenpox for adults?”

“Yeah. But worse. It’s gonna fuck up his plans for Oxford.”

“There nothing you can do? You know the fund?—”

I held up a hand, cutting him off. “Bro, no money can solve this particular issue but thanks. I appreciate it.” We bumped fists.

“It’s our money, Samuel. You know that. They’re my family, even if they don’t have a clue who I am.”

If I had a pussy, I’d have fucking melted. “I know, bro. I know. Means a lot.”

He dipped his chin then grumbled, “I want some of the soup too.”

Snickering, I said, “It’s the best soup in the world, granted. But I think we have a birthday cake tonight so that should make up for it.”

“Whose birthday is it?”

Another laugh escaped me. “Your girl’s.”

“It’s Eve’s birthday?” His eyes widened in panic, and I’d have laughed again if he didn’t look so spaced out.

“Yeah. She’s eighteen. You gonna tap that?”

He punched me in the arm but didn’t reply. He knew I was joking or we’d have ended up fighting on the floor. Wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. Instead, he was rubbing his chin like he was looking for a solution for world peace. “What the fuck do I get her for a present?”

I shrugged. “How about freedom?”

Frazer squinted at me. “Dickface.”

“It’s the truth. Getting that boat cost us a fucking fortune. Plus, I don’t think she’s like that. How can she be? I mean, where she’s from it’s likely they didn’t have a Hallmark on the compound.”

“True.” He winced. “Still, I feel like shit. I should have known. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? ”

“I just did,” I mocked, then admitted, “I only found out when I was in the gym.” I hated that. I liked knowing all the shit on my people. You couldn’t put out a fire if you didn’t know what set it off. “Dre was mouthing off about Eren going all pussy on her. Making her some kind of birthday baklava or something.”

“Birthday baklava?” He pouted. “No cake?”

“Well, the Turkish version of it.” I shrugged. “It’s good shit. I had it before when I was a kid.”

“I’ve had it too, but I’d prefer triple chocolate fudge.”

“I don’t know; it’s going to be good stuff. He’s making it from scratch. That’s where they are now. In the kitchen.”

He processed that, then the skin about his eyes pinched as he sighed. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“I not only have fuck all to give her—don’t even have a clue what I’d get her if I had a mall down the road—but it’s just weird, man. We have a woman now. One we share and more than just because we’re Pack, you know? The only reason I’m not freaking out about all of that is because she needs us to handle her. To keep her safe. Doesn’t make it less surreal though.”

He wasn’t wrong. Shit had changed a lot in a short amount of time, and it was beyond peculiar. It would have been even if Eve were normal, but she was the direct antithesis of normal.

You rubbed the woman’s belly and she could grant you a wish.

Nothing about that was regular.

Okay, so the belly stuff was nonsense, but still. She was, as Eren had called her, djinn. And trying to find shit out about them was difficult as hell. The amount of crap I’d already waded through online was a major time suck.

Those were hours I wouldn’t be getting back.

I peered over at the doorway when I heard some noise brewing out in the hall. “What’s going on?”

“Bonfire at the beach,” Frazer answered succinctly.

Huh. That was news to me. “How come?”

He shrugged. “You know what Genny is like. Any excuse for a party.”

I almost laughed. Yeah, I knew what Genny was like. Not that I said that, though. “Maybe Eve would like to hang out? Might be nice for her birthday.”

“True.”

“I don’t think she’s exactly the superficial kind, Fraze. Don’ t worry about a gift.” When he nodded, still looking faintly uneasy, I half thought he’d have preferred her to be superficial.

That would have been easy.

Nothing about Eve was easy.

Did he but know it, that was exactly what he needed.

He’d had most of the girls in our year. If not once, then several times, and since the fucker was handsome as sin, women often rolled over for him. It was good for him that Eve wasn’t like that.

As my mother would have phrased it, it was going to build his character.

A thought that had me snorting into my coffee mug when I took a deep sip.

“What are you snickering at?” he groused.

I shrugged, focused on the screen rather than on him so he wouldn’t see my amusement. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit,” he grumbled, then cracking his knuckles, he sighed again. “Think she’d want to know about Louise?”

Surprised, I kept my gaze focused on the screen until I could compose my features. “I’m sure she would,” I told him softly, but my brow puckered, “I wouldn’t consider it a birthday present, Fraze.”

Opening up was one thing, but information about a murdered cousin wasn’t exactly a gift, was it?

“No. I know.” He cleared his throat. “Just been wanting to share with her, you know?”

“That’s good, man. You’re supposed to want that with her.”

Frazer cut me a look. “You think you’ll ever share with her?”

I shrugged—there was no way to know that. Not for sure. “I’m not sure she’d want me to.”

“If you just opened up to her, stopped being a dick like Dre, then I’m sure she would. She’s surprisingly easy to talk to, Samuel.”

I wanted to mock his relationship advice, but he was right. I was holding back until I got the mark, but what if that never happened for me? There was nothing that said it would, even if logic made it seem reasonable. Of course, logic was nothing in this situation. None of it made sense.

A woman with so many Chosen?

Who had earned marks of her own?

Yeah, Eve was an anomaly.

So, if I didn’t get a mark, and I was one of the only ones hovering in the Pack like a wallflower, I’d need to get her to like me for me.

Trouble was, I wasn’t a very likeable person .

Sure, Reed and Frazer liked me. I’d hazard a guess and say that they loved me. I was their brother, just as they were mine. But this was different.

It was as easy for me as it was with Reed and Frazer where girls were concerned. Caelum made females hard, and they were always on the lookout for strong Packs to cling to. But Eve wasn’t like that. She wouldn’t suck my cock because, on the off chance, it might lead to something and she could sign her star with a Beta Unit.

Eve probably didn’t know what a Beta Unit even was yet! She wasn’t impressed by the same shit as the others and, if I were being honest, I was glad for that. It would have been boring as hell if she’d been like them.

I rubbed a hand over my face and mumbled, “I’ll try.”

He slapped me on the back. “That’s all I can ask for, bro.”

My lips twitched as I reverted my focus to my screen and cut off the live feed to my family home, moving onto the Forex graphs I should be studying instead. When Frazer didn’t leave, I noticed he was studying them too.

“You’ve done well,” he pointed out, and a part of me wanted to preen because he wasn’t wrong.

“I was just checking shit out. We’re going to need a lot of funds,” I told him under my breath, “if the fallout is major. I’m just shifting things around to make it easier to liquidate our assets if need be.”

He nodded. “I’m just grateful we’ll have the cash. How far away is the boat moored?”

“Currently about six hours away.”

That had him wincing. “Shit. So far?”

“You know what it’s like here. They’d pick up on it and investigate.”

He grunted. “We need somewhere to hide out on the island if everything goes to shit.”

“The best person to ask is Reed. You know he knows the bays like the back of his hand.”

“True. I’ll talk to him.” He clapped me on the back again. “Well done, bro. Keep up the good work.”

My lips twitched. As he got to his feet, I called out, “Good luck figuring out something for the birthday girl.”

He hesitated, hovering for a second before he admitted, “I think I have something for her.”

I didn’t ask because he’d have told me if he wanted me to know, but I watched him go and wondered what he had up his sleeve.