Seven Wishes: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part ONE

by Akeroyd, Serena

  Change had come to Caelum today.

  The rest of the school just didn’t know it yet.

  4

  Frazer

  A few days later

  “Did you see her?”

  I snorted. “How could I miss her?” Not only was she the new student in school, but she was two months late for the beginning of the year, and to top it all off, was the exact opposite of our females.

  Creatures were slender and lithe. The new girl wasn’t. But I wouldn’t deny that the contrast wasn’t as much of a turn off as I’d have expected.

  She had more tits and ass than any one woman should know what to do with, and that was for damn sure.

  Reed shrugged. “Thought if you had then you’d have lured her away from the dark side.”

  I had to laugh. “Yes, Luke, she needs to be saved.” When he grinned at me, I told him, “They’re not all bad.”

  His grin faded into a grunt. “They’re like fucking fleas. Once they’re on you, they won’t get off.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Stefan and his Pack had serious attitude problems. They liked to think we were in their faces all the time because we came from rich countries while their backgrounds were the opposite, but money didn’t make you any less of a dick.

  Nestor and Eren weren’t too bad. They were actually decent, but Stefan and Dre were constantly hormonal.

  I wasn’t sure what their problem was, but whatever… Dre, for all his attitude, had suffered for his arrogance in the ring a few days ago. Reed had pounded him into a whole other world of pain, and I’d been cheering him on.

  “She look lost to you?” Reed asked, breaking into my thoughts.

  “We’re all lost at the start,” I excused, watching the new girl, Eve, as she stared up at the TV on the wall like it was a safe she needed to crack open.

  If it weren’t for the intelligence in her eyes, I’d seriously think there was something wrong with her. And I really felt bad for thinking that, considering for most of my life, people had thought there was something seriously wrong with me too. If I heard any more ‘he’s a cookie short of a full jar’ references, I’d probably lose my fucking shit, but Eve? There was definitely something weird about her.

  She stared at TVs like Reed stared at the chocolate muffins in the cafeteria. Half like they were his reason for living, and half ‘why do you make me eat you when Coach has told me to cut back?’

  As I watched her press the frame of the TV, I cleared my throat. “Is she looking for buttons?”

  “I think so.” Reed tilted to the side, and I knew exactly where he was looking—ten guesses that it wasn’t the TV.

  “Her ass is fine,” I admitted.

  “Fine?” He grunted. “You need to check the dictionary for a definition on that word. I bet it bounces when you fuc—”

  “She’s too innocent. Any dope can see that,” I interrupted, but my cock did harden at the image that shimmered into being at his words.

  It would totally bounce, and would undoubtedly be a perfect handful for grabbing and tugging her back onto my dick.

  I shifted in my seat, faintly embarrassed to be sporting wood over a few thoughts. I wasn’t fourteen anymore. I was almost twenty. Jesus, you’d think I’d have more control over my cock by now.

  “Innocent or retarded?” Reed whispered, and I elbowed him in the side.

  “Don’t be a dick.”

  “I’m not. You didn’t see her yesterday trying to figure out the e-readers. I mean, seriously, one button and it turns on, bro. It’s not hard.”

  My lips curved. “No, but I did see her clothes when she came in. She’s obviously from somewhere…” I grimaced. “Like a cult or something. That outfit was pure Handmaid’s Tale without the red cape.”

  “No, just a brown one.” He shuddered. “Sticky beak alert, but…”

  “But?” I asked, cocking a brow at him. It wasn’t often his Australianisms came out, but when they did, it always made me want to laugh.

  “What’s Stefan’s game?”

  “He wants into her panties,” I hazarded a guess.

  “Yeah, of course, but there’s more. He almost bitch-slapped James the other day for checking out her ass.” He snorted. “In fact, look over and you’ll see we’re being graced with his attention too.”

  I cut Stefan a look and saw Reed was right. We had one side of the common room and they held state at the other. Since we were the two Packs who were constantly fighting shit out, trying to best each other to get to the top of the class, it fit that we had our eyes on each other during downtime.

  And Stefan’s ire was definitely more than just territorial…

  I could see why Reed was so curious.

  Stefan had banged most of the girls in our year without forming any attachments. But the new girl? The chick who didn’t know how to turn on a TV? No, he was pissing on her like a dog would his yard.

  I watched as Eren got to his feet and approached Eve. He showed her the remote and pushed the big red button. She jerked back when the sound came on, and I had to snort at the look on her face when the first scene that came on was a knife going through someone’s belly.

  She staggered back like she’d been hit herself, and though the screen was 3D, it wasn’t that good.

  Her mouth dropped open as she composed herself, then she reached up and touched the screen.

  “Is she an alien?” Reed whispered, making me laugh. The noise jerked her from her study, and when she saw we were watching her, her cheeks burned a bright red and she scurried away from the screen and over to the sofa where Stefan and his buddies were slouching, sans Dre since he was still recovering from the beating Reed gave him.

  Stefan shot me a dirty look for embarrassing her, but I hadn’t particularly meant to.

  His crew thought I was a dick, but I actually wasn’t. Sure, like any guy I had my moments, but they thought I was a twenty-four-carat jerk. When, at most, I was fourteen-carat.

  “She has to be from Mars.”

  “Or from some backwater town that didn’t stop a cult?” I cocked a brow at him. “It’s obviously the first time she’s seen that kind of tech.”

  “You think?” he jeered, rolling his eyes. “Took your genius to figure that one out, Fraze.” Before I could do more than grin, he murmured, “But that’s what doesn’t fit. Stefan is out for what he can get. You know that. He wants to be the Alpha, and picking up a girl like that doesn’t fit in with that plan.”

  Reed wasn’t wrong, but then the dick rarely was. He might have been the brawn in our Pack, but he had brains too.

  I sank back into the thick leather sofa and let it comfort me as I thought about Stefan’s end game.

  In a world where the human’s concept of zombies existed, people like me, Reed, Stefan, and his cronies were the future enforcers who’d stop them from taking over.

  We didn’t call them zombies though. They were Ghouls. And they were our kind turned bad, and that was how we knew when to destroy them.

  Caelum churned out units like mine and Stefan’s, elite forces that were trained to destroy Ghouls and the nests they inhabited. We had our own inbuilt ranking system, one that set us up for bigger jobs in the future, and that was what our two Packs were constantly bickering over.

  The place as top dog.

  Unfortunately, Samuel’s soul had been fucking with him lately. We knew he was going to present as a Vampire, but for whatever reason, it had been making him sick on those days.

  Wouldn’t you know it, those days were the ones where we needed him to fight? Needed him to be at his best?

  There was no point bitching about it though. This shit happened. We weren’t all perfectly formed, and our souls could make fools of us at their whim.

  And they often did.

  It was why Sammy was in the sick bay now. His Vampire had decided that refusing to feed was a good thing to do, so he was having a transfusion instead.

  “Yeah, it makes no sense,” I confirmed, after thinking about it for
a few more minutes. “Stefan didn’t let Becky get her clutches into him, even though she’d have been a smart choice considering how often she’s sucking Dre’s dick and wants on his, plus she’s a good little fighter…”

  “Yeah, so totally makes no sense.” He pursed his lips. “Should we keep an eye on her?”

  I shrugged. “Would do us no harm.”

  Reed cut me a look. “You want to tap that ass?”

  Laughing, I shot him a grin. “What guy here doesn’t?”

  Even though she was like ET in some regards, she was beautiful and that more than made up for her inability to switch on devices. With her dark hair that she wore in a bun, and a face that would make angels cry with dark honey-colored eyes, rounded cheeks that were usually pink from her shyness, and a mouth with a pronounced Cupid’s bow that had me thinking of BJs all the time, she looked like a woman who belonged in a classical painting. Not the ugly ones either. The hot ones. She had the same body too. Bit plumper, maybe, but I didn’t have a definitive on that one.

  I could see some of her body thanks to her yoga pants—thank God for yoga pants—but she wore men’s shirts that covered her top half. Well, she thought they did. Somehow, they just made her tits look even bigger.

  Nestor’s laughter grabbed my attention, and I realized he was showing her something on his phone. Her fingers were tracing the screen like it was magic, and I couldn’t deny that my cock ached to feel that touch too. Every part of me wanted to show her my own specific brand of magic.

  Ha.

  Corny? Maybe.

  True? Definitely.

  My lips curved as I turned to Reed and said, “First one to tap her—”

  He held up a hand. “Bets can only be discussed when Sammy’s around.”

  “He likes her too?” That surprised me. Sam had a thing about blonde-haired girls, not dark ones.

  “He has a cock, doesn’t he?”

  Sheepishly, I nodded, but Eve was that kind of woman.

  She’d turn any man’s head, and even though we were a thousand times more than just ‘men,’ we were no different where it counted.

  ❖

  Eve

  “You don’t look overwhelmed.”

  I frowned at Nicholas. Or, as some called him, the principal. In the end, he hadn’t asked me to come to his office the day after my arrival, he’d given me some time to settle in, which only made me even more relieved that the boys had taken me under their wing or I’d have gone crazy waiting on him for more information.

  “Why would I be?” The list in my hand was kind of long, about as long as my forearm and the text was quite small, but I wasn’t about to complain. “I need to know all this, I assume.”

  His lips curved. “Yes. It would come in quite handy.”

  I shrugged. “Well then, what’s to be overwhelmed over?”

  “It’s a very long list,” he said gently. “But there’s no rush. You have a year to power through this.”

  I didn’t say anything, but inwardly, I snorted. I loved reading and after a lifetime of reading only the Bible, the dictionary, and Father Bryan’s endless ream of nonsense that he spewed out on the pulpit and that one of the Sisters wrote into the books that filled the compound’s library? I was ready for more. Ready to devour anything that was thrown at me.

  Plus, I hated feeling like I was in the dark on a warm, sunny day.

  Everyone was looking at me like I was an idiot here, and maybe I was, but the second I knew what was what? They couldn’t look at me that way, could they?

  “You’ll be having classes with Damon and Merry mostly,” he tacked on. “But you’ll have to start using the gym more, and you can work that out with Justin—he’s the coach. Speak with him when we’ve finished. It would be best to get started as soon as possible.”

  Nestor, Eren, and Stefan had shown me the gym, and it looked like some kind of torture chamber.

  Now, that overwhelmed me.

  But this list of books?

  No.

  They excited me.

  Those books contained information that would enlighten me about what I was, about who I was. Why wouldn’t I be excited?

  “Yes, I’ll speak with him.” Eren was waiting outside so I felt sure he’d guide me to this coach person.

  Nicholas smiled. “I wish all new students were as calm as you, Eve.”

  I shrugged. “I finally have an answer. If the books and the lessons guide me, why would I complain?”

  “Most do.” His lips twitched again. “You can find all the books in the library. If you have any issues, Merry and Damon will help. I won’t be a part of your education until you’re more comfortable with the basic workings of our race. I don’t want to overwhelm you further with information you’re not ready to handle. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes. Perfect sense.” And it did. I was beginning to see that speaking with the older people was easier than to the younger ones. They didn’t drop words in like ‘freak’ and ‘shook’ in the most random parts of a conversation.

  “Good.” He drummed his fingers against the desk. “If you have any issues though, you can come and speak with me, but Lori is useful too.

  “Life here is relatively free and easy going, Eve. I don’t believe in too many rules, as our souls don’t appreciate being controlled that much. However, please, do as your teachers say and don’t try to leave through the front gates.”

  “Why?” I wasn’t arguing, just curious.

  “The portal is important to us. It’s…” He winced. “This is a conversation best left for another day, Eve, when you’re more aware of our world. Consider Caelum a safe zone. It’s that way for a reason.

  “There’s something special about this island,” he continued. “Something to do with things you don’t know about yet. Those books will help you. You need a basic knowledge on most things that children learn in school, so Merry and Damon will judge how much you need to learn.

  “But the thing that makes Caelum special helps us control the souls before they manifest.”

  I tilted my head to the side at that. “What would have happened if Merry hadn’t found me?”

  “The soul would have manifested but…” His smile tightened, and in contrast to his relaxed one of moments before, it sent a wave of chills down my spine—what happened if you weren’t in Caelum when the dominant soul emerged? Did I even want to know the answer? “Truly, Eve,” he rasped, “this is a conversation best left for when you understand us more.”

  Though his answer irritated me, I couldn’t complain. Not overly. I was asking him to explain how to run when I’d barely learned to walk in this society.

  So, despite wanting answers, rather than argue, I decided to be proactive. I was armed with a list of books that would educate me. Not just on the world itself, but on this terrifying society that I was now a part of…

  Rather than moan, I would leapfrog off this moment and dive into this reading list.

  Therein lay all the answers I’d ever need.

  ❖

  Nestor

  One of the best things about Caelum?

  The food.

  As a kid, there’d been days when I’d been starving. When I’d literally have killed for something to eat, so I always appreciated food. I’d probably have appreciated shit food, but this stuff here?

  Manna from the gods.

  The dining area was large enough to seat two hundred and ran under the first floor of a large chunk of the main edifice. Meals came in two sittings because there were over five hundred to feed with the faculty to account for, and the shittiest part of hitting my eighteenth year had been, without a doubt, having to graduate from the first to second wave of serving as the younger kids ate first.

  The place wasn’t like the shitholes you saw on TV screens about school meals. They served fucking steak. Real food, and none of that processed crap either. Our bodies didn’t deal well with food that wasn’t natural, and studies had proven that all the chemicals and stuff shoved int
o ready meals made our souls deteriorate. E numbers and colorants actually made us sicker… that was why most kids didn’t do well when they’d been shoved in mental health ‘retreats’ that were state funded.

  Caelum’s dining hall was comfortable too. Cushioned chairs with circular tables so that groups of friends and Packs could sit together and chill as we ate. There was no rush. Meals were for celebrating here. Food was precious, but for most of us, who’d been homeless or had been without good home-cooked food thanks to being shoved in institutes, we appreciated it more than most.

  “You’ll get used to it,” I told Eve that following day as she took a seat with us. This was her first meal here because Lori had fed her in her room, not wanting to overwhelm her with the number of pupils who ate in the canteen.

  “Get used to what?” she queried, eying the mashed potatoes and gravy as though it had sprouted a head, then she shot us all a look as we started eating without waiting on her.

  Fuck, we trained seven hours a day. We needed the calories! I, for one, was goddamn starving.

  “The food.”

  Her mouth worked and her hands came up in the position I knew well. Then she frowned, stared down at her hands, back at us, and the meals we were already eating, then murmured, “No grace?”

  My lips curved. “Nope.”

  I wasn’t sure if that concerned her or not, but her hands dropped to her lap the second I’d made the ’n’ sound, so I assumed she was all for it. Reaching for her fork, she spooned up some of the potatoes and asked, “What’s the brown stuff?”

  “Dear God, they didn’t have gravy at your place?” I rasped, my heart fluttering in sympathy. Who didn’t know what this amazing stuff was?

  “Gravy?” She pursed her lips, then dipped the tines of her fork into her mouth. Her eyes flashed wide, and she released a moan that had the three of us freezing.

  Holy fuck.

  Could that have sounded anymore carnal?