“What the—” he started, but he didn’t finish.
With every ounce of the Were simmering away inside me, I pulled my arm back as I’d seen Reed do, balled my hand into a fist, and let loose.
My target was off. That was the first thing I noticed. But when I glanced off Samuel’s sweaty cheek, I connected straight with his eye socket. He staggered back just as agony filtered from my hand to my brain. I shook my wrist as the pain came, but I ignored it, balled my other hand into a fist, and as he fell back with the force of my punch, I hit him with the other hand.
Before that fist could connect, I was dragged back and hauled into someone’s chest. I didn’t want to be stopped though, I wanted to lash out. Wanted to kick and scream at this boy who thought he could spoil my day, thought he could spoil my friendship with the only three people in my age group who’d extended a kind hand to me.
“You can keep your insinuations,” I growled at him, “and you can stay the hell away from me!”
Behind me, I heard Stefan say, “Did she just curse?”
I frowned, aware that I had, and though I winced inwardly, I allowed Nestor to haul me away from Samuel who was being dragged back too. Reed was scowling at me, as was the boy he’d just been beating in the ring.
Ignoring them both, I twisted in Nestor’s embrace and hissed at him when he wouldn’t let go. “He shouldn’t have talked to me like that,” I spat when Stefan approached me from the front.
“What did he say?”
His hair was all over the place. It looked like someone had been using it as a handhold in one of his fights, but I wasn’t sure what he’d been doing since he hadn’t been in the ring. I’d have watched him and not Reed if that was the case.
His skin gleamed with sweat, and his bright eyes were sparkling with curiosity and… was that humor?
Inside, the soul raged even harder, wanting to give Stefan the same treatment as she’d given Samuel.
Maybe Nestor was right not to let go of me, because I would have hit Stefan too if I’d been free.
Like he read my thoughts, Nestor tightened his grip on me and dragged me farther back. My heels scraped against the gym floor as he hauled me away from the machines and to the area where there was a metal podium as well as a faucet for fresh water.
Eren had my bottle in his hand, and he was filling it up. I watched him warily, eying him as he moved toward me and pressed the opening of the bottle to my mouth. I nodded and parted my lips, letting myself drink the small amount he poured in there.
The cold water chilled the banks of rage inside me, not dousing them exactly, but cooling me down somewhat.
After a few sips, I rasped, “You can let me go, Nestor.”
“You sure? You still going to attack Stefan?”
“So long as he doesn’t say anything else stupid.”
Stefan scowled as he lifted his shirt up by the neckline and wiped his face on the fabric. Nestor’s chest, by contrast, was naked. I could feel him through my own shirt.
Was it wrong that I didn’t mind the idea of his sweat and mine intermingling?
I pondered the thought, knew it would be considered a sin back home, but ‘back home’ wasn’t exactly my haven anymore, was it?
This place was.
“I didn’t say anything stupid,” Stefan retorted.
“You were laughing at me,” I told him, my tone flat, but deep inside there was hurt brewing.
“Because you just punched Samuel, Eve. He’s someone most of the guys avoid fighting, and you went back to smack him again. It’s funny.” He shrugged, but the move wasn’t exactly apologetic.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “He insinuated I was some sort of…” How did I phrase it? Prostitute seemed a little strong. I wasn’t Mary Magdalene, after all. “Jezebel.”
Stefan cut Nestor a look. “She a slut?”
“I think so. It’s been a long time since I read any Bible,” Nestor replied.
“If a slut is someone who…” I licked my lips. “…interacts with a lot of men, then yes.”
Stefan blinked at me, then looked over his shoulder to cast a glance at Samuel. What he saw, I wasn’t sure, but he seemed to tense up. I knew him well enough to know that if he was angry then he’d gladly stir up another fight. That was all the boys did. Fight and eat.
“Why would he say that?” Eren asked, but he wasn’t posing the question to me.
That didn’t stop me from answering, though.
“How would I know?”
Stefan shook his head. “Sluts are a human concept, Eve.”
I blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“It’s an insult to a human female, but not to us.”
“You mean you call girls here sluts?” Outrage filled me, making me struggle against Nestor’s hold again when he grabbed me and stopped me from punching Stefan once more.
“No!” Nestor barked. “We don’t fucking call them that. We don’t call them anything.”
“Oh.” That took the fight from me. “Well, what’s your point then?”
“My point is that if a woman chooses to share herself with a man, that isn’t considered a bad thing, but Samuel wanted you to think that it was.” Stefan rubbed his chin. “Why would he do that?”
“Why do those braindead fuckwits do anything?” Eren grumbled.
“There’s a method to their madness. You know that as well as I do. They wanted us to head to Aboh without Dre. That’s why they beat the shit out of him. If Reed purposely channeled his Hell Hound into the fight, it explains why Dre’s concussion was so bad.”
I could sense that had all made sense to the others, but I was confused. “Where’s Aboh?”
“Nigeria,” Eren muttered, his tone absentminded like he was thinking of something else while he answered me.
I thought about the maps I’d been glancing over, trying to see the world for what it was and not what the New Order had told me.
Nigeria was in Africa, and its capital was…I thought back to the atlas, skimmed over to the page on Africa and studied the map of the country in my mind’s eye.
Abuja.
Yes. That was the capital.
“Why would you go to Nigeria?” I drawled. “It’s not like it’s next door.”
None of them replied, but I knew they were communicating silently. I felt Nestor’s tension at my back, saw it in Stefan’s frame, and didn’t need to see it in Eren’s to sense that there was something they were hiding from me.
Hurt welled inside me, and I gritted out, “Nestor, let me go. I won’t attack anyone.”
“You sure?” There was some of that amusement again. This time in Nestor’s voice.
Since when had I become their go-to joke machine?
Growling under my breath, I tried to channel the voice I’d used when dealing with Father Bryan. “I’m certain.” It must have worked because he let me go, but all three boys looked at me warily.
“What happens in Nigeria?” I insisted the second I was free and able to look at them all.
“It’s the nearest nation to this island. It’s where we get some time away from Caelum.”
“Like a vacation,” Eren supplied, but I didn’t trust his explanation.
“Why would the others try to stop Dre from going? Isn’t that mean?”
“Haven’t you figured out that they’re mean anyway?” Stefan retorted, his muscles bunching as he folded his arms across his chest.
“I suppose.” What Samuel had told me hadn’t been nice, but Reed had been kind enough when he’d explained why my favorite suit of armor in the whole Academy had horns.
“No ‘suppose’ about it.” That came complete with air quotes. “We’re not just jackasses, Eve. We get along with most people in school, but those three are pretentious, self-righteous assholes.”
“Why?” I wouldn’t take his word for it. Not when his words were merely an opinion and not fact.
“Because they are. They treat everyone like they’re lesser.”
“Why?” I repeated, ignoring their disgruntled huffs.
“Most of us are poor. I’m not sure why that is. But we are. You speak to anyone here, and they’ll have a nasty backstory. It’s just how we roll. Eren was beaten every day by his brother-in-law until he was recruited, and Nestor was thrown out of his house when he was eleven, and he only survived because a priest took him in. I was orphaned when I was young and lived in an orphanage where I was beaten and used like a workhorse.” Stefan’s tone held no hints of sadness. It was like they’d long since come to terms with their pasts, and they could no longer affect them.
From what he was saying, I was glad about that. It meant that, at some point, I’d forget about my time in the New Order.
“Those three aren’t like that?”
“No. Their families were either middle class or well-to-do,” Nestor reasoned, hunching his shoulders so he could shove his hands in his pockets. I tried not to notice what that did to the muscles on his chest.
I’d never been around men before when they were semi-naked, and these past few weeks I’d seen more male bodies than I’d eaten hot dinners.
Where my chest was soft, my breasts full and round, theirs were taut and hard. Some days, usually when the Succubus was in control, I wanted to squeeze their muscles. Prod my finger into one of the thick ridges to see how firm they were—
“Eve?” Nestor tapped my chin, making me blink when I realized he was aware of where I’d been staring.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry. I’m listening.” Spying the amusement on their faces, again, grr, I ducked my head to avoid their gazes.
“Because their families weren’t scum like ours were, they’ve got an attitude. They like to lord it over us,” Stefan explained.
“They want us to feel bad for not having as much as they had, even though they’re here too, where we’re all equal, and where our past bears no reflection on our future?”
The three of them snickered. “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
Confused, I turned back and saw Reed and Samuel hustled together, arguing over something next to one of the now-empty boxing rings. Reed must have sensed my gaze because his eyes darted over to mine, seeming to pin me in place for endless, heart-numbing seconds that made me wonder if my lungs had stopped working.
When his mouth curved into a smile, I finally pulled back, staring at the floor rather than at him.
More perplexed than ever, I rubbed a hand over my face. Feeling the sweat drying on my skin from the heat inside me that came from the soul that had launched me at Samuel, I mumbled, “I need to shower.”
I didn’t wait for the guys to say anything. What was there to say?
I’d just started a fight, had learned that the men here weren’t interested in faithfulness and that Reed’s smile was just as beautiful as Stefan’s.
Unsurprisingly, it was the last point that scared me enough to have me scurrying away to my room.
❖
Dre
When I stared at Stefan’s back, not for the first time, I wanted to shake my head at the sight.
It seemed too incredible to believe.
Mates at our age were pretty much unheard of. But to find them through the simple touch of hands? Impossible.
The mark didn’t lie, though, and I saw it every time we hung out in his room and messed around on his PS4. He never wore a shirt in here, and I knew why, too—the mark was red-hot. I’d touched it accidentally the first time he’d shown it to me, and both of us had yelped. It was a burn that hadn’t healed in some ways, except there was no infection. No leaking flesh or pus. Just red, raw skin that was waiting on the Claiming to calm it down.
“There’s no way you can fight in Aboh with that,” I said eventually, after glowering at what was, effectively, a huge open wound.
He shrugged. “Have no choice.”
“Sure you do, dumbass,” Nestor retorted, and by his tone, I knew it wasn’t the first time he’d brought this up.
“We have to go.”
He wasn’t wrong, but neither was he right.
Students grouped themselves in teams and worked months to get to the top of the league, and we were no different. Every time we won a fight in the ring, we gained points, and our Pack was always battling it out with Frazer, Reed, and Samuel to hit the top, and as a result of some stellar performances in the run-up to Reed knocking me out, we were due to hit Aboh as the Alpha team, with the Beta and Omega Units relying on us for instruction.
If we pulled out now, all that hard work would be for nothing. But, if Stefan was injured because he was weak from the mark, or if he was killed because he wasn’t fighting at full strength, then the game was over for him and we lost a brother.
The risks were immense, and I begrudged them.
Christ, I’d only been sleeping for a few hours when Eve had landed on Caelum’s doorstep, fucking up my world and my Pack’s too.
Fucking women.
Pissed off, I ran a hand through my hair and stated, “It’s not worth losing you if you’re not one hundred percent, Stefan.”
He turned away from the book he was reading. We were all studying for our finals. Even though we would be here until we were twenty-one, males had different roles to play than females.
After our final exam, our work at the Academy would consist mostly of training and practice.
Females, on the other hand, remained with the books. Though they were required to stay strong and fit—like Eve could ever be that. She was a good forty pounds overweight—their strengths came from knowledge.
Ghouls were crafty motherfuckers. They blended in with all cultures, which meant our females had to be cognizant on information that could vary from table manners to the different religions in each country. This would make them vital aspects of a Pack when we had to infiltrate a nation teeming with a nest of Ghouls.
We were so close to formalizing our Pack, and it pissed me off that the woman in our ranks had been decided for us.
A useless bitch from the States who barely understood what we were saying, who couldn’t run a few yards without turning bright red, and who didn’t understand her own culture, never mind the intricacies of another in a foreign land.
She was a stranger among her own people, and somehow, in a few years, we had to make it so that she knew her shit to be useful to our Pack and not just a deadweight.
For so long, I’d had no say in my life. Then I’d come to Caelum. I’d picked my brothers. Not just because we got on, but because we made sense, and after I’d tied us together with a loose friendship, that was when the camaraderie had grown.
It might have sounded cold-hearted to pick a Pack that way, and I wasn’t going to deny I’d acted strategically, but I wasn’t feeling cold at that moment. I was boiling over with temper. Aggravated at having no say in the final member of our Pack, pissed that she belonged to Stefan in a way she’d never belong to any of us, and downright fucked off that she was going to be a burden for us all to carry.
“She’s not as bad as you think.”
The words had me blinking, and I twisted to frown at Eren. “What?”
He cocked a brow at me, unafraid of the dark promise of violence in my voice. “You heard me. Eve isn’t as bad as you think. She’s smart, Dre. I think she has an eidetic memory.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Photographic.” Stefan nodded. “You might be right, Eren. I’ve never seen her with the same book twice, and she remembers most shit you tell her.”
I frowned. “How do you know that?”
Nestor inserted, “Because we’ve hung out with her for more than a few hours.”
“Plus, she quotes the dictionary like it’s her bible.”
Nestor shot me a narrow-eyed glance. “We all know you can be a prick, Dre, but let’s try to tone it down, yeah? We need her more than she needs us.”
That had me grunting. “BS. If she knew what Stefan was to her—”
“She’d run for the hills,” Ere
n said drily. “She isn’t like other girls.”
“How do you mean?”
“If you ask her what a penis is, she’ll give you the dictionary’s definition of it. I don’t think she knows what it looks like or what it does.”
“So? I’ve seen her with you. She cuddles into you all the time.”
“That’s true,” Stefan agreed thoughtfully. “But it might be the first bit of affection she’s had in her entire life. Why wouldn’t she leap at it with both hands? I’ve never been cruel to her. We’re all very kind and gentle with her, and help where we can. She feels safe with us.”
“She isn’t safe, though, is she?” I pointed out, glaring at him. “If you get killed in Aboh, then she’ll suffer for the rest of her life without you.”
He scowled at me. “I won’t die over there, douche.”
“That mark looks like it happened yesterday,” I retorted. “You can’t tell me it isn’t affecting you in the ring. I saw you with David. He almost got the better of you yesterday, and he can’t fight for shit.”
Stefan grunted. “He was Hell Hound yesterday, and I was Vampire. I got blood after the fight when I realized how weak I was.”
“You shouldn’t be taking blood from anyone other than Eve now,” Nestor pointed out.
“I know.” Stefan grimaced. “How can I explain that to her, though? She’s still using the bags of blood Lori gives her.”
“She doesn’t know we take from the vein?”
“I think she has to because the books will instruct her that way, but I don’t think that’s enough to make her seek a vein.”
I shook my head at him. “We’ve been given the biggest weakest link ever.”
“Only for the moment,” Eren retorted.
“Why are you defending her? You know I’m right!” I ground out.
“Because when you hang out with her and stop fucking judging, you’ll see that she’s nice.”
“Nice?” I felt my mouth work at that and knew I was doing a great impression of a goldfish. “Nice? Because that’s going to save our asses from the Ghouls, right? Her baking them fucking cookies and hugging them when they get hungry.”
Seven Wishes: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part ONE Page 13