Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE

by Akeroyd, Serena

  The room, when we arrived, was fancy. Gold carpets, low leather sofas, rich burnt orange accent chairs, and ornate gilt console tables topped with matching amber lamps.

  The view outside the windows disturbed me the most.

  There were fires that had spun into being from whatever destruction we’d wrought by killing that second wave of Ghouls, and the noise once Reed opened the French doors told me that something was going down, because there were three different kinds of sirens bursting my eardrums.

  When I shivered, Dre called out, “Shut the door. It’s freaking Eve out.”

  He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t thank him. Instead, I mumbled, “You can let me down now.”

  His hands tightened like he didn’t want to, like he wanted to keep me close to him, but I needed to get away. I was tired from what had happened at Tula, but more than that, I was tired from the fight I’d just seen, and my fear and concern was multiplying into a fatigue that made me want to drop where I stood. And, worse than that? The way he made me feel, the way he responded to me, clinging to me like I was his oxygen then shoving me away as though I was poison, just added to my emotional turmoil.

  When my feet collided with the carpet, I mumbled, “I’m heading to bed.”

  “No, Eve. Wait,” Samuel instructed, heading over to me.

  I blinked at him. “What is it?”

  “We need pictures for Bartlett.”

  Grunting, I stood there, letting him and Eren reveal the flesh that was marked. They unfastened my shirt and took a picture of the ink on the upper curves of my breasts, belly, and sides. Then, as Eren buttoned me back up, Samuel took a photo of my hands after he turned them, so the palms were showing. Next came the ones on my legs, which he captured after dragging down my yoga pants, then helped me out of them.

  When the pictures had been sent to Bartlett, I turned my back on them without another word and headed for the bedroom. No one said anything, and I was almost surprised when no one tagged along, but it figured they’d want to discuss what had just happened and to be quite frank, they could.

  I just needed a pillow. Stat.

  I didn’t undress farther, didn’t even turn down the covers. I headed over to the window, drew the floral curtains to a close, and then face-planted on the bed. Of course, I regretted that the instant my aching bones hit the mattress.

  Seconds, minutes, hours later? I woke up because there was a furnace at my side. My body told me it was Dre, and I kind of hated that I knew that without even having to twist my head to the side to look at the mattress invader.

  How did I know?

  His scent, I guess. But his feel too. It was like his energy was saturating the room, and had I not been running hot because he was boiling, I would have carried on sleeping like a baby.

  He didn’t utter a peep when I slinked out of bed, managing to contain the gasp that came as my aches made themselves known. The darkened room, with no light coming in from under or around the curtains, told me it was night, and I headed for the bathroom, hoping running water was still a thing.

  I mean, the apocalypse hadn’t really hit, but I wasn’t sure what was going on with the humans. They had to be scared, and were they clamping down on basic amenities?

  They had to realize that this was no orchestrated attack. No one place had been targeted, but a body of people had. I could see why that would cause mass panic, but surely it wouldn’t affect major services?

  I could only hope that was the case.

  When I turned on the light to the connecting bath, the amber marble gleamed under the warm glow and the fan whirred into being as I headed over to the matching vanity.

  As I stared into the mirror, eying the dark circles under my eyes, I saw a different woman looking back at me.

  In the compound, there’d been no mirrors. I’d only ever seen my reflection in the glass windows at the church, or in the school or communal rooms. Sometimes, I’d seen a distorted image in a puddle of water as I washed. But when I’d gone to Caelum, I’d seen myself for the first time.

  It hadn’t been astonishing. Why would it? I had seen myself before. Burnt chestnut hair, gleaming brown eyes, pale skin, and a body that was way too round for its own good.

  But as I looked at myself now?

  It was like seeing someone else.

  Someone awakened.

  My body was still curvy, but it was tauter from all the exercise I’d had to do. Not just at the Academy but here as well. I had dust in my hair and on my face, dirt too, and I even had a bruise on my chin. Then there was the fact that my skin was flushed from the sun, and my eyes had circles underneath them from lack of sleep. Deep in their core, however, there was a knowledge that had never been there before.

  It came from a welter of sources.

  I knew what sex was now.

  I knew what the world looked like—had been to several major cities in the span of a few weeks. Some people probably hadn’t seen that number in their lifetime!

  Then, there was seeing death. At the hand of the Ghouls, but also, their perishing from God’s plan.

  I was different now. No longer a girl and very much a woman.

  Pinching my cheeks to get a little bit more color in them, I stared at myself again then shrugged off the melancholy. There was no point in questioning what it was about myself that could keep six guys to me and somehow totally alienate a seventh.

  It wasn’t on me. It was on him.

  Dre.

  The bane of my existence.

  Okay, slight exaggeration, but the pain in my chest said otherwise.

  He’d come to my bed like he had every right to be there, and sure, he did. I’d Chosen him, hadn’t I? But Claiming was another matter entirely, and to be frank, if he kept treating me like this, I wouldn’t want to.

  Wasn’t it crazy how a sharp, bitten off retort was the straw that broke the camel’s back?

  He’d insulted me worse, treated me worse, and yet to hug me and hiss at me in the same breath, was more than I could take after what I’d just gone through.

  Sure, he had to be feeling the adrenaline, but me? It was decimating me.

  Barely holding back tears, I grabbed a towel from inside the vanity, slung it over the shower door, then headed into the glass cubicle.

  The water was hot and plentiful, telling me that not all services were down, thank goodness. I washed myself all over, wincing at the bruises blossoming over my body, and used the complimentary products to soothe my myriad aches and pains. I dried off and coated myself in the matching lotion that smelled of a flower I couldn’t name, and tried to massage taut and tired muscles.

  I was feeling much better by the end—a lot fresher and happier, truth be told.

  When I hobbled into the bedroom wearing the white robe that hung at the back of the door, I saw that Dre hadn’t moved.

  A part of me wanted to push him off the bed just to be spiteful, but instead, I walked over to the curtains, pushed them aside, then squeezed into the opening I made so I could head out onto the terrace.

  The world was still crazy, and some of the fires hadn’t been put out by the firefighters. There were sirens and the throb of panic was literally in the air. I could feel it. My heart responded to it, making it pump harder, faster, as though I was running even though I was still.

  Was I surprised when a few moments later Dre followed me out here?

  No.

  Did I welcome him?

  Did I look like a fool?

  We were silent for only God knew how long, and then he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t say anything for a second, then murmured, “Why do you think it’s okay to snap at me? To talk to me like you do?” In the grand scheme of things, he’d said worse to me since I’d known him, but today? His meanness as he carried me away from the carnage, holding me in loving arms while berating me with a sharp tone?

  No.

  I wasn’t going to take this anymore.

  I wasn’t his whipping post. I’d
been one before for my father, and that wasn’t about to happen again.

  Not in this lifetime or the next.

  “I don’t mean to,” he rasped, and his elbows plunked down on the silver rail beside me. He hunched his shoulders as he stared over at the same view that entranced me.

  “But you still do. Today wasn’t the first time, but Dre, it will be the last because I won’t deal with that from you. Today was hard, and you were what I needed you to be until you weren’t—”

  “I was under pressure.”

  “Bull,” I snapped. “The pressure had gone! We were safe. I’d just saved us!”

  “How do you think that made me feel?” he ground out. “We’re supposed to protect you. If we don’t, then what the fuck is my purpose in this world?”

  I spun around to gape at him, stacking my hands on my hips as I glowered at him. “What are you even talking about right now?”

  “You’re my mate. My woman. I’m supposed to keep you safe. Instead, you had to save mine and six of my brothers’ asses? That’s not how this should work, querida.”

  For a second, I could do no less than sputter at him. “Are you being serious right now? I mean, of all the sexist crap you could have spewed at me, you’re telling me you were pissy with me because I saved you?”

  He clenched his jaw. “It isn’t sexist,” he spat. “It’s what I… What is my purpose if it isn’t to protect you?”

  “How about not to treat me like a piece of shit?” I countered, swearing at him even though he knew I didn’t use curses like the guys did.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he insisted, his hands flaring out as his exasperation seemed to rattle inside him. “It just came out. You were worried about them and not yourself… It just…” He swallowed. “I wanted to do better by you, and I failed.”

  The words hit home, and I stared at him, wondering what he meant.

  I didn’t have to wait long because he turned away, bowed his head and whispered, “My parents left for America because of me. They wanted more for me, more for us. They went because I’d busted my knee in a car crash when I was ten, and then the year after, I was sick and they couldn’t help me, couldn’t get any medications for me. They thought, in America, it would be better. I was getting worse. I’d just turned eleven, and the souls were taking over me in a way that I couldn’t even…” He sucked in a sharp breath. “I started hitting out at them, slapping them if they tried to get me to calm down. It was bad. And for a long time, I thought they left to get away from me because I was a hideous son.”

  “But they didn’t?”

  He shook his head. “No. They were scared for me. America is the solution in some parts of this country. If you have no means of providing for your family, it’s like, let’s go there. It’s the land of opportunity for too many of us, and my parents were desperate. They let themselves go with this coyote, a man who takes people across the border, for too low a price.

  “My grandmother shouted this at me one day. Told me her son had died because he was desperate to send money for me, desperate to get me what I needed because I was, in her words, a fuck up. That day, when she was hurling abuse at me, I snapped. The Hell Hound was in charge, and, I admit, I just went for her.” He gulped. “She escaped, hid in her room and had the local lawman come around and haul me to jail. It saved my butt, though. That was where I was recruited.”

  I thought about what he’d said, ignored the latter part because this wasn’t the first time I’d heard this story. But it was the first time he was telling me it. “Why did it matter that the coyote was cheap?” I asked softly, not understanding what he meant.

  He blew out a breath. “He was cheap because he was hiding his journey from the cartel he worked for. He undercut them, and then my parents and the others he was transporting paid the price when he learned the cartel were after him.

  “If they’d found him with any hidden bodies on his truck, they’d have killed him. As it is, he lived to see another day by destroying the lives of those he was supposed to be transporting.”

  My mouth tightened, and I stared at him for a second before looking over the view once more.

  Humans had a lot to answer for.

  They were starting to taint things for me, and that wasn’t useful considering I was actually, in a small way, their damn savior.

  Scowling at the chaos ahead of me, the smoke that stained the air like a low-lying blanket, the frenetic sounds of cop cars and the toots of cars still stuck in traffic, with a few neighborhoods in the city in the dark as though the electricity had been cut off in those areas, I mused, “If you could, would you kill that coyote?”

  He didn’t even wait a second to think about it. “In a heartbeat. The Cartel too. But they’re everywhere here. They’re like a spider’s web. It spreads all over, and we’re just the flies they want to eat.”

  “Would you have enlisted in the Cartel?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “I mean, I want to say no, but to get away from my grandmother, maybe. But she was sick and poor, so she might have died and left me her farm. If the farm had started doing well, then the Cartel might have come to me and made me pay a kind of ‘protection’ money, but I wouldn’t have been actively involved with them, you know?”

  I licked my lips and shuffled closer to him. “Is this why you’ve been a jerk to me all this time? Because you’re scared of caring for someone?”

  “I’m a guy. We don’t talk about this shit,” he said blandly.

  “If you ever want to be Claimed by me,” I retorted, “you’ll be talking about this stuff on a regular basis. I’m not having you treat me like trash because you have some boogeymen in your past, Dre. We all do. We all have things we shouldn’t have experienced.”

  He sighed. “You’re right.”

  “And yet, you’re the worst. I know things happened to Stefan, the things that happened to Nestor, too, were beyond reprehensible, and Eren as well… but they don’t treat me the way you do.

  “You hurt me, Dre. You really hurt me. You seem to wield the sharpest knife, and are capable of making the most precise cuts that get to me the worst.”

  I heard him gulp. “I’m sorry, Eve.”

  That had me shaking my head. “No. I don’t accept it. Sorries are too easy. Sorry is just a word. I need you to mean it, to live by it, or it’s just another statement without intent.”

  “You’re right,” he rasped. “And even though you think it’s just a word, I genuinely mean it. I-I have been a shit these past few months, but that’s because you changed everything. I know it’s no excuse, but you did. You came into my world, a world that had order, that made sense, and suddenly, nothing did.

  “Years ahead of schedule, I was turning into my beast, I was having to leave my cacti behind, having to forge a new life with men who’d been enemies until you came along…” He grunted. “It’s been hard. For someone who can’t stand change, who doesn’t trust easily, you can’t even begin to understand how hard it was for me, Eve.”

  “No, I can’t, but I can understand how hard it was for me too. Stop being selfish, Dre,” I ground out, calling him on his nonsense. “You weren’t the only one dealing with stuff. I came into a crazy new world, one where I knew no one, but was embraced by three guys who made me feel safe. Secure. Wanted, even. You came along and wrecked that. Any stability I thought I’d found, you destroyed.” I released a shaky breath as I remembered how terrible I’d felt in those days after he’d awoken from the deep sleep he’d been in after he’d been knocked unconscious by Reed. “You made thing so much harder on me, Dre.”

  “I know I did,” he whispered. “And if I could kick myself, I would. I swear I would, but it wasn’t…” He cursed under his breath. “Okay, it was intentional at the time.”

  “I know it was,” I grumbled.

  “I just mean that the Dre of before isn’t the Dre standing here today.”

  If there was anything that could have made me listen, it was that statement.
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  Why?

  Because hadn’t I just been thinking the exact same thing in the bathroom?

  Hadn’t I looked in the mirror, stared at my reflection, seen the same girl looking back at me, and yet, also seen the infinitesimal changes that made me feel like a completely different Eve?

  One so overwhelmed with knowledge and experience that she felt like Eve 2.0?

  I could have carried on railing at him, demanded more apologies, made him promise never to treat me so badly again, but I didn’t.

  He was right.

  He wasn’t the same Dre, but that didn’t mean the Dre of old wasn’t still inside.

  “The next time you speak to me the way you did today, I won’t talk to you again.” I didn’t put a time frame on it, because I didn’t know how long it would take for me to ram the lesson home.

  “I deserve that.”

  “You’re not a child. I’m not punishing you by not speaking to you. What I’m saying is that I will have no desire to speak to you because if you treat me like a turd, then we have nothing to say to one another, do we?”

  He grunted. “No. And I won’t do it again.”

  He would.

  It was in his nature.

  He might be a different Dre, but that didn’t mean his personality had made a complete reversal. He wasn’t suddenly nice and friendly. That would, in all honesty, never be Dre.

  And I was okay with that.

  Each of my men had weaknesses and strengths, and that was what made them unique. That was what made them a joy to be around.

  “Good,” I told him in a quiet voice. Then, I reached out and grabbed his hand, and entwined my fingers with his.

  “How are you feeling? You took quite a fall today,” he inquired, changing the subject.

  I was aching, that was true. “When I fell, I…” I winced. “It’s weird but I did something. It means I’m aching but not as badly as I might.”

  He hummed. “That’s not weird. You called on a creature.” Another hum. “Probably the gouille. They have the toughest skin. Not even the sharpest knives can get through it.”