Eight Souls: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part TWO

by Akeroyd, Serena

  He wasn't technically wrong.

  Dealing with Eve was like talking to a six-year-old sometimes. She had the same vocabulary as a fucking kid, and yet, she wasn't. She was an adult. She was smart, mature in her own way, but she was of another time, a different era.

  She wasn't aware of the nuances that were inherent in our world, to society these days, and having been reared in a cult, I understood all that. Hell, I even empathized. But now? At this minute? It would have been damn handy if she understood some of those nuances.

  Not even about our world, but just the regular shit we all said. At our base, thanks to our formative years, we all spoke like kids from the twenty-first century. Eve? Not so much.

  I ran a hand over my face, trying to figure this out, trying to understand what the fuck was going on here.

  Until Dre had said we had a problem, I'd just been freaking out about the fact I had a mate period.

  The mark had appeared a mere hour after I'd sat with her outside on the cliff one day. It had been a burning brand that was impossible to ignore, impossible to forget. Not just because of what it represented, but because it would carry on burning away like recently seared flesh until my Chosen claimed me.

  I'd figured she'd understood what she'd done. I had been waiting on her to Choose me publicly, as all females of our species did, but Eve?

  Well, she hadn't.

  And I'd gotten mad.

  Mad enough to give her the silent treatment last night.

  I didn't even give a fuck that I should have been glad about her wanting to keep things on the down low. The minute she claimed me publicly was the minute we’d be under watch from the faculty who never allowed a mated pair to be alone together until graduation. That alone was why Samuel had picked a fight with her—to protect Reed. Who, according to Samuel, was also her fucking mate.

  But last night, I’d just been furious. Angry she'd Chosen me and was content to make me suffer. And after Aboh, when I'd needed her, she'd gone straight to Stefan and his cronies. Not me.

  That had fucking hurt. Hurt so bad it was a thousand times worse than anything my parents had ever done to me. Through their neglect and lack of care, I’d suffered, but Eve? She’d decimated me when she hadn’t come to greet me, when she hadn’t rushed to hug me after I’d landed—childish, but I was just a man. Wanting a woman who’d Chosen him.

  It should have been obvious to me that she hadn't realized what she'd done. She didn't know our ways, after all, but what my cousin had once called my ‘dick-face mode’ had ticked into being. I’d treated her like shit last night. Blanking her as though she didn’t exist to me, but she did.

  She was mine.

  And I was hers.

  God help us both.

  Guilt had me suffocating until I managed to rasp out, “I should have known you didn't understand what you did. You’re not like the others. They might have strung me along, but not you. I’m sorry I underestimated you.” I bridged my hands together and squeezed my knuckles tight. My control was close to being breached. I wanted to touch her like I wanted my next breath. Even this short distance between us was torture.

  The fact that Stefan had been dealing with this from day one had me pitying him when I should have been loathing him for daring to be another of Eve’s Chosen.

  “I don’t even know what I did, never mind understand it,” she countered, sounding miserable and confused. Shit, she more than sounded it. The way she was gnawing on her bottom lip, the force with which she was wringing her hands… it all made me want to wrap her up in my arms and protect her.

  Even if that meant protecting her from herself.

  “Females select their mates,” I told her softly instead. Taking away the need for her confusion with answers, not with my body—which I'd have much preferred—but with my words. “Usually, it’s a combination of the creature and her desires. When the two are in alignment, then that means you've Chosen someone.”

  “That means you had the hots for Stefan and Frazer,” Dre inserted, and I elbowed him in the side.

  “Shut up, jackass,” I growled, enjoying his wince as he rubbed at his side. Then, with a sigh, I murmured, “But he's kind of right. Unless you're attracted to someone, the mark won't form.”

  I was used to seeing her cheeks turn red, but the crimson staining her face at my words? It was nothing like I'd ever seen. Her eyes turned glassy, and I wasn't sure if it was thanks to the feelings I inspired in her or what my words represented.

  “How did I do it?” she whispered, her voice low and husky.

  “You didn't really do anything,” I said with a sigh. “Your soul did. The Sin Eater in you Chose me.”

  “While also Choosing Stefan?” Dre cocked a brow at me. “That makes no fucking sense.”

  I shrugged rather than admit that, somehow, Eve had also chosen a Hell Hound. “Does he have the same mark I do?”

  His nostrils flared with irritation, but he nodded. “He definitely does.” He cut Eve an exasperated look. “Trouble with a capital T.”

  “I didn't do anything,” she argued waspishly.

  “You didn't have to. Just by breathing, you’re a walking disaster area.”

  “There’s no point fighting fate,” I reasoned, knowing I should defend her but shit, Dre, for all he was being a dick, did have a point. The impossible was happening between our Packs, and it was thanks to this one woman.

  “No point? What the fuck do you think the faculty is going to do when they find out about this?” he growled, and I winced because he was right.

  “What do you mean?” Eve murmured, any pinkness in her cheeks having disappeared in the face of his words. She was white as a sheet, so frail and sickly looking that I wanted to embrace her.

  Fuck, I didn't even need that as an excuse to want to tuck her in my arms.

  I'd never had these feelings before. Not even with Louise, who was the only person I had truly loved before Caelum. Loving Reed and Samuel was different, and technically with Louise too, since she was my cousin. But as hard as I'd wanted to protect Louise, and as badly as I failed, it didn't compare with the bone-deep, intrinsic need I felt to shelter and shield Eve from the harshness of our world.

  Dre made a disgusted sound. “I mean,” he snapped, “that Caelum doesn't do freaks. If you don't fit in, then you're eradicated. That’s how it works. You’re no better than a Ghoul to them.”

  I wished he was wrong, but he wasn't, and that terrified the fuck out of me. Even though I hadn’t known about the other Chosen, it was why I’d been contemplating escaping Caelum. Eve was odd, in more ways than I think most realized, but I did. To be more precise, my Sin Eater did.

  I said nothing about that, though, instead focused my ire on Dre who was being a prick as per fucking usual.

  “Are we going to have a problem?” I growled, flexing my fists.

  He cut me a look. “No. She's Stefan’s, therefore, unfortunately, she's Pack,” he sneered. “I honor my Pack.”

  “You disrespect her at every turn,” I pointed out, still on edge.

  Dre shrugged. “Until she earns my respect, I'm not going to hand it out freely.”

  “Is she safe with you?” I asked, needing to hit this home because Dre, through his dislike of her, could be the one who informed Nicholas about how peculiar Eve truly was.

  “I told you already,” he ground out. “She's Stefan’s. He's marked. Whether I like it or not, she Chose him and for whatever fucking reason, he wants her,” he growled. “Worse than that, the other dipshits in my Pack want her too. They’re all making moon eyes at her and jumping however high she asks them to—”

  “I've never asked any of them to jump!” Eve butted in, her tone indignant enough, that even in this shit show, I had to hide a laugh.

  Dre narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you purposely dense? Or just fucking stupid?”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “If you're going to malign me, then at least be accurate about it.” Her chin tipped up. “I'm not s
tupid. You all talk like ingrates. If you used words that were in the dictionary then I'd understand you. But you don't.”

  “It’s called living in the twenty-first century,” Dre snapped.

  “And we're getting off the point,” I cut in before this could turn into a fist fight. “Look, whatever the hell is going on here, we can't avoid the truth—Eve, you're in danger. If we want to keep you safe, then we’ll…”

  Eve, shaking her head, whispered, “I've Chosen you… but what does that mean for us?”

  It was the first time she'd taken an active sort of ownership over what she'd done, inadvertently or not, and I gentled my voice as I repeated the truth to her, explaining, “The Sin Eater in you recognized me as hers.”

  “But, what does that actually mean? I understand the words for once, just not the meaning,” she questioned, her brow puckering. “Mine for what?”

  My lips twitched. “To do with as she wills.”

  Her eyes flared at that. “But I don't—” Her bottom lip wobbled, and she pressed a hand to her belly. The move was strangely compelling like she was quenching something she didn't understand as she tried to communicate with her body in a language that was alien to her. “Is it about reproduction?”

  Dre snorted. “Fornication leads to reproduction, so yeah.”

  “It’s about both,” I retorted, glaring at him, and trying to think in words she'd understand, I explained, “Your cult… people got married, didn't they?”

  “Yes.”

  “It wasn't an interesting cult,” Dre inserted. “Not a sex-fest one. Of course, you had to be boring, Eve, didn't you?”

  Smacking him in the arm without looking at him, I turned back to her and saw that her focus was on me. One hundred percent. That was something about her I'd noticed before. She gave you all of her attention like a vacuum sucked at her focus until all she saw was you and nothing else.

  “Your soul wishes to marry me. That’s about the long and the short of it. But…” I bit the inside of my cheek here because there was no God. To Eve, however, she'd been raised to believe there was. “Humans decide on who they want. Or, usually, they do. I assume things were arranged in your world?” At her nod, I murmured, “Well, there’s no arrangement. Choosing me has nothing to do with politics or anything like that. Your Sin Eater recognizes me as hers because…” I hesitated again. “God willed it to be so.”

  “He touched upon our union?”

  “And the one you have with Stefan,” Dre barked out—like any of us could forget that. Or the link she had with Reed.

  I ignored him though, and just carried on staring at her, willing her to understand.

  “So, we get married?” she asked hesitantly.

  Amusement sparked, but I only pointed at my shoulder, dipping it south so she knew I meant my back. “That’s the equivalent of marriage vows, Eve.”

  “But I didn't do anything!” she argued once more, and though her words were redundant, I heard her panic. Her fear. And it fucking killed me.

  Needing to soothe her, I reached out to grab her hands, but she shoved them away. The move stung, and I fought hard not to lose my temper because it wasn’t anyone’s fault here that she didn’t understand. That she didn’t get how our race worked.

  Still, I had no choice but to tell her the complete, unadulterated truth. “You didn't have to. Your soul did.”

  2

  Reed

  As I flowed into downward dog, I tilted my tailbone to the sky and pressed the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet into the earth.

  It felt good.

  In fact, it felt better than good. Yoga grounded me in a way that very little else did. My temper was difficult to control at the best of times, the Hell Hound demanding that it be allowed a free reign over me, but of all the things I'd learned here at Caelum, one of them was that yoga was better than most things the faculty had taught me.

  The actions of having to control my breathing by pressing my body into a pretzel actually helped.

  I didn't know why, just knew that it worked, and some days, I really fucking needed it to work.

  There was no rhythm or rhyme as to why my Hell Hound would surge to the fore. I couldn't even explain it. Every day, until I graduated, a different soul would overtake me, be at the forefront of my being as I went about my business. That was the way for all creatures.

  Until we were of age, the seven souls played with us as if we were their toys, and the older we became, the nearer graduation approached, it became more and more difficult to control them. To have control over ourselves.

  My Hell Hound was a little different than most though. I'd known from the very beginning what I'd become, unlike other students here. The day I'd facilitated my mum’s death, I'd known I was a monster, and when I'd come to Caelum and had learned I had six other monsters living inside me, I'd known which was which, and which one I was—I was a Hell Hound.

  Yoga wouldn't make me a better man, nor would it make me a kinder person, but at least it tempered the aggression flowing through me on a minute to minute basis. And after Eve had Chosen me, seemingly unknowingly, I needed that calmness more than I needed my next meal.

  With the African sun beating down on my back, warming me through, my spine tingled as I pushed and pulled my limbs and joints into the varied positions that somehow worked their magic on me. Even my skin prickled with the heat, and after a lifetime of living under such intense, desert sun, the sensation made it a pleasure to be out on the beach.

  We’d never lived near a beach back when I was a kid in Oz, so to be at Caelum was actually a privilege. Not a day went by where I didn't work out on the beach, go surfing, or run on the shore. They were the three activities that helped me control myself, helped me contain this monstrous beast living inside me.

  As I inhaled and exhaled, closing one nostril off with my thumb, breathing in through the left nostril, I used my fourth finger, my ring finger, to press the left nostril closed so I could breathe through the right. Practicing breath control helped ground me further, and it was the reason I didn't throw my cell phone into the approaching tide when it began to buzz.

  I ceased the one nostril breathing exercise, choosing instead to blow out a grunt. As I stared ahead at the rippling shore, letting the pure white bubbles at the tips of the surf soothe me, I reached for my cell and groused, “What?”

  Frazer snorted. “So polite.”

  “If you wanted polite, then you should have called Samuel. What do you want? I'm working out, Frazer.”

  He hummed under his breath, and when he spoke next, there was an apologetic note to his tone since he knew the importance of my exercises. “Sorry, bro. But this is important. I need you to come to my room.”

  I scowled. “Can't it wait? I've almost finished.”

  “No. This is...” He sighed. “Sounds extreme, but it’s life or death.”

  This time, my grunt was more than exasperated—Frazer had a habit of exaggerating shit. I growled but started gathering my stuff together as I mumbled, “Be there in five.”

  Cutting the call, I took a second to press my hands together into a prayer pose and touched the tips of my fingers to the center of my forehead then my heart, giving thanks for the practice.

  Loping off the beach, I rushed through the crumbling sand and back toward the stairs that had been cut into the cliff face a long time ago. There were over two-hundred steps, but I made the climb, without complaint, a few times a day. Sometimes, I thought the ocean was the only thing keeping me sane, and for somebody who dreaded insanity, it was a blessing to be here and so close to the sea.

  I was barely out of breath by the time I reached the top, but as I ran the half mile toward the Academy, my skin was a little red because I didn’t have a chance to cool down after practice. It was still boiling hot, and switching from yoga to a swift run was a faint jolt to the system after those stairs.

  I slipped in the back of Caelum, and not wanting to see anybody or have to talk to anyone on my wa
y to Frazer's quarters, I stuck to the back passages, using the back stairs that were darker and narrower because they'd once been servant’s quarters. Amid the shadows, and more at ease since I was inside now, I made my way to the attic where Frazer had lived for the past five years.

  Why he liked it up there, I'd never know. My place wasn’t exactly bright and airy, but his was just creepy.

  I was Australian. My continent was hardcore. Most of the animals there wanted to kill you, and the ones that didn't, weren't scared of you. If anything, humans were scared of them. Even so, I'd never seen as many insects as what Frazer had to deal with up in the attic, but he said he liked it, and who was I to question his reasoning?

  The freak could live wherever the fuck he wanted, especially now that he was twenty. Two months ago, he used his birthday as a means of declaring Sammy, himself, and me as Pack. Because of that, he could have moved rooms, since having a Pack was the first stage in officially becoming an adult in the faculty’s eyes, so we were all granted more freedom than before. But he'd been more than happy to stay in the attic, and even if I didn't get it, I could appreciate the fact his room was larger than most.

  The floorboards creaked underneath my feet as I walked because this was one of the oldest parts of Caelum. Some portions had been built back in the 1800’s, with most recent additions being only a couple of years old. Caelum, in many ways, was a fixer upper. Whenever it was decided that a new annex was required, a new section was patched up, stuck onto the side of an older part of the building, and an extension was made so there was access. It didn't make for a particularly pretty building, but it grew, as did our Army, to a point where it was almost symbiotic.

  Above the creaking of the floorboards, I heard the rumble of conversation, and I didn't bother knocking as I walked into Frazer's room, but that didn't stop me from hovering in the doorway at the sight of so many people in there.

  I understood why he wanted to be here, in the attic and not a common room when I saw there weren’t only six other guys in the bedroom, but Eve as well. The only person who was missing was Nestor.