ELI
"What are you doing?" Finn asks as he strolls into the sitting room, casually gnawing on a pineapple chunk stabbed onto a cocktail stick, which he is picking from an open coconut. The juice is dripping down his wrist, and he doesn't seem to care.
I wrinkle my nose and gesture to his hands. "You know that's not how civilized people eat fruit, right? You look like a beach gremlin."
"Bromelain-giving smoothie, motherfucker. I'm basically becoming unkillable from the inside out."
"Take a probiotic like the rest of the sane pack. You look like you robbed a tiki bar."
"To answer your question, Finn…" Kaleb enters like they both have gone to the same place. He reclines like sin incarnate in the corner armchair. "Eli is having a beautiful date. He brought a woman home for the first time. I can smell her. Eli, should you give that cooking to Finn or do you plan on ruining your first date?"
I glance at him. "You say that like you're not involved in her being here. Thank you, I can handle my own cooking."
"Oh, I am. I picked the target. You know, to make it interesting. He'll either end victoriously or in pieces. My money's on the second."
I shoot Kaleb a death glare, but he just smirks over the lip of his glass, taking a long sip before raising it up in a mock toast.
"Who're you guys talking about? I'm lost," Finn asks.
"The ugly duckling—Hope Kendrick."
"…Well, you're about to be shocked if you think she's anything close to ugly," I say, gulping down half a bottle of cold water.
Kaleb barks a laugh. "I'd say you're trying to claw your way out of the friend zone now, but I don't think you're even in a zone at this rate."
Finn takes another annoyingly long sip of his stupid smoothie, filling his mouth as he lets out a goofy chuckle like a fucking dumb kid.
So I do what any reasonable, grown-ass man would do to his little brother.
I whip the smoothie out of his hand and then pelt it at Kaleb, hitting him on the forehead with a satisfying whack.
My brothers protest in unison, and I grin down at my food as I stuff another bunch of carrots at them.
"I don't think you've made this much effort for a woman since… ever," Kaleb says, not missing a beat.
The sound of Finn's choked cough fills the room. Kaleb and I watch as he catches flecks of apple in his tight fist. "What? You really have a thing for her? Why am I only learning about this now?"
"You've had your head in your ass in the infirmary, nowhere playing school doctor, that's why," Kaleb snickers.
"I was saving lives. That's my gift. A healer. I'm not cursed with some psychotic gifts like y'all. I'm the only normal one among us."
"Normal my ass!" Kaleb and I say in perfect unison.
Kaleb smirks and sets his whiskey glass down with a soft clink, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket to pull out an obsidian-handled folding knife. With practiced ease, he unclips the worn leather honing strap from his belt—custom, of course, like everything else he owns. He hooks the loop over his middle finger and stretches it tight between both hands, dragging the blade slowly across it in deliberate, rhythmic strokes.
It's an old habit—one I've seen a thousand times. He doesn't say it, but the stropping is less about the blade and more about calming the storm brewing under his cool exterior.
It's something he's done since we were kids, something that soothes him.
Kaleb might enjoy ribbing Finn and me, but I know he's stressed about the monster lurking around school and killing werewolves. He never shows he cares about the apocalypse anyway, but I know deep down, he wants everyone safe. Especially his brothers.
Finn is mostly out there having a one-on-one encounter with the shapeshifter and then trying to always heal the monster's victims... the only thing he can't do is bring back the dead.
And now, about me going off to play some insane death game with a shapeshifter serial killer I barely know—with Hope, of course—he's worried I'd get myself killed, so he joined the game and made the others join as well.
Whoever defeats and kills the shifter first will get the prize that he won't disclose yet... I just hope it doesn't have anything to do with exclusive parties, because Kaleb loves those. The rule was simple: get a partner, and second, don't get killed.
Werewolves are mortal anyway.
"Has she arrived yet?" Finn asks as he snaps out of his analytical haze, looking straight to Kaleb as though I'm not even the right person to be asked.
"Where's my Luna?" Hope's voice cuts through the room before I can respond.
She stands in the doorway, hands on her hips.
Kaleb pauses mid-stroke, the blade hovering over the strop. "Speak of the devil. You are fucking gorgeous! Hope Kendrick? I should have picked you up myself," he mutters with a half-smile.
Luna bolts out from under the couch and races toward her with an excited meow. Hope drops to a crouch immediately, scooping her up like she's a lost child.
"There you are, baby," she coos, nuzzling Luna while throwing a glare at Kaleb. "Are you one of the Alpha students living here?"
Kaleb rises from his seat, sliding the blade back into its sheath with a quiet click. "Guilty as charged," he says, sauntering closer. "Kaleb Dimitrov. I was supposed to pick you up, but I got other things. Nice to finally meet you, Hope."
"Finally?" She chuckles. "You say that like you've been waiting for me all week."
"I bet you, I have."
My eyes stay fixed to her, and I take the opportunity to openly assess my partner as she declines Kaleb's handshake and pulls up her middle finger for Finn.
"Why? What did I do?" Finn asks.
"That's for leaving me in the middle of a school with no specific direction and trying to kiss me."
Kiss her? My eyes squint at Finn.
I won't blame him. We've all agreed that the relationship with hope with strictly be work related even I was swayed because I'm sorry but she looked like some nerdy underaged girl until I saw her at that cage house .
I didn't even know she was the hope Kendrick untill her details were read by Duno.
Hope twists her damp hair over her shoulder, and my gaze drifts down to her chest—like it has every two minutes since she walked down the stairs in my blue T-shirt and no bra.
No bra.
The thought ricochets through my skull like a firework in a tunnel.
She's stolen my damn clothes and somehow turned them into a whole new fit. My jeans hang low on her hips, cuffed at the ankles like she owns them, the waist clinging to her curves only because she tied it up with two red bandanas like she's starring in a rebel fashion show.
My T-shirt now hugs her waist where she's knotted it tight, exposing just enough golden skin to spark a riot within me—and her pierced belly button.
It's unfair, the kind of magic she pulls off.
And completely distracting.