Chapter 4 Caiden
Caiden
“What’s your name?” We’d been sitting in silence for a few minutes while I watched the thundering of the man’s pulse slowly return to normal… and I realized that I didn’t want to keep calling him the man in my head.
One, it was weird, and two… I still wasn’t sure he was a man at all. He’d said something about not being able to go back to what he was supposed to be… and I’d seen enough since I’d died to understand there were more things on this earth than I’d ever known about while I was alive.
“Soul,” he said, his voice soft, his eyes lifting almost helplessly to me after a second, like he didn’t want to ask the question but he couldn’t help himself. “What’s yours?”
“Caiden,” I answered instantly.
“Caiden.” He repeated the word like he was trying to taste it, that long tongue spilling out to lick his lips in a show of swallowing down the syllables to trap my name against his ribs. Finally, he fixed those odd eyes back on me. “How are we supposed to help each other, Caiden?”
It was a good question that I didn’t have an answer to. I didn’t know what to tell him, other than that everything inside me was insisting I was better off keeping him by my side than letting him leave. I hadn’t felt clear about where I was, about what I was doing, until the moment he’d touched me.
“Well… we could start off by getting to know each other a little. I’m guessing you aren’t exactly…
” I trailed off, looking him up and down.
He was in the shape of a man, but that long tongue kept licking nervously at his lips, and those eyes weren’t anything I’d ever seen when I was alive.
Even the strange, soft-looking texture of his hair wasn’t exactly normal. “You aren’t human, are you?”
“No.” That answer came instantly, like he was eager to give me what I was asking for. “I am Death’s hound. A soul hound.”
Oh, so… eager like a puppy? Looking at those liquid dark eyes and that tongue… I could definitely see it. He probably wouldn’t appreciate it if I pointed that out, though, so I kept that little revelation to myself.
“And… this isn’t how you usually look?”
He shook his head again, his shoulders shimmying slightly as he spoke, like just the thought of his real form was enough to get him excited.
I wondered if his tail would wag if he had one.
“No. I’m a hunter, a creature made of shadow and stealth…
not…” His eyes dropped to his long, dangerous-looking hands.
His claw-tipped fingers twitched. “Not this. This is all wrong.”
From the low sound of pain that tore from his chest, it made me wonder if he was trying to do whatever he’d done before. When he finally looked up again, his eyes were wide.
Lost.
Yeah… we were both lost all right.
“You can’t change back?” It was kind of obvious, but…
“The flowers did something…” Soul’s eyes flickered around the clearing, to all the places the morning glories had sprouted up as I’d walked past. Finally, he turned back to me. “You did something to me.”
The edges of accusation were chased with that same helplessness from earlier… and even though he was glaring at me like he wanted to shift into that form he was talking about so he could eat me for my apparent sins… he still wasn’t moving away.
“I didn’t mean to. And…” I bit my lower lip and tilted my head. “I mean, you still look dangerous to me, if it helps?”
“You don’t understand. This isn’t what I am.
I don’t know how to walk on two legs like this for more than a few hours.
This isn’t what I’m supposed to be.” I could see it on his face, an emotion that was almost fear, almost panic.
It clawed at the edge of his expression.
“I’m made to hunt, that’s all—it’s my only purpose. ”
His eyes widened as I reached out, but he didn’t try to pull away when I flattened my palm against his chest. “I don’t know much about you, but it seems like you’re more than just some mindless beast.”
“I’m not.” He frowned, baring sharp teeth at me for a flash before he dropped the expression like it hurt him to do it.
“I’m nothing more than broken fragments of a shattered soul sculpted into a new form—it’s what I was made for.
It’s all I was made for… and up until this hunt, I’ve been fine with that.
Content to be just that for all eternity, as long as my Master needed me. ”
Up until this hunt?
“And now?”
He shook his head, the movement jerky, a back-and-forth motion that almost made him whimper. “It’s different.” The syllables sounded like an accusation again, but his hand lifted, claws easily encircling my wrist and showing me just how much bigger than me he was. “I don’t like it.”
“Then we’ll figure out how to change you back.
” I wasn’t sure why I was offering to do something when I had no idea how he’d gotten stuck in a different form to begin with.
I wasn’t even sure if I could help him—if I could do anything.
Up until I’d met him, no one had been able to see me… to touch me.
And now I was… tethered. Just like I’d asked.
“How?” he whispered, his voice just as confused as I felt. But this… this I could do. This was what I’d been made for—what my whole life had narrowed down to when I’d still been alive. I could comfort him. I was good at pushing my own emotions, my own thoughts, aside to focus on someone else.
“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out together, okay?”
“Together.” He echoed the word like he couldn’t believe he was saying it, but he was already nodding.
I’d noticed that about him. His expressions seemed like he was working up to saying no, to attacking me, to doing whatever he’d come to do, but he kept contradicting himself.
Now that violence gave way to his shoulders shaking, to those dark eyes shifting to look at me—wide and wild, confused and just a little terrified…
I moved before I thought about it and did the only thing I could do—the only thing that made sense.
I wrapped my arms around him. It’s what I would do if he were human. On those nights when Cole had looked at me like his entire world was falling apart, when the doctors had come back and told us that I was just getting worse… I’d hug him.
My arms couldn’t fix a damn thing, but they could offer something steady, something to focus on. Something solid and real.
I didn’t know if a soul hound would respond the same way to hugs as my brother had, but it was the only thing I could think to do.
Soul tensed for a second, and then we were moving.
His broad arms pulled me closer as he came to his knees—it brought him level with my chest, so he could tuck his head beneath my chin.
He held me against him with so much strength that I could barely breathe, with arms that were shaking so violently it felt like I would break him if I tried to pull away.
He held me to him, and I did the only thing I could.
I wrapped one arm around his shoulders and carefully brought my other up to thread through his hair in a soothing gesture.
With his enormous frame draped around me, I almost felt like a kid again…
Except, when I was a kid, it had usually been Cole I was hugging—a perfect mirror to me in every way, all the best parts of me I wanted to hold together for as long as I could.
I’d never felt swallowed up when I was holding someone before… never felt like there was a part of me that was getting just as lost in the feel of being held.
Stroking my fingers through Soul’s soft hair while he trembled in my arms was different. Everything about this was different, and I was starting to realize that as much as I felt like I would drown in the Lake if I let myself go back into the water, there was a real risk of me drowning here too.