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“Pretty far,” Sariel admitted. “She doesn’t like my father very much, and Auren’s death made it worse. She moved out of San Diego. Only Lucy and I know where she lives now.”
“And Michaelson?”
“Unfortunately, Michaelson idolizes our father. I’ve never tried to show him the truth.”
“Why not?” I questioned, turning as much as the seat belt would allow me so that I could face him.
He glanced at me briefly before turning back the road. “Mikey blames me for Auren’s death. When I was found, I was too out of it to explain what had happened to him. I’d been drugged and beaten and too weak to shift. I didn’t even know my name. Azazel pretended to search for Auren around the same area they’d found me. At the same time, I was hospitalized. When they didn’t find Auren, Azazel spun some ludicrous storyto Mikey about me abandoning Auren and saving myself. He also tried to sell that story to Lucy and Grandma Credence.”
At this point, I felt genuinely embarrassed by how I’d fangirled over Azazel. The man was cruel and insane. “I take it they didn’t believe him?”
Sariel chuckled. “Lucy told him to never speak about me that way again. Credence told him it was a good thing I didn't inherit his cowardice.”
“I think I’m going to like your grandmother.”
Sariel smiled, then continued. “Anyway, Mikey bought his story, and I saw how Azazel was with him. He was an actual father; he did things with him that he didn’t do with me after my wings came in, and for a while, I thought Mikey was set to inherit AMH.”
He swallowed. I watched his throat work as he switched to drive with one hand while the other settled on the center console between us. “I assumed he’d never hurt Mikey. That he wouldn’t treat him the same way he’d treated me. Then, Mikey failed a course one semester, and I wasn’t home. I was never home, actually. I preferred to stay at my apartment where I could… escape.
“Azazel beat him so badly, he calledme. Maybe you don’t understand that significance because you don’t know how bad our relationship was, but he still called me in tears. When I was sitting in the emergency room while a doctor attended to my little brother, I realized how fucked up Azazel truly was. There was no way I was leaving Mikey alone in a house with him after that.”
Sariel ran his hand along his jaw as he maneuvered the car around a minivan. “I thought our relationship would take a different turn after that. I thought he’d finally understood why I left as soon as I turned eighteen, why I was rarely at the estate.
“He told me thanks for coming to get him, but he’d called his father to pick him up. Said he knew he’d fucked up, and he’d do better to get back into Azazel’s good graces.”
I was gaping at him. “What?”
Sariel nodded, laughing bitterly. “I didn’t bother trying to tell him anything after that.”
And I could see why. Sariel’s little brother was basically brainwashed, and Sariel had spent so much time away from home he hadn't been around to ensure it didn't happen.
“I made a deal with Azazel shortly after that,” his fingers drummed against the steering wheel. “I’d be his good little pet if he left Lucy—who still doesn’t know she’s married to a monster—and Mikey alone.”
“How the hell did Mikey explain the bruises?”
“Azazel told her he was attacked in an alley.”
I could only shake my head. “And Mikey didn’t correct him.”
Sariel scoffed. “Of course not.”
We lapsed into silence after that. I’d learned so much about Sariel in the last few days, seen sides to him I would have never believed existed. If someone had told me five days ago I’d be sitting in the passenger side of a stolen car with the ginger from hell going eighty miles an hour, I would have made an earnest suggestion about them getting mental help.
Yet, here I was, my wolf rolling around and panting like a pup instead of a full-grown, sometimes murderous wolf. I wondered if his angel sometimes had a mind of its own like my wolf did.
The thought barely took root before a jarring memory of Sariel telling Dessi that he’d met my wolf had me turning to him sharply.
“You met my wolf.”
Sariel dragged his gaze away from the road to raise one amber brow at me. “Yes, I did.”
I blinked at him. “Did she… I mean… Was shepleasant?”
I knew that my wolf might’ve been a little more pleasant with him than usual, going by how she reacted to him. For that reason, his answer might mortify me and create unnecessary awkward tension between us, but I needed to know. I had to believe she wouldn’t have embarrassed us.
Sariel cleared his throat, but I didn’t miss his chuckle. “She was veryaffectionate.”
I groaned, burying my face in my hands.
