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By the time he stepped back, and I was forced to let him go, we were both clearing our throats and unable to look at one another.
I made myself comfortable as he dropped into his office chair. The screens behind him were black, and I couldn’t help but wonder what was usually on them when he pulled his aviators off. Then, for the first time in a long time, my brother meets my gaze.
I had no idea how I’d missed the scarring that first night, but seeing it now made me feel hollow. I should have noticed. Cared.Something.
Auren then told me his story. It’s nauseating to hear now that I was listening.
He didn’t stumble or break down or show all the torn-up, tender bits I was sure were left over. I could feel my own, too, like a broken ankle that had never really healed right, aching with every step I take. Hearing him talk about his trauma as it had happened to someone else hurt almost as bad as knowing he’d gone through it at all, and there was nothing I could do to help him.
“Azazel is such a fucking dick,” was what left me at the end.
Auren snorted, chuckling darkly when I leaned forward and ran my fingers through my hair. “So Kiyomasa really isn’t that bad, then?”
He shrugged at the question, eyeing twinkling with mirth. “He finished raising me.”
Kudos for that, at least.
“The man was a hardass when I first got here, but the older he gets, the more sentimental he is,” he continued. “He’s absolutely convinced he’ll die any day now.
“I was so scared when I realized Azazel was trying to kill you,” Auren lamented. It was hard to meet his gaze when he stared at me. “I didn’t know what to do, you know? Kiyomasa was info-dumping on me, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
His laugh was a little strained as he looked away, seemingly embarrassed. Being able to see his expression was a novelty; the subtle twists and glances made him seem more human than his stony persona normally allowed. “When he started telling me about you being a hybrid—”
“How did he even find that out?” I cut in.
“Your birth mother was in the Free Kingdom, remember? The Resistance has had spies in their court for longer than I’ve been leading it. At the time, it was Kiran and Atlan relaying information to him; she was completely distraught for months after she left you. Rumors started spreading, and most of them made it back to him.”
A lump formed in my throat against my will.
Lucy was my real mother in every way that mattered, but part of me—the small part, the little boy she’d left on his father’s doorstep with no explanation—hurt to hear that.
It would have been easier if I could pretend Penelope hadn’t missed me at all.
“It wasn’t hard to put two and two together,” Auren said. “We use the same method to get most of the kids here away from the families who are most likely to turn them in.”
I felt surprised at that. “Wait, you kidnap them?”
He gave me a look that let me know he thought I was an idiot. “From the parents who had affairs and got hybrid babies dropped on their doorsteps? Or the ones who turn their kids over to the Upper Councilthemselveswhen it turns out that the fae they slept with wasn’t actually infertile? Fuck yeah, we do. Most people who have hybrid children don’t mean to have them, and we can’t even save half of them. There are too fucking many and too much misinformation about their danger to society.”
That was the exact opposite of everything I thought I knew about the way our world worked.
Hybrids were supposed to be rare, something that was taboo and only happened once in a blue moon, when fated mates met from different species or two brave souls fell in love and weren’t careful enough. Learning that the Upper Council was just getting rid of them quietly, not even following their own damn trial procedures, though
I could feel the room threatening to close in on me for a split second before pushing it from my mind.
“When Kiyomasa offered me this position,” Auren said after I let the silence drag on too long, “making sure we started saving as many hybrid kids as we could was one of the first things I did. I never wanted there to be someone who was hurt like you. Not if I could help it.”
“You did a good job.”
I thought so, anyway. With no baseline for how many kids that actually was, I had no idea if he was actually managing to save people like he’d been plotting to, but the thought was there, and it had to count for something.
Auren grimaced at me, then smirked. “I’m definitely trying to do one.”
He went on to tell me that the first few years of his taking over were a mess. Some people still refused to follow him—he was too young, but having formed a circle of older hybrids to “guide” him had made a lot of the naysayers happy—and I could feel myself getting defensive of him.
“That’s why Kiyomasa is the Director, huh?” I asked.
He laughed at the question, rolling his eyes. When he leaned back in his chair, it rocked backward a bit, and he propped his ankle up on his knee. “Basically. It was easier to let him field the requests of the ones who refused my leadership than to divide the Resistance.”
