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Swiping at her red-rimmed eyes, she forced a smile for her son.
“Probably not, Tiana. They keep getting turned away as threats to the cause,” a gruff voice spoke up behind her, after which an older man joined us. “They can’t get themselves together long enough to get to safety.”
“What do you mean?” Auren was the one to ask as the dark-skinned woman bowed her head sadly.
“They have trust issues and some resentment about it all. I guess it’s flagging something with your witch, because it seems like most of our wounded are being turned away. It almost makes it feel like it was all for nothing. I’m sure they’re upset, you know?”
My brother stiffened, obviously not a fan of this turn of events. He could play the hardass all he liked, but his moral compass had clear lines. Turning away traumatized wolves? That wasn’t part of it.
I could hear his wheels spinning as he tried to work out a way to get them somewhere safe from our father. It wouldn’t shock me if he had already come up with another location they could be moved to without compromising everything. He’d probably even give them all a check for the trouble.
“Anyway, thank you,” Tiana continued. “Azazel was… well, he was full of shit. About all of it. All we have to show for putting our trust in him is a trail of dead bodies and mutilation, so I’m hoping you guys canactuallyhelp us.”
Looking down at her son again, she straightened her spine before calling out for Maisie. A kid came barrelling over to her with a beaming grin, and she returned it before saying her goodbyes and leading her and the older man on the path toward the refugee houses.
My stomach refused to settle with the revelation of what Azazel had been doing to them. It was one thing to lie and give them false hope in order to keep them in line, but torture? Murder? I wasn’t exactly surprised, but it still made me sick to imagine.
My brother must have felt the same, because when I looked over at him, he was staring after the little family with a scowl.
“I have to go talk to Zuzanna,” he announced.
I nodded when he hurried towards the witch as she shook her head at another wolf, this one leaning on a cane. I watched them for a moment before turning away in favor of watching the wolves whoweremaking it into the compound. We couldn’t save everyone, but the ones we did save were the ones I needed to focus on if I wanted to keep my own wolf in check.
For whatever reason, he was clawing at me, itching to greet every single one that walked by us.
Aria returned after dropping off her own family, practically floating over to me and throwing her arms around my neck.
“He wants to establish dominance,” she advised me, having obviously been eavesdropping on my thoughts. “Or play. Probably a bit of both, actually, since you keep him locked up tight.”
There was no judgment or disapproval in the statement, but I winced anyway. I’d been so quick to preach about her accepting herself, and now look at me—barely able to acknowledge my wolf without my skin crawling.
Aria pressed her cheek against my chest, and I returned her hug with a small sigh. “I’m not used to all those fun instincts you keep rattling off. When do they stop?”
She giggled at my expense. “They don’t!”
Of course, they didn’t.
The idea that Johnny had just wandered around like this for years and I’d never even suspected was crazy to me, but apparently, it was the truth. He had an iron will, as far as I was concerned since I was being driven insane by my wolf.
Then again, he’d mentioned before that Aria was unusual in the fact that her wolf was a wholly separate entity, hadn’t he?
“Normal shifters just feel the feelings; they don’t have a literal wolf trying to fight their way out,” she explained, hearing my thoughts again. “When they talk about their ‘wolf,’ it's referring to their instincts, not a whole separate being housed in the same body.”
It made sense. Angels were the same way, apparently, and I’d just been the odd one out because of my hybrid status or something.
It brought into question a lot of things, though. Like the twins—did they have separate wolves? Did Kiyomasa have a demon on his shoulder?
You’re making my brain hurt,Aria complained.Stop overthinking it.
She laughed when I huffed into her hair, pulling away enough to beam up at me.
I pressed another kiss to her head, letting myself bask in her scent and warmth for a moment. It settled every part of me to just have her in my arms, sharing my space, and I wasn’t ready to let the feeling slip away quite yet.
She just let me, smug and biding her time so that she could rub my nose at how needy I was being later. Her silent reassurances that “she wouldnever” fell on deaf ears when she could no longer mask her giggling.
7
A NEW FRIEND
