32 Olivia
November 9th, 2022
He was getting angry, I could feel it.
The morning of November 1st, Evelyn had me move into Everett’s place. She and Everett had hired people to remodel my house. Which I was grateful for but staying here these last few days have been difficult, to say the least.
The main problem was that I didn’t have any wine, so everything that I had been feeling at my house was ten times worse for the first four days before I finally accepted that I would better heal without it. It wasn’t an easy acceptance, but it was one I needed all the same.
I didn’t sleep in the bedroom, I refused to go with him out on his little assignments, I didn’t talk. All I did was eat, watch television, and wake him up in the middle of the night, screaming.
Emily and Greyson had returned home with promises of future visits, not too soon though because next month was their wedding, and while Everett and I did have an open invite, Everett had informed her that there were things we still needed to do, so if we didn’t make it, he apologized.
As guilty as I felt about it, I was glad he declined. If I was still struggling, which I hoped I wasn’t, then I didn’t want to bring down her amazing day with this bullshit. She deserved better. Both she and Grey did.
Rae, Jack, and Zo, who I had met only a couple of times, left to start hunting down the people who sent Tommy those pictures, and everything had almost returned back to normal.
Everything except for me.
While some of it was my choice, not going on assignments, there were other parts of it I still couldn’t figure out.
The talking thing for one.
It was just starting to get irritating. I was supposed to have the ability to control this power of mine, and I couldn’t.
I had tried to start writing again too, but it seemed impossible. I was back in contact with Katie, and she was more than forgiving about my process, telling me to take a year off, if need be, that the deal would be put on hold until after I decided to pick it back up. Something she would never do for anyone else.
And I was just…just here.
Just existing.
Frustrated at myself that I was stuck in this impossible box of being too scared to feel what was under my skin and irritated that I couldn’t force it out.
It was as if my mind was tired of dealing with it, but my heart was still worried I’d eventually regret letting go.
So, here I was, sitting in my own frustrations while the television played on near silent, Everett gone for the day.
He was allowed to be frustrated, I couldn’t blame him for it. He told me his patience had limits, and I was pushing those every single day, unable to tell him that I was trying.
But how could I learn to control something I didn’t understand? How could I learn to coexist with this new…new bloodlust raging in my system without blacking out? Without accidently killing the people I cared most about?
When did being human suddenly become so complicated? Was this a part of the PTSD? Was this because of the trauma I suffered, or was this just an obstacle my mind had created all by itself?
Was I pushing too hard?
Was I not pushing enough?
I sat at the table, my laptop open in front of me. Merlin was on the table too, sniffing around his new little bed, while Lucy watched me from where she lay in front of Everett’s door. She was getting better. She still wouldn’t allow me to go anywhere alone, but every day I saw her pushing to give me a little more freedom. A little space. I could see how hard it was for her, but she was trying, just like I was trying.
I would get better; I had to get better.
Maybe I would call Rae today, ask her if there was something she really struggled to get passed. If she had some advice on how to flip that switch in her head and make things okay again.
The door opened and my eyes locked onto Lucy, watching her reaction, watching any twitch of her ear.
She pushed herself up in a lazy kind of way, sniffing the air, and my racing heart stuttered. It wasn’t Everett or Evelyn, and those were the only two people I knew of who knew that this place even existed.
But she knew the person. She had to have or else she would have lunged already.
I glanced over and saw the last thing I expected to see.
A cane appeared in my line of sight, followed by the man carrying it.
Azrael was still wearing that mask. That sharp smile smaller today, but ever present.
Lucy walked over and sniffed him again and then turned to me, gauging my reaction.
“Hello, wild rose.”
I forced myself to relax back in my chair, tracking him as he headed for the chair across from mine.
I gave Lucy a soft nod and found his eyes. “Wild?”
“So it is true,”
he purred. “She speaks, and here I thought I was hearing things.”
He sank into the chair, watching me unflinchingly. “Wild with razor thorns and a fractured mind. A new species, remember?”
Right, he had said that in the clearing. I had forgotten.
I tilted the laptop screen down as Merlin inched closer to Azrael, sniffing the air. “I suppose I don’t see what you see,”
I finally said, searching his eyes. Why was he here? From what I knew of him, he played his part and moved on. I had assumed that after I had returned back to my own house, I wouldn’t see him again. Not for a long time, at least. This was the last thing I expected.
“People rarely do,”
he hummed. “Don’t be so distraught over it, it’s been a thorn in everyone’s side since I first walked into our very building.”
Their building. The building, I assumed, where Rae had trained. Had forgotten she had trained in until her memories slowly started coming back.
They had all trained there.
Maybe that’s where I needed to go. Maybe what I needed was to work this shit out of me.
Azrael watched me for a long time, and I let him. I didn’t find his eyes as terrifying as they had been before. In fact, I hated what I saw, not because it was scary, but because I recognized it. I saw in him what I felt in my soul, and I wondered if anyone else could see in my eyes what they saw in his.
Death.
Rage.
“I can see it, you know,”
he had said. “That little crack they found in your soul and widened. Like calls to like, rose. It would do you well to remember that. He may be your Claim, but it was you who so eloquently described the difference between twin flames and soulmates. I don’t believe in such trivialities, but if I did, I would have to say that while you and the mountains are flames, you and I? Our souls hum to the same frequency.”
That’s what he had said so many weeks ago.
Were we the same like he suggested? If so, did he have the answers I needed to fix this? To fix me. “How do you do it?”
I finally asked, my voice a bare whisper.
I knew Everett hated Azrael, I knew that. And because of that, I had held the fear that if he and I were the same, maybe he would hate me too once he found out the truth.
But I couldn’t keep going through this life fighting with my own mind, trying to survive this.
I wanted to live.
I got out of that room so I could live. So, if I was like Azrael, if we were the same like he said, and Everett decided that he no longer wanted anything to do with me, then fine. At least I would die having finally solved this problem. At least I would die having known a few seconds of true freedom before I went back to that…to that place I had seen when they had killed me.
His stare was unwavering. “I’ve come to realize that every heartbeat is numbered, and whether that number ends by my hands or another’s, it will still end.”
His hand flexed around his cane. “I do like ending them myself though.”
“How?”
I asked, straightening. “Tell me,”
I ordered.
“Why?”
he retorted quickly.
“Because I want to know,”
I answered, my voice as steady as his stare. I needed to find whatever formula he had in order to fix this. Maybe it would make sense coming from his mind. Maybe, by the time Everett returned, I could find the ability to speak to him again without completely losing my shit.
He angled his chin. “If you’re looking for the answer to the question ‘how much have I really changed?’ I already have that answer. Would you like to know?”
I swallowed, searching his eyes. “Yes,”
I breathed out.
“Not at all,”
he answered, thrumming his fingers.
Confusion filled me at his confession. “What?”
It was impossible. I had changed, I could feel it. I know I had.
“You haven’t changed at all, wild rose. You’ve only…”
his smile stretched. “Bloomed. As an author, you should know that while your works are of fiction in this world, there are more truths to it than you could ever rationally admit to. You, my dear, are just as fucked up as the rest of us. Maybe more so. The craving of blood, of death, of destruction, it has always lived and breathed within you, those men simply widened that crack.”
I shook my head. “No.”
That was impossible. Yes, I have always been angry, but not like this.
“Yes.”
“No,”
I said again. “I’ve never felt like this before. Ever. Not one time. I tore open a man—men—because of this. What you’re saying can’t possibly be true.”
“But it is,”
he sang. “You swallowed your anger, as the mountain boy says, your entire life. Over and over again, biting that sharp tongue of yours to keep the vultures happy, and then, dear rose, you found something just as sharp. A pen. So, you bled, and you bled, vomiting up the truths you wished to release upon this world, living vicariously through your characters, getting off on the idea that your hands were slick with their blood. And then,”
he went on, my blood chilling, “you were taken. You were held far away from your pen and paper, far away from your outlet, so when they cracked you open and you were given the opportunity, you executed that rage in the only way you knew how; you slaughtered.”
I inhaled sharply, shaking my head. “No.”
I wasn’t always like this. I couldn’t have been.
“You ripped those men apart, poor Tommy, and rightfully so. Your mind did crack, wild rose, just not in the way you thought, and I don’t know why you’re sliding into such deep denial now because, if I remember right, you craved the feeling of pulling that trigger for a long time. You craved the sound of a bullet shattering through a skull, but now, it seems, you’re terrified of that very truth you confessed to the mountains not months ago. We are the same, you and I, in a far more dangerous way than anybody will ever willingly admit. It should scar me, knowing that Everett was attracted and fucked a woman so similar to me, but alas, perhaps there are enough differences to make it less debilitating.”
My eyes widened. “How do you know that? About the confession.”
“I know everything. I told you once and I’ll tell you again, every road leads back to me.”
My heart was thudding in my ears, my breathing labored, but the denial died on my lips because he was right, I had liked it. I loved it. I loved ripping those men apart for touching me. I loved feeling their skin tear under my nails, hearing their screams turn to gargles and coughs. Fuck, I had loved it so much, I had done it again. In front of Everett.
Was I Azrael?
“Don’t worry, deary,”
he beamed. “You can’t possibly be that similar to me. It’s just the rage we have in common, the craving of absolution. Of death and justice and balance. Other than that, your mind is solid.”
I searched his eyes, flexing my hands at the memory of the blood sliding through them. “How do I control it? The black fog that covers my eyes. How do I control it?”
He cocked his head to one side. “How does a lion control its thirst for blood? He hunts.”
I sat forward. “But I blacked out, Azrael. I don’t remember doing any of that stuff. I slaughtered, and I came too, and I was holding—”
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, trying to rid my mind of the images. “Tommy,”
I finally said, finding his eyes again, my heart pounding, my breathing hitched from remembering those days. “I came back, and I was choking Everett.”
“Because you’re trying to suppress something that shouldn’t be suppressed,”
he explained chillingly. “You’ve never suppressed a memory a moment in your life. Not one, it’s not in your nature. Your mind is at war with itself because of you, dear child. Only you can stop that.”
“How?”
I stressed. “How do I stop it?”
“You must realize that the only real power you will ever have is the power over your precious Claim, and the power you wield when this world fears you. I’m sure he’s talked to you about that.”
He did.
Azrael nodded once. “You must accept that it’s okay to be hated, feared, loathed. You must accept the fact that you were raped and tortured and killed over and over again. You are all about stories and plots and character arc’s, so here is yours. Write out the next chapter of your life and title it ‘Redemption’. The first line should be you accepting the fact that you have a new taste for bloodshed, the next paragraph should be you learning how to fight, and the rest of the chapter?”
He shrugged. “It should be all about you giving this world the kind of justice you never got. We have so many Initiates being turned, wild rose, so many in need of correcting. Perhaps your bloodlust can be used for good.”
I watched him for a long time, searching his eyes. I had lost my chapters the day they found me, and I hadn’t been able to write since. Not physically or figuratively. So…maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to force myself to do what I was too scared of doing.
“Sometimes to regain control, you have to release it,”
Azrael said as if seeing my thoughts drift through my eyes.
I straightened, an eerie sort of calm washing over me. “Why didn’t you tell them?”
His eyes shined. “Secrets.”
He pulled out a silver pocket watch, clicking the top open to check the time before sliding it back into his pocket. “You must learn to control it, rose, because it is terrifying. It’s terrifying when it controls you, so you can’t allow that. I’m not one to give advice of coddling and leaning, but I suppose the dear little mouse, not to be mistaken with Merlin, has taught me something about words. Sometimes falling into the depths of it can prove to be as enlightening as climbing out. The only way to find your path in the woods is to seek out every trail, even the one that leads straight into the darkest depths of it.”
Was that the answer then? To allow it to swallow me whole and hope that letting go would lead me back to sanity? To balance.
The door opened again and this time, Lucy’s tail wagged twice, her ears perked.
A moment later, Everett walked in, his steps slowing when he found us.
Everett’s eyes darkened when they shifted from me back to Azrael. “What are you doing here?”
“Having a fun little conversation about death and destruction with your talkative rose.”
His eyes found mine again. “Nobody will see it until you make them, so stop being so terrified of how they’ll take it, and just be. Your hands were made for red, wild rose, your nails made of razor thorns, don’t take that for granted. Become the serial killer you were born to be.”
Everett tracked him to the door, watching until it shut behind his brother before turning back to me. “What did you talk about?”
I worked my jaw, turning back to Merlin who was now sitting directly in front of where Azrael had just been. Become a serial killer? That was his advice?
I was him in the sense that we both had the same rage in our bones, but he had gotten committed! I didn’t want to be committed. I didn’t want to be labeled as that kind of crazy. Especially not at the cost of Everett.
But…he was right, wasn’t he? I could feel the truth in his words as they settled over my shoulders, and nothing else had worked. Nothing.
“Olivia,”
he tried, walking around the table. “We’re still trying to find the man who was trying to take you. If he said anything about that, you need to tell me.”
He still had no idea that I even knew the name. That I had seen his face. Whatever power Azrael held in this world, it seemed unending, and if he wasn’t speaking to them about it, why should I? There had to be a reason. Azrael knew him. He had to know him.
“Olivia.”
I found his eyes, my heart thudding. Just talk to him. Why are you still so goddamn scared? Just talk to him. Talk to him! Tell him something, anything! Tell him that you hated the way he cooked dinner last night, that it had too many carrots in it. Tell him that you want him to hold you when you wake up in the middle of the night, terrified. Tell him that you look for him in every room, that you wait anxiously for his return. Tell him that the only way you feel safe is within that aura. Tell him that you were terrified he would hate you if he found out that you and his brother were the same. Tell him something.
Anything.
“Pup, please,” he tried.
I stood abruptly, my heart pounding, my skin feeling too tight around my bones, my muscles filled with too much energy. I had to get out of here. Maybe if I could just run it off, I’d be better equipped to handle a moment like this. I could talk once all the energy was out.
But I took one step towards the door, and he was there, blocking my way.
I stopped, staring at his hands as they flexed at his sides, my breathing labored. “Just let me go.”
“I’ll let you leave if you talk to me,”
he bargained.
My eyes lifted to his. “Already bargaining?”
The memory of that day filling me so fully, I couldn’t breathe. “I don’t think I’m the one who will cave first.”
I hadn’t caved. I had held my ground. I never said a damn word for the sake of The Family. I bit my tongue until it fucking bled. I did that for them.
So why the fuck did he get to die, and I had to live with this? Why was his penance death? Why did he get so goddamn lucky?
“Olivia, talk to me,”
he said, taking a step forward. “Just fucking…”
He inhaled sharply, his eyes shining, his hands shaking as he ripped them through his hair, the mask falling to the floor. He snarled. “Fuck! Why won’t you fucking talk to me, Olivia!”
he shouted, his eyes wide, glistening, his hands shaking.
I couldn’t help but flinch back, my own eyes filling as I watched in complete horror the man who never broke shatter in front of me. The very thing I had spent all this time trying to avoid.
The very reason I broke that fucking earpiece was to keep this from happening and I still caused it. I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t fix anything.
“Talk to me,”
he pleaded, taking a step towards me. “I fucking miss you. I miss your button pushing and your teasing and your little snide fucking comments. I miss your laughter and the way you try to hide that beautiful smile of yours as if…as if you’re afraid that if you allow yourself to be too happy, someone might steal it from you.”
I inhaled sharply, tears sliding down my cheek, mirroring the ones sliding down his.
“I miss fighting with you, talking to you, hearing my name on your lips. I fucking…”
He deflated, panting, taking me in so fully, I had never felt more exposed as his eyes found mine again. “You talk to everyone. All of them, you’ve talked to the fucking…the fucking cleaners and you greeted your neighbors. You talked to Azrael. Why won’t you talk to me? Why am I not allowed to hear your voice anymore? Hear my name? hear…hear anything? Why have you kept that from me?”
I felt my bottom lip tremble, those tears searing into my skin, and I hated it. I hated it so goddamn much. I worked my jaw, trying to hold it back, trying to hold myself together. “I am…”
I inhaled sharply, his eyes falling to my lips as if he were about to latch onto every single word I said and never let it go. “I am Olivia Kingsmen,”
I said thickly. “I am a writer, I am unbr—breakable. I am Claimed.”
His brows furrowed, his eyes finding mine again. “Yes, you are. You are my Claim. Mine. My writer, my unbreakable girl. Why are you so terrified to speak to me?”
I inhaled sharply again, trying to keep the sobs in. “Because,”
I whispered, my voice cracking, my chest caving in, “I don’t want to shatter.”
A sob cracked through me, my entire body shaking. “I’m t-terrified that if I—if I let myself talk to you,”
I inhaled one last time, “that I won’t be strong enough to keep myself together.” A sob shattered through me. “I am unbreakable. I am Claimed.”
He straightened, such pain and love in those icy blue eyes of his. “Then let me take care of that. Let me take control, pup. Let me do my job.”
I shook my head, wrapping my arms around myself, feeling so goddamn powerless, so weak. “Angry is…it’s too small a word,”
I confessed, feeling as if I was on the verge of collapse. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want you to hate me because I’m like him,”
I confessed, glancing to the door. “I don’t want you to die because I can’t control it. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to survive like this. I don’t want to be committed. I don’t want to lose my family. I don’t want—”
I inhaled sharply. “Tell me what to do. Please, just tell me. Tell me how to fix this. Tell me what step I take next, please.”
Everett stepped forward and then hesitated, his fingers sanding together, his eyes desperate.
But I needed him. I needed him more than I feared his touch. He was safe. I knew that deep in my bones. Everett was safe.
But I couldn’t bring myself to uncurl my arms.
He must have seen the struggle in my eyes because a second later, he straightened. “Just breathe,”
he told me, taking a slow step forward. “Breathe.”
And I watched, my entire body tensing, as he slowly closed the distance between us, each step deliberate, each step allowing enough time for me to tell him to stop before he took another.
Finally, he stepped into my space, forcing his hands at his sides, his presence so pure, so overwhelming, I couldn’t help but latch onto his shirt, my nails digging into his clothes.
He released a heavy breath and dipped his head forward until his forehead gently touched mine, our breath mingling, my body flooding with warmth at the intimate contact, a dam cracking wide within me.
“Fuck,”
I sobbed, gently tugging his body closer. “Please hug me, please,” I begged.
There was no hesitation in his movements as he wrapped me up tightly in his arms, and as soon as they were around me, my legs gave out and I fell into him, pulling myself against him, the sobs wracking through me as one arm tightened around my waist, the other finding the back of my head.
“It’s okay,”
he told me, stroking my hair. “Baby, it’s okay.”
I could have sworn I heard his voice crack, felt the warmth of his tears seeping into my hair. “I’m here, pup, I’m here.”