Chapter 37
Olivia
She wasn’t around Vancouver.
I frowned as I stepped back from the large, detailed map Azrael had hung on the windows in the office, Lucy sitting beside me.
Washington wasn’t big compared to some other states, but the woods were dense and unrelenting. Even with our most trusted people, it was taking far too long to search the trees, and even though I just crossed the city off, I still didn’t feel good about it.
There was no way to tell if we hadn’t missed something. One burrow. One hidden entrance. One small hillside. We could have walked right by it. We had no idea if Absolution was a house, a bunker, or a Hobbit hole.
I glanced at Lucy, pressing my lips into a line. Her nose was good, but not good enough for hundreds of miles of woods.
“Have you slept at all, pup?”
The tension eased from my shoulders as Everett stepped up to my other side, gently brushing a kiss across my cheek.
My hands fell to my sides. “She’s not sleeping. Neither is he,” I went on, glancing over to Azrael who was still watching that heart monitor.
Everett watched him for a long time before turning back to me. “She is. Her heartbeat reflects that.”
It’s not restful. There was a pattern, and we all knew what it meant. Scarlett’s heart calmed for only a couple of hours, but around 11pm and 2am, she was woken from her sleep, her heart beating erratically for almost an hour before it started to slow again.
She was getting her sleep when she could, and I knew exactly how it felt. I knew the nightmares she was enduring. I knew where her mind was.
“I know we will find her,” I told him confidently, trying to shake my own memories away. I was just worried about how. I knew she was like Azrael, and knowing her story, I knew she could withstand a lot, but she couldn’t withstand everything. Nobody could.
Jack, Rae, Emily, and Pops, who was still angry at Azrael, went to go search the woods around Kelso while Grey, Ev, Lucy, and I stayed here.
We thought Azrael would question the split, but he hadn’t. He watched Emily leave with the others, and I could have sworn I saw a bit of pride in his eyes.
The truth was, while Emily chose not to go out and ‘be one of us’, she was still trained.
She was a great shot, and she knew hand-to-hand combat decently well.
It just took her longer than the rest of us to learn, which was acceptable, but she did try, and she wanted to help.
Rae was more than willing to have her back out there if things got sticky, but we had all the confidence in the world that she would be fine if it ended in a gunfight.
“How is the school going?” Azrael asked just as Everett opened his mouth to respond.
Ev and I exchanged a look before all three of us headed for him.
“Good,” he answered. “Jeremy volunteered to look over things for a few weeks. Electric and plumbing are in, the walls are being plastered, and the roofers are coming in three weeks from now to start building on the roof while the inside is getting painted.” It wasn’t the correct order to do things, but Azrael was in a rush to get it done and we were doing our best to comply.
“Good, I don’t want our new generation of Initiates getting high on the paint fumes.”
Everett stopped a few feet from his desk, but I joined Azrael’s side, watching Scarlett’s heart beat steadily. He hadn’t looked away. Not even for a second.
After a moment, I found Everett’s eyes.
He gave me a single nod and turned to leave without another word.
I waited until the door shut behind him before turning my attention back to Azrael. “The Blackheart brothers have given you all of their recent problems,” I said, taking a step back from him so I could see him more clearly. “You’ve killed them all.”
“Are you shocked by the brutality of which I work, rose?”
I shook my head and leaned back against the side of his desk, searching his face.
“No. I’m shocked that Alaric is allowing you to do that with how angry he is.
” I wasn’t shocked in the slightest. What I was shocked about was the fact that he had that much restraint.
I couldn’t imagine the rage he was feeling.
Everett still wouldn’t talk in depth about the mindset he had been in when I was gone.
I couldn’t even begin to understand the mindset Azrael was in right now, but by the way those bodies looked before Alaric disposed of them, I knew some deep, dark, demonic place had opened up inside of him, and it wasn’t going to close until his wife was back in his arms.
“He lost the only sister he’s ever had, of course he’s angry.”
“And you?” I countered, knowing he would never tell me the truth. But I had to try. I don’t think anyone had asked him how he was doing, and whether or not there was someone here he would tell the truth to, he deserved to know that we cared enough to ask.
His eyes finally shifted to mine, hardened but there were cracks in them that had never been there before.
“Are you angry?” I pushed.
His eyes fell to my cheeks, taking in the scars I had long since embraced.
It had been a year and a three months since Everett had Claimed me, and a year and two months since I was kidnapped myself, and since the moment I woke up in that hospital a year ago, Azrael had been there.
Pushing me, forcing me to grow, to sharpen, to embrace who I was, and I had become so much stronger because of it.
In all reality, he was my best friend, which was strange to say given the dynamics between he and the rest of The Family. However, since being here, things had changed, and I think he saw it too.
Grey had become a sort of steady rock for Azrael, a voice of reason, I had become a partner, the others watchful and attentive. We were all doing everything we could to find the newest member of our family, and he was seeing all of it.
Sometimes I wondered if he ever realized how much love they had for him. Despite everything, despite the secrets and the betrayals and the games, when it came down to it, we were all family.
What could that realization do to a man who had convinced himself long ago that he could never be worthy of love? A man that didn’t even believe in it?
“Yes,” he finally said.
He had gone back to his normal self these last couple of weeks.
Hardly talking, watching, thinking. He had started checking his watch several times an hour, and while I wasn’t sure how much he had checked it before Scarlett, I knew that until she left, he hadn’t checked it even once.
At least not in the presence of his family.
She had made him lose track of time.
Azrael.
The man who never lost track of anything.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” I challenged.
“Careful, rose,” he hummed, turning back to the screen. “Words hold power.”
I considered what I had said carefully. “What do you want to do about it?” I asked.
He thrummed his fingers along the deer head once. “I want God to deliver the wrath he so rightfully promised,” he said quietly.
And I heard it then. I heard the betrayal in his voice, the dark, painful rage burning under his skin. It was in that moment I realized all those times he had spoken against the Man nobody in this family believed in, it wasn’t mockery, it was anger.
Anger for what the world had done to him.
Anger for the monster he had been forced to become.
Anger at the people he pretended not to care about for not accepting him the way that he was.
Was that why we were friends? Why he had taken such a liking to me? Because he and I were as close to the same as he thought anyone could ever be until, that was, he met her.
“How long are you planning on hiding it?”
I looked over, Azrael’s features heavily shadowed, only lit up by the soft glow of the computer light and the yellow light that illuminated the map from across the room. “What—”
“I don’t speak unless I’m sure,” he responded without looking over.
I watched him for a long time before my hand slid over my stomach, my heart beating a little harder. Everett and I had promised we weren’t going to tell anyone, but of course he knew. He had had nothing but time on his hands and watching was what he had always done best.
“The first one always takes longer to show,” I finally confessed. “It’s not the time to announce something like this. It doesn’t feel right.”
Azrael stared at her heartbeat for a few seconds longer before he spoke, and when he did, it truly surprised me. “Congratulations, Olivia.”
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. As if the idea of someone else knowing made it so much more real. “Thank you. How did you know? We were doing so well.”
I expected some sarcastic comment back, but that was not what I received. “I saw your reaction when I made the mistake of confronting Red,” he confessed quietly. Before I could respond, he went on, “how far along are you? I need to know the risk.”
“I can fight,” I told him confidently. “You won’t take me out of this because I’m pregnant. You won’t keep me from helping her.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he answered and then looked over again, his eyes falling to where my hand rested on my still normal stomach. “Your Claim deserves to know that there is someone else watching out for the innocent life growing inside of you.”
I knew it. He had changed. Scarlett, aptly named the Queen of Hearts, had lived up to her name.
I swallowed, my eyes burning as I turned back to the room. “The morning she was taken,” I answered. “I was a couple days late and took a test. I was going to get everyone on a videocall when we were done with our job, but then you called.”
“Just over a month then,” he replied.