The street was dead silent. No cars travelled down it, no one came out of the stores to see what was going on. Only magic could have caused such an occurrence and it was not anything Az was familiar with.
Just as he’d had the thought his gaze caught movement across the street and as he watched time seemed to slow down. Gods, was it possible? Like a nightmare come to life, the man who had made his very existence hell moved forward to him. Narrowing his eyes, his wolf growled. Az knew it would never be enough to illustrate his true hatred of this momement. Right now the pack might be on its way to Texas but Kendrick Kane was in Maine.
He closed his eyes for two seconds before he opened them. They’d been totally misled. It wasn’t likely St. James had lied to them…not with the drug they’d injected him with. It was far more likely Kendrick had manipulated the whole thing, feeding the Senator wrong information. He’d forgotten how good at this his father really was. Cullen Murphy had mated and gone soft; Tristan’s best Alpha quality was that he was nothing like Kendrick and would never think these things himself; Theo had too much on his plate; Gabriel was losing it; Rex had never known their father, not really…but Azriel should have remembered. He should have known that they never had the advantage, that every single moment of his existence had been a game to Kendrick.
Why should it have stopped now?
Kendrick had taken them all to “become men”. Each one of them when they’d turned twelve had been given their turn. Michael had gone first. It had seemed simple enough. Az hadn’t been alive to see his brothers have their experiences. They’d always seemed so grown up to him, so amazingly capable, the best of the best in terms of shifters, everything he wanted to be that he feared he never actually would be.
After his father had tried to kill him as a child after he’d seen Az’s strange magical abilities, things had improved for a while. Kendrick basically left him alone. Except sometimes he would catch his father staring at him when no one else watched. He’d hoped he was proving himself to be worthy of the Kane name, someone his father would want to have around. Stupidly enough, he’d looked forward to their trip away, to give him his first shift.
The whole thing had turned into a living nightmare for Az. Kendrick had set the whole thing up like a giant game. A game Az had lost. As an adult, he could reason that there was no way for him to have won. The odds were impossible for anyone. Even his brothers would have failed it. But then when he’d been so young, so desperate for approval it had sealed his belief that he was worthless to the pack, at least when it came to traits that shifters valued: strength, heroism, stoic acceptance, and the ability to get the job done.
In retrospect, for Kendrick it had been a rather simple plan. His father had told him that there was a woman missing, a human woman, presumed dead. His father knew she wasn’t dead. He knew where she was. Somewhere in the state of Maine she had fallen in a hole. She was bleeding to death. The thought still made Az shiver. Humans, his father had told him, they died so damn easily.
He’d held out a piece of cloth. Shift, he told him, smell the material and use your new senses to find her. She had two hours to live. Then he’d walked away. Az had started to shake. He’d never shifted. How did you do that? Wasn’t there supposed to be some ceremony, something to draw his wolf out?
For hours, even after he knew the woman was dead, he’d tried desperately to bring his wolf to life. His father had reappeared then. Az had fallen to the ground and sobbed.
Please, he’d begged him, please save that woman. Don’t let her die because he was inept.
Kendrick had laughed, telling him how easily each of his brothers had made the shift. Then he’d ordered Az’s wolf to come to the surface. It had hurt like nothing ever had since. Having done it enough now, he knew it was because Az’s wolf had been angry. Even his canine knew you weren’t supposed to come into the world like that. His father had suggested he immediately commit ritual suicide since he’d never be a decent shifter.
His wolf had kept him alive and for the first time in his young life he’d looked at his father and saw him for what he was: evil.
Even if it would be a very long time until anyone else would realize it, or at least until they would say it aloud that he wasn’t everything he should have been.
So there was no excuse for his having just assumed everything that was happening meant that they were somehow thwarting him. With the pack away, Kendrick could just walk into Westervelt, overcome the pregnant women they’d left behind, and take back the island that housed them for some long, the place that seemed to call magic all on its own.
He sucked in his breath. Was that what Kendrick wanted? The island…
His father stopped walking right in front of him. The man still hadn’t aged. How was it possible now that he wasn’t Alpha? And how had he lived through their mother’s death?
“Shift Azriel, I want to know you hear everything I say not filtered by the ears of your wolf. A beast that is too strong for the likes of you.”
His wolf growled and lunged. Az tried to hold the canine back but it was fruitless.
I will kill him if you will not.
He sighed. His wolf never understood. I would kill him if it were that easy. I can’t beat him in a physical fight, not as exhausted as I currently am. I won’t let him just pick me off. We can outthink him.
Shifting, he stared at his father with human eyes for the first time since they’d tried to take him down during Cullen’s kidnapping. The man looked so much like Tristan and yet he looked completely different too. Where Kendrick’s eyes were fathomless pits of fiendish hell, Tristan viewed the world with compassion. Even if he were blind he’d be able to tell just by the way the wind moved around them. Kendrick seemed to think he ran the motion of the earth and the wind seemed to always plow into him like it wanted to knock him down where he stood.
His father regarded him silently for a moment before he spoke. “When this first started and you all betrayed me and your pack, I just wanted it back. I thought I could take it by force.”
When they betrayed him? He opened his mouth to speak and shut it again. What was the point?
“Now I don’t want that anymore. I don’t need you. I have my own wolves. I just want you dead. Sooner or later you’ll all be dead. Today is your turn.”
Azriel raised an eyebrow at his father. He’d always thought that gaining an insight into his father would hit him like a truck slamming into a brick wall. It wasn’t anything like that. The clouds moved from his eyes and he could see things through clarity he’d never had before. What was different? Well, that was easy. Leah St. James lived in the world. As long as she existed he could do anything, even solve a riddle that was his father.
Why had his father tried to kill him when he was a child and done everything he could to try to destroy him later on?
The answer was simple. He’d done all those things so Azriel could never do what he was about to do.
Without another thought, he placed his hand on his father and with less effort than he expected he forced himself through Kendrick’s memories. The pack needed information.
If he was going to be killed, the least he could do would be to collect information for Tristan before he went.
Without another person to guide, he could move quickly through the mess that was his father’s psyche. In no way did he want to see memories of them as children, old pack politics, or musings on their mother. No, his destination was simple. How many wolves did Kendrick have in his league, where were the witches and what did he have planned for them?