“Rarely wrong,” he corrected me. He smiled, but I couldn’t muster a smile back. Something about him wasn’t adding up.
“As much as I don’t want to see my sperm donor, I agree it’s a logical next step. I need to know as much about my powers and where I came from as possible so I have the best chance to beat Red,” I admitted. “Michael, what made you so sure I was the child Zaz foresaw? I’m sure a lot of female, witch-hybrid children are born into the world…and the Underworld seems to always be a mess from what the guys told me.” I couldn’t mindlink with Zaz, but I swore he understood the suspicious look I gave Michael. The soulbond must have put us on the same wavelength. Something in my gut was telling me that Michael was keeping something from us all.
He wilted under the scrutiny of myself and the five men at the table. Sweat rolled down his forehead as he gripped the handle of his empty mug, knuckles turning white. Zaz grabbed his other hand despite Michael’s struggling, holding firm as his eyes turned white.
Chapter 5
Touching Michael was instinctual. After feeling Diana’s distrust, my intuition told me I would get a vision from him. I had already suspected Michael wasn’t telling the whole truth, ever since he contacted me twenty-two years ago. He rarely told the whole story, using the greater good as his excuse. I felt my eyes change as his memory flooded my vision. The room went white before refocusing all around me.
Michael was in a dark nightclub lit only via strobe lighting. He and a tall, muscular man with black hair had a woman with dark curly hair sandwiched between them as they grinded on each other. They were in the midst of a throng of people gyrating and practically fucking each other with clothes on. The unknown man’s hand trailed up the woman’s thigh, slipping beneath her mini-dress. She turned her head in my direction to look up to his face, and I saw striking green eyes that glimmered in the strobe lights.
There was no denying the woman was Marilyn, Diana’s mother. The resemblance was uncanny. They had the same face shape, lips, and hair. Marilyn was young and looked just like I remembered from Diana’s early childhood, before she’d passed away. The scene faded as another memory took over. The sight before me only came in quick flashes, but what I saw was scandalous enough to make me gasp.
Michael, his friend, and Marilyn were naked, tangled together in a bed with white sheets. Their moans and harsh breathing floated through the air, providing the perfect soundtrack for their X-rated activities. Marilyn was sandwiched in between them again, with the unknown friend on the bottom and Michael behind her.
“You’re so fucking tight,” Michael growled before he slapped her ass.
“I can feel us sliding inside her together, Mikey,” the man said before trailing bites across Marilyn’s jaw and down her neck.
I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing that. No one wants to see the man they thought of as a father slapping a woman’s ass, especially when that woman was their charge’s…girlfriend’s?...mother.Ugh, I have no clue where Diana and I stand on that.
I had enough of an idea what that memory was about. I let go of Michael’s hand, which hurtled me back to the here-and-now.
I wanted to shift back to my human form, so my body would stop glowing silver and my eyes would turn normal again. When fully shifted, I wasn’t pleasant to look at. But I was too angry and on edge to channel my magic to change my appearance.
“You lied to me!” I bellowed at Michael as I stood up. My wings flared, and one of them almost hit Diana and Desmond. “How could you withhold that from me?!”
“I knew it! What did he lie about?” Diana asked, switching her gaze between us and shifting to the edge of her chair to give my wing some room, waiting on pins and needles for the answer. She had good intuition, but I wasn’t sure if she was quite ready to hear this.
Michael sat at the table, holding his head in his hands, and he exhaled a deep breath. He was silent for a few moments, no doubt trying to find a way out of telling us the truth.
Desmond waved his hand, and I heard locks engaging throughout the house. His smug smile brought back a familiar sense of comfort I hadn’t felt in centuries.
“All the doors and windows are magically locked, and I disabled fading beyond the wards. You’re not leaving until you tell us the whole truth. And youwillexplain yourself,” Desmond commanded. He was still a leader, even after all this time. Seeing him take charge of a room was thrilling and spoke to something deep inside me. “You have no right coming to our home and withholding information, especially when that information concerns the woman we all care about.”
Michael straightened his back, and clasped his hands on the table. He locked eyes with Diana. I held her hand, trying my best to give her strength. She was going to go ballistic once she heard the news.
“Diana, I’m one of your fathers,” he said in a direct, serious tone.
“What?” she asked. Her face fell, settling into a mask of alarm. She looked at me, and I could hear the confusion in her tone she desperately tried to hide. “What is he talking about…one of my fathers?You’remy father?” she asked after turning to face him again.
“I’m one of your fathers. Azazel, can you paraphrase what you saw, appropriately?” he requested.
“You have to be kidding me…nope. I’ll never be able to unsee that last part. You dug the hole, so you can climb out of it on your own,” I snarked. I wasn’t helping him with this. He’d lied to me, too.
“For thousands of years, I’ve had an on and off again relationship with a man…your other father. There were times we kept an open relationship due to circumstances I’d rather not talk about. We met your mom in a club, and we hit it off with her. One thing led to another, and we…um–” he rolled his hands in a gesture instead of actually saying he double-teamed her mom with his boyfriend. “Your other father ran into her months later, and realized she was with child. We did the math, and realized it could be ours. After she gave birth to you, we visited her while you were both sleeping and did some magical tests on you…and you had a third of each of our DNAs. We asked trusted sources, and no one had ever heard of such a thing happening before. You were a magical anomaly. That’s when I knew Azazel’s prophecy referred to you. When you were around two months old, we borrowed you one night and blocked your powers. They were so distinctive, even as a baby. Without a magical signature, you’d be safe…or so we hoped.”
Diana’s expression turned stony, and I couldn’t tell if she was angry or upset. She wrung her hands together.
“Zaz, did you assist him in binding my powers?” she asked in a deadly calm voice.
“No, he did not,” Michael interjected. “Myself, and your other father cast that magic. Your powers won’t be completely unblocked until we lift the last of the magic ourselves. Azazel didn’t show up to my home that night until much later, and all he did was participate in the soulbonding ceremony with Raphael and Gabriel. He had no clue.”
She took a deep breath, and her face finally cracked. I could see the mounting fury in her eyes. “Who is my other father?”
Michael didn’t answer right away. He shook his head, and before he knew what hit him, Bash stood behind him, with both of his hands on Michael’s temples. I had never seen Bash take someone’s mind by force. Michael’s eyes rolled to the back of his head as he thrashed around trying to buck Bash’s hands off. Something Bash saw made him gasp. He dropped his hands from Michael’s temples and backed away from everyone, with a look of pure shock on his face. He paced around the table, running his hands through his hair.
“Bashy Boy, what’s wrong?” Ares’ worried tone mirrored the rest of the crew’s faces.