"I'll be fine! Stop worrying!"

My fifteen beloveds' concerned expressions didn't fade, so I groaned. "He's not a threat. Azazel has proved that over the last few years. Just let me talk to him alone, please. I have a lot of questions for him."

Kyler nervously rubbed his arms. "Questions?"

I nodded. "Yeah, a whole lot of them. I need them answered now. More questions have been piling up and been weighing down on my mind since I learned about my origins, then yours, and even about some of things I've experienced. I can't wait any longer."

Kyler sighed and bent in half to cup my face. His big hands and long fingers held my head. I relaxed as his thumbs moved over my human ears. Kyler gently pecked my forehead.

"All right, Anwyll. We trust you."

"Are you sure you're all right, Annie?" pressed Waltz, and I understood he was asking about my mental state.

I nodded. "I am, Alt. I've had plenty of time to accept my origin."

Kyler's blue-gray eyes held my firm gaze. "Even I have not fully come to terms with everything and it's been decades since then."

"It's different, Ky. You were tortured for years and I really experienced nothing in comparison with my mother who was acting out against Azazel."

Ambrose suddenly growled, "Do not compare experiences, little wolf. Your own torture is not to be taken lightly."

I snorted softly and smiled to myself after watching my other lovers nod in agreement. It's kind of funny how I acted as a quasi-therapist to my beloveds and now the same advice is being given back to me a few years later.

"Thank you, Rose." I replied softly, then reached up and squeezed Kyler's hands. "Ky, I will return in good health, I promise. I promise this to you and my fourteen other beloveds."

The corners of Kyler's lips lifted in a little smile. "I know, pup." he whispered. "I love you, and be careful."

"I love you too, Ky. And I will!" I grinned as Kyler released me, then blew kisses to the others before entering Azazel's special room.

The former Evil Spider looked up from his book with a soft smile. "Hello, Anwyll."

"Hi, Azazel. You ready to go?"

He nodded, placing the bookmark from the bedside table into its spot. He set his book down on the bed and pushed up, then took my offered hand. Azazel's dark eyes were gentle like his expression as he looked down at me, his light gray skin and dark auburn hair well taken care of now compared to when I first saw him in his cursed spider form. His lover, Kenith (Ifrit in actuality), pampers him and I try to do a little extra with him as well.

But this will be the first time we'll actually be alone since he kidnapped me over three years ago now. I'm not scared, like I told my family. I just want answers—closure to my burning questions.

I squeezed his long fingers. "Zel, shall we go?"

Azazel chuckled and agreed. I teleported us to the area where Blaine admitted that he wanted to be topped by me. Instead of putting ourselves in that exact location, I instead had us appear on the other side of the river that dropped into a waterfall. Azazel took a deep breath in and slowly let it out, closing his eyes as he tilted his head back.

Although it was definitely noisy from the waterfall below, I had made sure with my magic that Azazel and I were in a bubble that dampened the sound of the falls enough to clearly hear each other. And it looks like that was the correct call because Azazel seems at peace while listening to the birds chirp and the gentle sounds of water splashing against the rocks below, despite the loud and violent torrents that were doing that right now outside the barrier.

"Thank you," murmured Azazel, moving to sit down next to me. "I know you fought for my freedom to step outside a couple years back, and I have truly appreciated it. Even now, as I sit here with you, I am more thankful than ever that you are you, Anwyll, regardless of the fact I am your creator."

My eyes teared up a bit. "Thank you for saying so, Zel. Truthfully, after learning I was a being created upon the cruelties of others, I felt like that had become my definition of an unnatural person. I felt less like myself. I was so scared that I would become someone else, yet as I tried to cling to the person I thought I was..."

"You felt farther away than ever," finished Azazel, so I nodded. He sighed aloud. "I can understand that completely, my dear Anwyll. It was right after my mother cursed me to live in that wretched form and thusly abandoned me. My siblings refused to even step a single foot near me, although that was much the same before the curse changed my appearance. Perhaps that abandonment drove me into making at least one person who could love me as I was, even as I am now."

I chuckled. "You do have someone who loves you romantically with an insane sexual attraction as well."

Azazel blushed and turned his head. "True," he murmured. "Kenith is too much sometimes."

"I understand that completely!" I replied with a laugh, using his words from a little earlier.

After that, we sat in silence for a short while until I gathered my thoughts. My first question was one I'd been curious about for a long time.

"You said all of the lovers I have that you changed genetically are older than me. How so and by how much? Are all of them at least eighteen years older?"

Azazel hummed, thumbing his lips. "Yes, they are, Anwyll. It's not hard to manipulate people's memories. I believe I explained the situation with the Faerie King's successor, Waltz. His parents are no longer alive. It was not due to the time I spent integrating his DNA with the king of faeries' own as well as his magic, but rather unfortunate happenings."

I really had to steel myself for all of the answers to my multi-layered question. I didn't really want details about how Azazel managed to do it, but I feel I need to know the things he's telling me so I can move on with my life.

"When was he captured by you, Zel?"

"Around the time his father put him in the therapy camp. Not many people cared about what he did or did not do in that place, so I took him and experimented on him for about ten years before I was able to capture the Faerie King. He was the most compatible with that one, especially through emotions since I left them side by side while operating. I linked their emotions and magic together, so Waltz's wings would appear whenever happy or pleased by something since the Faerie King often tried to remain positive to keep Waltz calm. It was quite sweet to watch."

I felt a little sick to my stomach while Azazel talked about how Waltz came to be as he is now. The former Evil Spider had no qualms speaking about his past with them and he didn't even look a smidge regretful. But I somehow knew that would be the case. Well, not somehow. Azazel himself had told me before his spider form was destroyed that he never regretted making me, just how things turned out in the end.

"So once you were done with Waltz, how many years had passed?"

"About twelve. Due to the Faerie King's magic, it allowed Waltz to appear just as young as before I took him. Essentially, his 'youth' had been restored. I took him back to the camp and then manipulated the workers' memories, altered their appearances slightly so Waltz could blend back in, and even created fake parents since his had already passed away—his father from cancer and his mother died in a car accident—while I was experimenting on him during those first ten years."

"Oh," I breathed. "So it was basically you who sent Waltz to live with Alexandre."

Azazel nodded. "He was not assimilating well to society. I suppose I had forgotten that the Faerie King lived amongst nature since the time of his creation, so thusly Waltz needed to be surrounded by it as well. The city life was disastrous for him."

I nodded my agreement. Waltz always looks relieved to be home once he comes back from being with friends and he looks at peace while laying down outside in the sun.

"As for his true age, Waltz is fifty-one. I was still working on you in the midst of all of these experiments."

"Ah, okay." I mumbled in total shock, then wrapped my arms around my knees. "I guess you did something similar with the others?"

"Exactly the same. Around the time they discover the attributes of their newly mutated selves is right after I return them to the place I had taken them from."

"B-but Briar was like three or four?"

"I used magic to return him to that age. He is fifty in actuality."

"Oh..."

Azazel chuckled. "He was more difficult to mutate, even though the black jaguar DNA was compatible. The beast's mind was incredibly difficult to subdue until it realized that the human needed protection from me. So the beast assimilated his mind into Briar, hence why you sense the beast side of him when his eyes turn gold."

"That makes sense," I murmured softly, squeezing my hands together. "What about Damon? How did you manage to capture an angel?"

Azazel smirked. "So even you were fooled."

"Huh?"

"Damon is not an angel."

"B-but he has wings and a halo!"

"Seraphs are the only angels to have wings and no angels have halos. They emit light, so it often looks there is a halo around their heads if you squint hard enough."

My jaw dropped. "Seriously?"

Azazel nodded with a laugh. "Anwyll, did you not notice that Damon has fangs that lower when he is furious or aroused?"

I blinked, then flicked through my memories. "Uh, yeah, I think I've both seen and felt his fangs before. So what is Damon?"

"He is a type of a demon that poses itself as the most commonly known appearance of an angel to trick humans into thinking they are worshipping something holy when they are not."

"Wait, so can Damon change his appearance?"

Azazel shook his head. "No, and neither can that type of demon. It was given that task by the leader of demons and the ruler of Hell."

I was a little stunned to be honest, but then something occurred to me. "No wonder Blaine doesn't have a reaction to Damon despite being part demon."

I received a nod in response, then Azazel explained, "If Damon was truly an angel, Blaine would feel wholly unwell just simply being near him."

"I see, that makes a lot of sense. So are Blaine and Damon around the same age?"

"Yes, they're both about twenty-six years older than their current ages of twenty-two and twenty-one. I captured both an incubus and that trickster around the same time, so I worked on them within a few months of each other."

"Wow, so Waltz is actually slightly older than Blaine and Damon. Even Briar by one year..."

"Yes, indeed."

I hummed for a moment, then asked about Gavin. Azazel crossed his hiking pants-clad legs and rested his hands on his knees.

"Gavin was a tough one," he uttered with a harsh sigh. "I thought he might be more easily experimented with at first due to his genetic heritage, but that tiger was fierce. Unlike the black jaguar within Briar, this tiger was already one with Gavin the moment I brought that DNA line forward. The tiger did not want compromise and fought me tooth and claw, but I did manage to forcefully combine the tiger with the human in order to test a very minor shift between forms. Aside from Kyler, I had yet to try it again—this time from a recessive gene."

"So Gavin had no time to really come to terms with his tiger side before you dumped him back with his family."

"No, and he certainly did not get much time to be human for years afterwards. Thusly, he was still struggling and warring with his two minds when you first arrived at our home."

I peeked at Azazel when he said "our home" very softly, as if he wasn't allowed to call it that. I had him lean closer to me for our sides to touch, so Azazel merely smiled and looked down at me. He reached over and patted my head, ruffling my hair between my wolf ears.

"So Gavin is how old?"

"Fifty-two," he replied. "I spent thirteen years working on him."

I keep expecting to hear a younger age and I'm shocked to hear quite a number of my lovers' biological clocks are in their forties and fifties. They don't look or sound like it at all. And they don't even know their own ages.

Azazel continued, "I was getting closer to being finished with your creation, but I wasn't quite there yet. I did not want to make the same errors as I had with your father, Anwyll. Erasmus had too much of my power, making everyone suffer wherever he went—hence, the battlefield suited him. But I did not want the same for you."

"Mm, I know. Thank you." I whispered.

I really am thankful to have turned out the way I have, even though the line is still kind of blurry between being thankful and feeling anguish towards the situation. Kyler was correct. I still haven't actually come to terms with my origins, but that's okay. Everything takes time.

"Who are you curious about next, Anwyll?" Azazel's dark-colored eyes were brimming with curiosity. He seems happy that he's able to talk freely with me without one of my lovers snatching me away.

I tilted my head back and let the filtered sunlight warm my face. "Um, how about Angel?"

"Ah, that pitiful child," he murmured. "It is quite sad that he actually believed his friend existed."

I tensed. "What?"

Azazel chuckled darkly. "That friend Angelique thought he killed never existed in the first place."

I twisted and looked straight at Azazel's right side profile. "What are you talking about?"

"Truthfully, it was purely by chance that one of my dear spiders happened upon a unicorn. Their horns aren't used to kill, but to stun and then heal the intended opponent."

I frowned. "B-but his horn really is sharp!"

"Yes, and it can stab through things. But it cannot kill. After stunning the individual upon impact, it would simply heal the person or creature the horn stabbed through."

I rubbed my face and sighed aloud. "So was that friend something you made?"

Azazel shook his head. "I merely manipulate others' memories, form contracts to enslave subjects, and change appearances aside from wielding the dark magic of death."

"I-I see, but you made Papa and me..."

"Yes, for a specific goal with eventual rewards, or so I believed. There is no benefit in creating something that I have no interest towards."

"Well, that does make sense, but what exactly is the situation with Angel's past? What do you mean that his friend never existed? We even went to his grave!"

Azazel sighed and leaned back, resting on his hands as he stared up at the blue skies with puffy white clouds. "That was all in his head."

I stared incredulously at Azazel. "What?"

"Well, you two did go to a legitimate grave, but the situation was completely imagined. I had been experimenting and testing on Angelique during the timeframe of that dead boy's lifespan. Aside from healing, one of the abilities of a unicorn is to cause realistic hallucinations so that it can remain undiscovered and or to avoid capture by humans. My assumption is that once I returned Angelique to his family, he likely heard of a kid who died under the same imagined circumstances—excluding the horn—and had an intense hallucination due to the unicorn's ability. Due to its severity and deeply rooted nature as some sort of defense mechanism, I guided Angelique's family to send him to Alexandre DeLuca. Again, being surrounded by nature helped Angelique's mental and emotional well-being."

"That's a horrible defense mechanism." I remarked, gripping my knees. "So everything that happened was all imagined."

Azazel slowly nodded. "Yes, every single thing. Angelique is twenty-nine years older than his believed age of twenty-five. He spent eleven years with me, many years before you were born."

My heart hurt inside my chest while thinking about all the pain Angel went through because of his own mind. I feel the tears coming on for my poor Ange. But I merely bit my lip and steeled myself for the next answer to my question.

"What about Zaire?"

"Oh, Zaire, the poor boy. He was terrified of Gavin's tiger form, which broke their relationship apart. I took Zaire not long after I returned Gavin, which inevitably led to him being sold to a underground animal fighting ring. Zaire already liked snakes, so it wasn't hard to blend him and a Naga."

My eyebrows hopped up. Around three years ago, Zaire had me turn him into a Naga with my magic during one of our date days. Maybe that's why he seemed comfortable for the most part?

"So plus the eighteen years and their current ages, how much older is he? Maybe five more?"

Azazel responded positively. "Much like your Russet, although he's only twenty years older than his believed age of twenty-four."

My eyebrows furrowed. "Why was he in an old woman's cellar inside of a cage? None of that made sense to me. If you cared so much about your other DNA-manipulated children, why was he in such a bad place until I went with Alexandre to get him?"

He chuckled. "I staged it as such. Truthfully, Russet was only in a cage an hour before you arrived with Alexandre. He was so attuned to his rabbit companions that he believed that he spent all his years in a cage up until that point."

"Why was he so skinny!" I exclaimed. "And dirty and traumatized from rape! Was that all fake, too?"

"No," murmured Azazel, "Russet was raped and abused. He spent many years in that cellar long before I grabbed him. I kept him with me after that as he was frail with no will to live. I had to erase his time with me, sad as that is, in order to assimilate him within the DeLuca household. You cannot forget that I can manipulate appearances and memories. In truth, I made his appearance dirty again after returning him to that place and tipping off Alexandre."

My eyebrows hopped up. "That was you?"

Azazel nodded with a small smile. "Yes, that was me."

I apologized for shouting at him earlier, then said, "I remember Andros had magically scanned Russet's biological age to be twenty. Did you magic to hide his actual age?"

"Yes, otherwise the DeLuca brothers would have become too curious and likely start looking into various areas I did not want. I was not yet ready to reveal myself."

"I see, that makes sense." I glanced up at his face, but he was already looking at me. "What about Dian and Ian? Did you have any part in how they came to be as they are?"

"Yes and no. I gave some tips to their mother well before they were formed as one in her womb, which is why I felt responsible for their health and well-being when their mother's experiment was revealed to have 'failed'. As you can guess, I had them go to Alexandre. They are their correct ages as you were born around a year before them.

"As such, they are not part of the 'Emerged' as you call them. You merely assumed that Dian would be one from how it 'looked' to you through your magic and what you knew at the time. However, he is a half dragon that can bring his attributes out at will. Both of you are under the assumption that he needs to be angry for them to appear, but that is false."

"All right," I murmured, feeling more than a little overwhelmed. "And Andros?"

"No, I had nothing to do with Andros' unnatural state in dragon form."

I'm a little surprised by that, but I believe Azazel. There's no reason for him to lie at this point. The DeLuca matriarch is just actually crazy for pure dragons.