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His transformation had happened behind my back before. Now I get to see the way the human muscles shift, the way his skin grows thick, gray, and marked like stone. I expect it to be painful, to see Titan’s horns and claws extend and hear the breaking of bone and the tearing of flesh. Instead, the shift is swift and seamless like a theatrical quick change where none of the intricate rigging can be seen by the audience. It looks like a magic trick, it looks like…
Like magic. Because it is.
In seconds, his suit and shirt are torn from his body, and I have to stumble for his phone with just enough time to save it from crashing on the asphalt. When I see the screen, several notifications for texts and a missed call pop up.
I look up from the phone, and in front of me is Titan as he always should be.
My breath catches in my throat as I take all of him in. He is massive and brutal in his beauty, the tips of his horns shining in the street’s fluorescent light, his fangs gleaming too. He is bare except for his loincloth. He slowly unfurls his leathery wings, and they expand from one side of the narrow alley to the other.
“Fuck,” I breathe out in awe.
While it must be close to midnight and the sky is cloudy, the ambient light from the city means there is no such thing as true darkness here. If anyone were to turn the corner, they would see a monster.
“We need to go.” Titan closes the distance between us.
“But the calls from Rook.” I hold out his phone to him only to realize how tiny it looks compared to his claws. I laugh, but it doesn’t sound like my voice. It is tinny and frenzied.
“I’ve already seen the messages. They’re tracking a potential Strange who was here tonight.” Titan sounds strained, like he has to apply maximum effort to contain whatever emotion is roiling beneath the surface. “But you need time to come down from what just happened.”
“I’m fine,” I fire back. “So there was another Strange? Didn’t Dredd say that was bad?”
“Your pupils are the size of saucers, and you are shaking.”
It isn’t until he says it that I realize it’s true. I look down to see that I can’t keep my hands still, and I can’t seem to focus my vision on any one thing. Adrenaline propped me up for our escape from the party, and sheer petty pleasure at seeing the fear in Harris’ eyes held me together. Now I’m out here in the quiet of the night, and it’s just Titan in front of me. There is no one I have to hold it together for, not even myself.
“If you say you’re fine one more time, baby girl, I’m going to spank your ass red every night for a month.”
If he didn’t look so serious, with his stone brows knitted together and his chiseled jaw clenched, I’d remind him that we don’t have a month together. But the way his marble eyes flash with blackness makes me think he might just pay to keep me around long enough to follow through on the punishment.
Before I can think of a response to Titan’s warning, he lifts me up in his arms, claws curling under my knees and back. He holds me against his chest, and instinctively, I wrap my arms around his neck.
“Hold on,” he commands and takes flight.
I cling to Titan’s neck as he takes us straight up into the sky over downtown, above the buildings and billboards, and finally above the thick layer of clouds. My fingers are frozen as they dig into his skin. My teeth chatter as the wind whips around us and my dress flaps wildly. I turn my face into Titan’s chest in part to shield myself from the cold, but also because while I trust Titan, I didn’t just suddenly lose my fear of plummeting to my death.
I breathe him in. He smells like warm rain and sun-heated rock, simple scents that I might’ve thought of as obvious or boring, but on him, they feel comforting. I inhale fully and grip him tighter as I pretend I’m not thousands of feet above the Earth.
I should hate what just happened at the wrap party, the violence and the spectacle. It isn’t good for my future sugaring prospects. I’m sure Harris is, at this very moment, making it his mission to bad mouth me to every wealthy potential sugar daddy in LA County, but I couldn’t care less. I’m angry and frustrated and all the things I’ve been for a long time, not just because of Harris, though he makes a good scapegoat, but because the people I trusted most in my life failed me and I’ve yet to be able to fight back and win.
Tonight, Titan did that for me with a well-placed hand on his throat. And when I saw Harris’s face turn bright red and his eyes bulge, I wasn’t horrified. I was jealous. It should’ve been my hand doing the deed.
It will be me soon enough,I tell myself, unable to stop myself from thinking about my mother and ex-manager.I will be the one to strike and win.
I feel the impact of us landing on the side of a cliff, my brain wandering too far from the moment to find its way back swiftly. At some point during the trip, the air had gotten colder, and I’d been able to taste the salt in it. We’re somewhere in Malibu, I guess, or just north. All sound is drowned out by the crashing of waves below. In front of me is the narrow mouth of a cave and, just over Titan’s wings, is the dark edge of the horizon.
Titan says nothing as he carries me into the pitch-black darkness of the cave. It’s protected from the wind, and the moment I’m inside, I notice how much warmer it is. He places me on a smooth stone surface, and then his touch is gone from my body. I can’t see more than a few inches in front of my face, and for several seconds, I follow Titan’s path around the cave by listening to his tail swish along the sandy floor.
A flame bursts to light in Titan’s hand. For a moment, I believe it is magic, and then I see the long match. There are candles in glass lamps set all around the cavern. He lights them one by one, bringing the space more clearly into view.
There are blankets, several large cots, and a stack of books on a crudely carved shelf in the cave wall. My body twists on the large rock as I try to take it all in.
“What is this place?”
Needing to let out the sudden burst of nervous energy, I start to pace, barely registering each unusual item I see in the cave. A sword, a blank canvas, paint, and brushes.
“Dredd likes to stay here sometimes, when the brotherhood is too much for him. Reminds him of our time in hiding.”
“In hiding?” I stop my pacing and venture a glance his way. His back is to me, and his claws clench at his side. “How long were you in hiding?”
