“I don’t know about that. Whenever I see the Alpha Lisa painting, I think to myself, ‘That’s a picture of a smiling alpha. She’s wearing some drab clothing. Why did some famous artist want to paint her?’ Not even a hundred words.”
Mathlin snickered. “Here.” He drew a picture of a flaming cock piercing a bubble. “This gets the point across.”
Titan snorted. “Trust you to turn an attack into a sex joke, Math.”
“It’s clear and to the point! You know right away what attack it is.”
“That I do. You’re amazing.”
Mathlin brightened. He set aside that spell and squinted at the next one. “This one is balls. Big fucking balls.”
“Oh gods,” Titan muttered. “How are you going to draw that?”
“How do you think?” Mathlin said airily. He was already drawing a pair of hairy balls on the back of the spell sheet. “These are fireballs, so they’re flaming.”
The drawing took up the entire sheet. Mathlin barely had space to add flames licking around the balls.
“This is how you know they’re big,” he said solemnly.
Titan stifled his laugh.
The next spell sheet had three cocks drawn on it. The one after that had a flurry of flaming ball sacks. Mathlin made sure the drawings had thick lines so Titan wouldn’t have to squint to see them, but this meant that precious seconds were ticking away with every stroke of his pencil. He still had a stack of spells to translate, and others that he hadn’t used on himself or the bakery.
As useful as his translations were, this was taking too long. Valberdon had found out about Mathlintwo days ago.That was too many hours. Hours in which Titan could’ve been taken out by a surprise attack, leaving Mathlin to his ex-captor’s mercy.
Fuck, he couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t stand the thought of... of losing Mathlin, of Mathlin being tortured.
He pushed aside those thoughts, his chest tight.
Why hadn’t Valberdon shown up? If Titan were the one hunting his prey, he would have already struck.
Unless the wizard had a better plan up his sleeve.
A cold chill slid down Titan’s spine. His instincts snarled, threatened and aggressive.
“Math, I can’t just sit around. I need to do something,” he seethed, his fangs growing longer.
Mathlin’s gaze sharpened. “Here,” he said, stabbing his claw into his thumb. “Let me write you a spell—”
Something exploded outside the bakery, too close for comfort.
“Fuck,” Titan hissed, his shift bristling beneath his skin.
“Fuck,” Mathlin whispered. He grabbed the front of Titan’s shirt and yanked him down. “I need more time!”
“We don’t have any left,” Titan growled.
“There’s time for this.” Mathlin’s eyes glowed bright orange. He squeezed blood out of his fingertip and traced a rune onto Titan’s forehead. Then he pushed a warm pulse of energy into Titan. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”
Titan’s skin tingled; he narrowed his eyes. “What does it do?”
“It’s a defense spell to hold off magical attacks for a short time.” Mathlin looked a little pale. Had he overtaxed himself?
Titan tried to suppress his worry. “Put that onyourself,sweetheart.”
“You’rethe one about to charge out there.” Mathlin’s gaze burned. “Ti, he’s fucking dangerous.”
“I know. Use Uriel’s spells, protect the pups. I’m not going out there unless I have to.”
