Wrapped up in the sudden wash of empathy, Ezra’s arms sagged, and Titan abruptly jerked his gaze away from Al to stare straight at him. The two of them held eye contact for several seconds, Titan’s expression still open and vulnerable, before he seemed to remember himself and shut it down. All at once, a mask was cast over his face that hid the depths of his emotion, leaving only the cocky, confident front he put on all the time.
Was that what it was?
A mask?
Could his ego really be a front?
More importantly, why did Ezra care?
Titan was going back to Darvrok 6 where he belonged and he was going to take his putrid personality with him. It wasn’t Ezra’s job to tear down his walls and discover his inner truth, and doing it wouldn’t get him anywhere. After today, they would never see each other again.
Abruptly, the humming ceased. The sudden silence was eerie, but it did a great job of pulling Ezra out of his thoughts. He looked away from Titan and at Ruth the Elder, whose eyes were shut and fluttering madly beneath her eyelids. Al and Jude had closed their eyes as well, and both of them stood trembling, chins lifted, lips parted. Whatever was happening inside of them was intense, and Ezra found himself concerned.
Then Ruth the Elder’s eyes snapped open, irises not just yellow, but glowing like the sun. She gasped and dropped her hands, and as she did, Al and Jude dropped, too, falling to their knees in unison as though neither had any strength left in their legs.
“It is done,” she announced, then said something in Darvrokian, which was repeated by all who spoke the language including Titan, who mumbled it, and Al, who sounded absolutely exhausted.
Neither Al nor Jude rose to their feet, but even in their exhaustion, they looked up and smiled at each other. Jude took Al’s hand and kissed his knuckles, and they both snickered like something was funny—and probably, it was. From what Ezra understood, the bond had tied their minds together and allowed them to speak to one another telepathically.
It was romantic, sure, but it made the hairs on the back of Ezra’s neck stand up a little.
What about privacy?
What about if, god forbid, they fell out of love?
No one stuck around forever.
Although seeing the way they crawled to each other and held each other close, laughing, crying, so blisteringly happy that even Ezra was warmed by it, maybe that wouldn’t be an issue. Maybe the issue was that no one in Ezra’s life ever stuck around.
It was cool, though. They didn’t need to.
He was having a good time on his own.
“Congratulations,” Ezra said softly to his friends, stepping forward to offer Jude his hand so that when he was ready, Ezra could pull him up onto his feet. Jude and Al, still wrapped up in each other’s arms, looked up at him, beaming.
“Thank you very much please, Ezra,” Al said. “I feel much happiness.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ezra replied with a laugh. He nodded at Jude. “And what about you, man?”
Impossibly, Jude’s smile grew even wider. He looked at Al and searched his face for a long moment.
“Yeah,” he said, without bothering to turn back to Ezra, “I feel much happiness, too.”
7
Titan
The bonding ceremony ended without a Burrow Worm sighting, allowing Al and Jude to escape down the central aisle and into their dwelling unharmed. In their absence, Titan lifted his great-aunt T?$ off the erroneously labeled crate and set her on the sand next to the dais.
By the time he finished, Ezra was gone.
“My gratitude unto you, ?.Λ.yz’Ο,” T?$ croaked. She reached up, hand shaking with age, and patted him several times on the cheek. “You are a prime specimen and so physically capable, even in your unsightly human disguise. A blessing of an offspring indeed.”
“I am the one who must pay gratitude to you,” Titan replied politely, although his heart was not in it. He was too distracted by the space where Ezra had been—and now wasn’t. “Surely it was your wisdom and composure which soothed the Burrow Worms and allowed for an uneventful bonding ceremony, making my part in today’s events redundant.”
“You may call me by my human name of Ruth the Elder while I am in this form,” she said. “Itis a distinguished name I selected with much care, and I wish to hear it used, as soon we shall return to Darvrok 6 and there shall be no reason to speak it again. A pity. The Earth language ‘English’ is largely unappealing, but some of its words are quite beautiful. My name, for example, as well as the word ‘yas,’ which Human Corbin graciously taught me.”
“‘Yas’? Did you mean to say ‘yes’?”
