Oh well. She’d been next to naked in only a skirt anyway, so… yeah.Hello, titans!
My fist connected solidly and sent the queen flying off her feet, arching through the air and landing fifty feet away on her back.
With two strides, I reached her and knelt, bringing my fist down so hard it pulverized her chest, punching right through her body.
Yikes!
Talk about not knowing my own strength!
I took my fist out and shook off the blood and gore. Disgusting. Then I touched her again, using my body-sense to feel for any life. Nope. The queen was dead.
Two hits had been all it took.
The crowd was deathly silent as I looked over to see how Bayn was doing.
He was having a bit more trouble defeating his father.
BAYN
I felt morethan saw Izzy’s transformation. Then my mother went flying backward, which distracted me enough for my father to land a heavy blow to my chest, knocking me back and winding me.
I’d never tested myself against my father before. I’d always assumed we were close in strength, with myself being slightly stronger. That assumption was tested now. My father had gone absolutely berserk when the fight had started and I’d been on the defensive from the get-go. Yet, I’d matched him, blow for blow, able to deflect or evade his strikes and even get in a couple of my own, though they didn’t land either. We’d been fairly evenly matched… until now.
After my lapse in attention and my father’s stunning strike he pounced on that opportunity and swept my legs out from under me before I could move. I fell, hard, the wind knocked out of me again. And that gave my father another second’s advantage, dropping hard with both knees onto my chest and crushing the air out of me once more.
I raised my arms to block my face as his fists rained down. My forearms took the brunt of his beating, until he switched to pummeling my upper chest.
I panicked.
I couldn’t lose this fight.
Losing was death.
I’d lost so much already. I’d lost my home, my people, and so much of who I was. I’d been under someone else’s thumb so long I’d forgotten my pride and heritage. I couldn’t lose now.
I bucked hard, even though I couldn’t breathe, even with my father’s weight on me, even bruised and broken as I was, I put everything I had into the move.
My father slipped to one side and with a wild punch — which landed, surprising me — I knocked him off me, then I rolled away. I needed a second to recover, regain control, but my father was still raving mad and launched himself at me.
And hit Izzy.
She caught him in his wild charge and easily deflected him, throwing him with enough force to hurl him hundreds of feet into the wall of the arena, where he left a dent in the stone before he fell.
“You need a sec?” she asked, standing over me.
I did.
Even if I didn’t want to admit it. It felt like weakness… and yet…
I nodded.
I couldn’t deny the truth. Izzy had saved me. She’dprotectedme. No one had ever done that for me. As much as it felt like weakness, I was also overcome with gratitude. Did I want to fight my own fights? Sure. But I’d been on the back foot and needed time to recover.
I got up slowly as my breath returned, my strength finally rebounding.
When I looked over at Izzy, I finally noticed… she was stark naked. Of course she was. Her clothes wouldn’t have survived this growth.
“You look good kicking ass,” I breathed.
