Page 24

“No, I’m not sick.” Current nausea notwithstanding.

“Perhaps your brain is malfunctioning, then?” Kyle suggested, tone tinged with worry.

“I will share honesty with you, Human Ezra—Secretary of Defense Buttons came to me and expressed concern about your well-being. She stated that your behavior has been quite suspect, and she wished for me to check on you should I be amenable, which of course I am. I do not wish for you to be malfunctioning. You are my friend.”

Not bothering to process the part about his cat, Ezra was touched by Kyle’s worry. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, though. Sure, harboring such a big secret was eating him up from the inside out, but he couldn’t tell him the truth. It wasn’t like he could just open his mouth and say?—

“I had sex with Titan,” he blurted out. “Twice.”

Welp. Never mind.

Clapping a hand over his mouth, he stared at Kyle wide-eyed, waiting for the panic to settle in, but it didn’t come.

Instead, every muscle in his body relaxed as a wave of relief washed over him.

He hadn’t realized he’d been so tense, but he supposed it shouldn’t be surprising—he’d been messed up over Titan for weeks and hadn’t been able to talk about it.

Without an outlet, the stress had been trapped, and it had been eating him up from the inside.

Kyle blinked in surprise. He opened his mouth as if to say something, faltered, and opted instead to just tilt his head questioningly.

Ezra sighed. In for a penny and all that.

“The first time was at Al and Jude’s rehearsal dinner,” he explained. “He came on to me, and I resisted at first, but, well… let’s just say he was persistent and I was weak.”

Kyle listened quietly as Ezra explained how Titan had tormented him all throughout the dinner, and about how one thing had eventually led to another.

He talked about his shock and dread when he’d realized Titan was going to be his coworker, and how he’d been seduced that evening in his own bedroom.

He told him why he’d been hiding in his room all week, and how he was certain that if he gave so much as an inch to Titan, he’d immediately take advantage and they’d end up rolling around in the sheets all over again.

It seemed that once he started talking, he couldn’t stop.

But he did leave out the part about the alligators and crocodiles.

“And I feel like such an asshole keeping it all from Al,” he concluded miserably, resting his forehead on the back of the couch with a groan, “but he hates his brother. There’s no way he wouldn’t feel completely betrayed if I told him the truth.”

Kyle continued to stare at him in stunned silence.

Ezra frowned. “Say something. Please?”

“That is… a considerable amount of information to process, Human Ezra,” Kyle finally admitted. He drummed his fingers on the couch, then walked around to take a seat next to Ezr a and looked him in the eyes. “Do you feel romantic attraction toward Master Titan?”

“No, he’s the worst,” Ezra said immediately. His stomach churned again, as if arguing with him, but he wasn’t lying… right?

Kyle squinted. “Yet you have mated with him twice?”

“Yeah.”

“I do not understand.”

“That makes two of us, man. I don’t get it at all. It’s like he’s cast some sort of magic spell on me and I just can’t resist him. Is that a Darvrokian thing? Is he doing alien magic to my brain?”

“I do not believe so, Human Ezra,” Kyle said gently. “While our minds allow us to do many great things, no Darvrokian can influence another being in such a way. I apologize to tell you that it seems that your encounters with Master Titan have been consensual.”

“Damn,” he muttered. He’d really hoped there was another explanation.

He lifted his head up from the couch. “Tell me, does Titan have any redeeming qualities? Can you think of anything about him that might make me feel less like a total idiot for letting a jackass into my bed and maybe screwing up one of my closest friendships?” His final question was one he left unspoken: Was the glimpse of the Titan I thought I saw someone I could see again?

Kyle hummed in thought. “Master Titan is… complicated,” he said at last. “I do not experience closeness with him the way that I do with Al or his other clutchmates, but I believe that this is not entirely his own fault.”

“What do you mean?”

Kyle clicked his tongue.

“When Master Titan had aged to roughly, hmm, let us say… seven of your Earth years, I heard his father telling him that he would grow up to become a great being, and that he would have all the responsibility of carrying on the legacy of the family. Shortly after, when his father left the room, I heard Master Titan making whimpering noises that I believe in a human form would have translated into tears. He has had big expectations put on him since he was very young, and while he acts as though he enjoys being the best and most important, I have belief that he does not truly feel satisfaction with the being he has been forced to become. He behaves how he does because that is how he was taught, but perhaps not because that is how he is in his heart.”

Ezra ingested all this information. If Titan really had been told as a child that his family’s reputation was solely on his shoulders and that he therefore had to be the best at everything, his behavior made sense.

He had been shaped into the person he was by his father much in the same way that a bonsai master might prune and shape a tree, parts of him being clipped or repositioned in order to achieve artificial perfection.

A strange feeling hit Ezra just then, and it took a beat for him to realize that he felt sorry for Titan.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with that?

“Great,” he muttered. “What do you think, then? Should I just rip the Band-Aid off and tell Al that I’m being mind-controlled by his brother and I can’t keep it in my fucking pants around him?”

“Ah, I do not think that is advisable, Human Ezra,” Kyle said with a grimace. “I have difficulty believing that doing such an act would conclude well for you.”

“Me either, but the guilt is killing me. I’m losing my mind.

I can’t sleep, I’m exhausted all the time.

I’m either so hungry I vacuum up the entire pantry with my facehole, or food disgusts me.

I couldn’t even eat the chips I brought with me to the couch.

Chips, man. Who can’t bring themselves to eat chips?

” Ezra groaned in frustration. “And it’s not like I can smoke to take the edge off, because the idea of letting my thoughts loose makes me sick with anxiety.

Just thinking about what I’m doing to Al makes my stomach hurt. ”

“If you desire to tell him, I will not prevent it.”

“But you think it’s a bad idea.”

“I think that the relationship between Al and his clutchmate is very complicated, and this knowledge may serve to complicate it further.”

“Yeah, no shit,” said an angry voice from behind them. Ezra and Kyle turned abruptly, both looking over the top of the couch at the figure who stood, arms crossed and jaw clenched, in the nearby doorway.

Ezra’s heart plummeted into his ass.

It was Jude.

“Oh, fuck me,” Ezra breathed. He covered his face with his hands and peeked at Jude from between his fingers.

“Ezra,” Jude said sternly, “I think we need to talk.”