Chapter 29 Attack With Balls （Part 2）
Titan had no options left.
“Wildcart!” he roared.
The cart paused, turning toward him curiously.
“Get back inside, now,” Titan ordered, sprinting toward it. “It’s not safe out here.”
That was the understatement of the century.
Wildcart backed away to one side, then the other, like a child dragging their feet.
“Good carts go back to where they belong,” Titan said sternly. “And you and Jannie belong with Mathlin in the bakery.”
The cart seemed to cheer up then. It started toward the still-open back door; Titan grasped its handle and began shoving the cart to make it move faster.
“Titan!” Mathlin hissed.
Footsteps were drawing closer, coming around the building. Fuck.
Titan gave Wildcart a big push, placing himself between them. Scarcely had Wildcart made it halfway back when Valberdon rounded the corner, cold eyes landing on Wildcart and Jannie.
Titan’s stomach dropped. He roared to distract the wizard.
This close, he could see the long white hair and high forehead that Everdin had described. Valberdon had a cruel air to him that Titan could sense, a bitter, sour scent that coated Titan’s tongue and made him want to spit.
“No one mentioned the offspring,” Valberdon said with an oily delight. “Ah, Mathlin. How nice. You’re providing me with a copy of you.”
“What the actual fuck,” Titan hissed. His wolf snarled beneath his skin; he wanted to shift, wanted to rip out the man’s throat.
But he could sense the wizard’s power. Valberdon was strong, as strong as Uriel, and Uriel was not here.
Were Uriel’s paper spells going to work against someone like that?
Valberdon ignored Titan and raised his hand toward Jannie and Wildcart.
Titan reacted on instinct. In one swift move, he drew his gun and flicked the safety off, aiming for Valberdon’s forehead.
Valberdon scoffed and waved his hand like he was swatting a fly; a blunt force came out of nowhere and smacked Titan bodily to the side. The shot went astray.
Titan roared and sprang back, aiming again. “You’re not getting your filthy hands on them!”
He fired. The wizard smacked both Titan and his bullet out of the way. Titan hit the asphalt and rolled to his feet, aiming—
Valberdon was moving his lips as he reached for Jannie and the cart.
Mathlin yelled, lunging out of the back door. Titan’s stomach clenched. No!
But Mathlin held up a spell sheet and aimed it at Valberdon. White light blasted from the tiny scrap of paper, smacking into Valberdon and throwing him back by a few yards.
Huh, Titan thought. So that was how the spells were meant to be used.
Valberdon roared and leaped to his feet, raising his hands in a low chant.
“Math, get back in there!” Titan snapped.
“You need to use the spells,” Mathlin yelled back.
Titan grabbed Wildcart and shoved it through the backdoor. Now Jannie and the cart were safe. “Stay in there,” he ordered.
Then he turned to Mathlin, who was shooting fireballs at Valberdon with another spell sheet.
Valberdon cursed, pausing his chant to deflect the fireballs.
“Set up something defensive. We need to make him aim away from Twin Buns,” Titan muttered, pulling out the spell sheets that he had stuffed into his pocket. “I’ll cover you.”
He cut his thumb on a fang, two seconds away from activating a spell.
Valberdon was faster. He fired a spell at them—not at Titan, but at Mathlin.
Titan’s heart stopped. He threw himself in front of Mathlin, barely hearing Mathlin’s distressed cry as the blunt force hit him in the chest.
It sent him flying backward. Titan crashed into Mathlin, both of them landing on the ground and skidding, Titan on top of Mathlin. Mathlin took the brunt of the impact.
Titan smelled blood.
Fuck! Panicking, he scrambled off his omega. “Math! Fuck, Math, are you okay?”
Mathlin winced and shoved the stack of spells at Titan. “I’ll heal. Use these.”
Titan took the spell sheets, fear gripping his lungs. Mathlin was pregnant. And he was hurt.
Despite all logic, despite the fact that wolves weren’t equipped to face off against magic users, Titan’s instincts kicked in.
He howled for help. For someone to get Mathlin somewhere safe.
Then he leaped to his feet and smeared his blood on the spell sheets, one after another.
There was no way to describe the urgency in his movements, the sheer desperation.
Mathlin was... Mathlin would be fine.
He had to be.
Titan roared, holding up one spell after another as fireballs and laser beams blasted out of them. Valberdon swore, summoning a shield to defend himself. Titan kept activating the spells anyway. Each of them hammered against Valberdon’s shield, striking so hard that the wizard gritted his teeth.
“Who gave you those spells?!” Valberdon cried. From this distance, Titan could faintly make out beads of sweat on the wizard’s face. Uriel’s spells were powerful enough that Valberdon was forced to focus on his shield, instead of weaving a complex attack spell.
“None of your concern,” Titan snarled. “You held Mathlin against his will for years, and now you’re back to haunt him? I was going to let you live if you stayed away.”
“He’s mine!” Valberdon’s eyes glittered with malice.
“He fucking ran away from you,” Titan spat. “He never should’ve been your slave.”
“He was my apprentice,” Valberdon hissed. He threw up a larger shield, then an energy wave to force Titan backward.
Titan’s shoes skidded against the asphalt.
He pushed against that force, reaching out with his senses.
Mathlin was still on the ground behind him.
Still breathing. So he stalked forward, slicing into his thumb again to keep his blood flowing.
It soaked into the spell sheets; fireballs shot toward Valberdon and slammed into his invisible shield. The shield rippled with each impact.
Titan was getting close to the last of his spells; he glimpsed the ones with Mathlin’s drawings.
“Balls of fire,” Titan announced, activating that spell on the heels of a lightning attack.
Mathlin giggled weakly as multiple flaming balls shot out of the spell sheet.
Three spells left.
The moment Titan’s assault ended, there was no telling what Valberdon had in store for them.
Where was Uriel? Panic crept through Titan’s gut.
Titan’s hesitation left a break in his attacks.
Valberdon cast his own spell, firing hot beams of light that Titan had to dodge.
Some of them grazed Titan’s limbs; he snarled and surged closer, activating his last spells in quick succession: a laser blast, a huge fireball, and a spear of fire that pierced Valberdon’s shield.
There!
Titan was shifting before he knew it, his clothes ripping, the wolf consuming his human skin. He kicked off his pants and sprang forward, smashing himself through the wizard’s cracking shield spell.
The shield shattered. For a tense second, horror consumed Valberdon’s face.
Titan landed with his paws on Valberdon’s chest, sending him crashing to the ground. He snarled and sank his fangs into Valberdon’s forearms, ripping apart his muscles so he could no longer cast spells with his hands. The wizard screamed.
“You should suffer a little,” Titan seethed in his face. “You took years out of Mathlin’s life, out of his childhood.”
“He learned things! He was going to succeed me!” Valberdon yelled.
Disgust filled Titan. Before he could tear off more vile flesh, Valberdon muttered something under his breath.
A summoning circle appeared beneath the wizard.
To Titan’s horror, a sea of giant slugs popped into existence around them.
Valberdon smiled grimly. “If I can’t have Mathlin, then you won’t either. These flesh-eating slugs will consume him and his child.”
Titan roared and ripped open Valberdon’s throat in a spray of blood.
Finally, that threat was neutralized. But the danger wasn’t over.
Already, the knee-high slugs were crawling all over the wizard and oozing onto him. Titan flung away one that tried to eat him. “Math!”
“I’m okay!” Mathlin croaked.
Titan wasn’t going to believe that until he saw Mathlin with his own eyes. He ran over several slugs to get to Mathlin, grabbing them with his teeth and flinging them off his mate. “Math. You okay?”
Mathlin rolled onto his knees shakily, grabbing fistfuls of Titan’s fur. “Gods, you’re so beautiful.”
“Math, you hit your head and I squashed you,” Titan growled, ripping apart the slugs when they got too close. “Are you and the pup okay?”
Mathlin rubbed his belly and nodded slowly. “Yeah. I healed the damage.”
Titan shifted back into a human, carefully running his fingers over the back of Mathlin’s head. It was wet with blood—and that made Titan’s gut clench—but Mathlin’s eyes were sharp; he didn’t smell of pain. Titan trailed his hands over Mathlin’s arms and back, carefully touching his belly.
Relief filled his chest.
“What’s with the slugs?” Mathlin blurted, looking around.
“Valberdon.” Titan spat the vile taste out of his mouth. “He’s dead. But before that, he summoned... an ocean of these things. Flesh-eating.”
Mathlin groaned. “How the hell are we supposed to kill all these? There must be hundreds of them!”
The slugs surged closer. They began to crawl up the bakery walls; Titan barely managed to shut the back door before the slugs could attempt to break through the barrier spells.
A chorus of howls filled the air. Titan watched with relief as several wolves appeared at the edge of the forest, eyeing the slugs.
“Mathlin’s safe!” Titan called out. “But the slugs are flesh-eating. Please help.”
“Ew,” Gavric said. “You owe me so many toothbrushes.”
“And mouthwash,” Vigil said.
“And dental floss,” Crush added.
“I should’ve stayed home,” Ottis mumbled.
In the distance, a shape grew larger in the sky. Flapping wings. As it drew closer, Titan realized it was a pterodactyl with two dark shapes on its legs.
Amidst the chaos of wolves tearing into slugs, the pterodactyl swooped down, dropping Uriel onto the ground next to them.
“Titan?” Uriel scanned their surroundings, his magic humming. He had several scars all over his body, lighter than his original skin. From a distance, the scars blended together to make Uriel appear paler than he actually was.
“I killed the wizard. Used up your entire stack of spells; it was the shield-piercer that let me get through. Thanks.” Titan sagged against Mathlin, his relief growing. “Do you think you could magic away the slugs?”
Uriel winced and looked around. “I’m going to need a while, but it can be done. Just hold them off in the meantime.”
“Woohoo!” Telos said, swinging a human Mav from his other leg.
Mav opened his mouth and breathed a stream of fire at the slugs, crisping up some of them.
Before Titan could thank the alpha pair, rumbling sounds caught his attention.
Cars were pulling up in front of the bakery, townsfolk pouring out of them—Mr. Abercrombie, Mr. Gonal, and Mr. Salem, along with several others who had shown up at Yasmin’s party.
Leading them with a huge pitchfork was Mrs. Everdin.
“Where’s the bad guy?” Everdin yelled.
“Dead,” Titan called back. “But he left these slugs. Be careful, they’re flesh-eating!”
“Charge!” Everdin bellowed.
With a chorus of battle cries, the townsfolk raised their yard tools and headed into the fray.
Mathlin leaned into Titan’s side, rubbing his belly. “This is crazy. Everyone showed up to help.”
“If I’d known we were coming to fight giant slugs, I would’ve brought more people,” Telos said, still flying above them. “I don’t want slug goop on my bare feet.”
Mav rolled his eyes. Mathlin giggled. Titan watched as his friends and family tackled the slugs, finally breathing out the adrenaline from his fight.
“You’re safe,” he murmured, burying his nose in Mathlin’s hair.
“I am.” Mathlin beamed. “And you owe me something.”