Chapter Two
Titus came up gasping.
Late afternoon sun slanting through the closed blinds.
For a second, he didn’t know where he was—only the tight band of pain across his chest, the ghost of grit between his teeth. Then the silence hit. Real silence.
He dragged in a breath. Cold. Dry.
Alive.
But the smell of sage and smoke clung, as if it had a right to stay.
The dream refused to let go.
Rolling, he sat on the edge of the bed—head hanging, hands braced against his knees.
The door cracked open. Light from the hall split the dark.
“You okay?” Walt Beckman’s voice, rough as gravel.
He stepped closer, holding out a glass of water.
Titus took it and drank deep. “Yeah.” The word rasped like it hurt coming out.
“Nightmare again?”
A rough nod. He drained the rest and handed it back.
“Was it Tatum or Viper this time?”
“Tatum.”
Walt sighed, low. Silence settled again, heavy as the dark. When Titus looked up, the old warhorse was watching him.
“You gonna keep doing this?” Walt’s voice was rough, worn from years of smoke and command.
Titus knew the worry behind it.
Hell, he felt it too. He’d only ever worked for the military, and this—This was something else—a different kind of beast.
But he fucking loved it, and nothing Walt said was gonna change that.
“I told you before, yeah. What time is it?”
“Four p.m.,” Walt grunted, half a growl, and turned for the door. The sound of his boots faded down the hall.
Titus sat still a moment, jaw tight. Then he shoved the tangled sheet aside and stood, heading for the shower.
The old two-bedroom place he’d grabbed for a while sat on the edge of Needles, California, where the desert bled right up to the back fence. March wasn’t cold here—just warm enough to dry the air and kick up the dust.
A freight train wailed somewhere in the distance. The place was quiet, forgettable—exactly the kind of bolt-hole he used when he needed to disappear.
Steam rose as he twisted the tap. In the fogged mirror, his reflection stared back—different. The hair was shorter, the jaw clean. He looked less wrecked than he had a month ago. Still carrying the weight, just wearing it differently—and far from the world he’d walked away from.
He knew Walt was hurt that he’d chosen a different path. Walt was heading back to Virginia—back home. Titus didn’t have one of those anymore. His path lay elsewhere.
He didn’t push people away for the drama of it; he’d just learned that closeness came with a body count.
For the first time since Genesis took out his brother, he thought maybe there might be a future.
He stepped beneath the hot water and grabbed the soap.
Almost two months in, working for Savage—commander of Erebus—was still so damn new he had to remind himself it was real.
Not the kind of move he’d ever planned, but when former Secretary of Defense David Allen—Dave—called him personally, Titus had been curious.
The drive over to Colorado from Arizona had been quiet—too quiet. Too much road. Too much time to think.
He’d met Dave and Stone at a beat-up old diner down the mountain from Pike National Forest.
Colorado had been fucking cold—January carried the kind of chill that crawled under your skin and stayed there.
And don’t get him started on the snow. Piles of it everywhere, people bundled so thick they looked like walking dominoes, shoveling walkways and scattering rock salt like it might save them.
“You were a hard man to find,” Dave said, sliding into the booth across from him.
Titus scratched at the scruff along his jaw, eyes on the steam rising from his untouched coffee. Being hard to find was something he’d gotten damn good at over the years.
“Yet you managed,” he said, quirking a brow.
“I did.” Dave’s tone was easy, but his gaze wasn’t.
Titus leaned back, the vinyl creaking beneath his shoulder blades. “So, what is it you need?”
“I want to run something past you.” Dave reached for a strip of bacon, broke it in half, and went on like they were just talking about the weather.
Over breakfast, Dave laid it out—a quiet network working in the dark, same as Genesis.
Titus listened, not because he trusted. This wasn’t about trust. It was about motion. Standing still felt too much like dying.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong—Erebus has rules,” Dave said around a piece of bacon, “just not military-driven ones.”
“I served, sir,” Titus replied.
“Oh?” Dave half-smirked, forking up another bite of pancakes.
Titus couldn’t help his own smirk. “And you know damn well I did.”
Dave chuckled, pointing his fork toward Titus’s untouched plate. “I do—and I know what you’re capable of.”
Titus met his gaze. Not many people knew what he’d done for the military, but if anyone could dig it up, it’d be the man sitting across from him. His file wasn’t redacted—it just wasn’t there. Years of ghost work. Missions that never made paper. And he’d learned to live like one.
“Doesn’t my family give you pause?” Titus asked, jaw tight. He’d spent years proving he wasn’t like them. Same blood, different breed. But sometimes, in the dark, he still heard their voices and wondered if Genesis had been right to pull the trigger twice instead of three times.
“You aren’t your family. End of story. Now eat.”
Emotion tightened his throat, and he nodded, grateful to Dave in more ways than he could count—and to the silent shadow always at Dave’s side.
He was thankful Genesis and YA had stepped up even when they didn’t have to.
The humiliation still stung.
It wasn’t about the help, or even Stone pulling the trigger—it was about the truth. His brothers, both of them, had been sick fucking pricks.
You couldn’t choose your family.
He knew that.
But what stuck to him—what everyone remembered—was that he was the brother of a child molester and a human trafficker. He’d tried to drink it away after Tatum went down, but there’s nothing worth finding at the bottom of a bottle.
Titus glanced at Stone, sitting beside Dave with one brow arched.
“What’s your take on this?” Titus asked.
Stone took a sip of black coffee. “It’s your call. But yeah—it’s a smart move. You’re hungry.”
He didn’t need to ask what Stone meant. Hell yes, he was hungry. He’d gotten hella satisfaction out of taking down the sick bastards who preyed on the weak.
There was one red flag he couldn’t ignore.
“Viper won’t like it,” Titus said flatly. Even saying the name left a taste in his mouth. Not bad nor fear—just friction. The man pissed him off in all the wrong ways—too clean, too calm, too damn sure of himself.
“Coffee’s ready!”
Walt’s voice cut clean, dragging him out of the past and back into the cooling spray. Titus blinked hard, ran a hand down his face, finished up, and shut off the water.
No sense dwelling on old ghosts. He had a job to do—and he’d give it everything he had.
If someone had a problem with that, they could go fuck themselves.
He caught himself smiling, just a ghost of it. Maybe he needed this more than he wanted to admit.
The bar smelled like spilled beer, smoke, and ten years of bad decisions baked into the wood.
Ceiling fans churned slowly overhead, blades clicking in uneven rhythm, doing nothing to cut the desert heat bleeding through the walls. The air was thick—whiskey, sweat, and cheap cologne layered over the faint tang of motor oil from the bikes parked out front.
Old rock hummed from an old jukebox in the corner, the kind that only played what it wanted—right then, it was playing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son.
Titus sat in the back booth, shadowed by neon light that buzzed faintly against the window. The seat vinyl stuck to his arm when he shifted. He ignored it, watching the door.
Around nine that night, the place started filling up. Men at the bar laughed too loudly, voices rough from smoke and road miles.
Titus wasn’t alone. Next to him sat Phoenix and Wrath.
A few glanced their way, weighing them the way men like that always did—deciding if they were trouble, or the kind that drew it.
Phoenix Knight—with a K, as he liked to say—was new to Erebus.
Titus only remembered his last name because Phoenix had made damn sure of it on their first job together.
The guy was tall, broad-shouldered, with sun-streaked hair that brushed his collar and startling blue eyes that missed nothing.
There was a danger in him, easy and unhurried, the kind that came wrapped in a grin.
Titus had liked him from the start. Phoenix was a riot—hilarious at all the wrong times, or maybe exactly when they needed it.
Wrath sat across from them—shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair, steel-blue eyes, and a face carved from battle and bone.
Scars marked him, not for show but as reminders.
The former SEAL was hard to read, calm in a way that spoke of deep water.
Solid guy, steady. His boyfriend, Rogue, though—now that one was a force to be reckoned with.
“I might smell, but not as bad as some animals,” Phoenix said, tossing one of the bikers a bored look before lifting an arm and sniffing his own armpit. He snorted a laugh.
A few of the bikers didn’t find it funny—their faces twisted fast from amusement to ugly.
“Please,” Wrath drawled, sounding half-asleep, “don’t tease the wildlife.”
“Maybe the SecDef’ll think twice about turning his assassins into errand boys,” Titus grunted, pushing back from the table just as the first biker lunged.
He met the man halfway—fist to throat, elbow to jaw—clean, efficient, satisfying. The biker hit the floor hard.
Another came swinging from the right; Titus ducked, drove a knee into his ribs, and sent him crashing into a table.
“Guess diplomacy’s off the table,” Phoenix said, kicking his chair back and catching a third biker square in the gut. He grinned as the man folded. “Can’t take these boys anywhere.”
Wrath sighed, stood, and caught one by the collar, slamming his face into the bar with a dull thud. “You always have to talk first,” he muttered to Phoenix.
“Hey, I was being polite,” Phoenix shot back, blocking a punch and twisting the guy’s arm until something cracked.
“Polite?” Titus grunted, dodging another swing. “You called them animals.”
“Term of endearment,” Phoenix said with a wink, driving his boot into another man’s stomach.
Wrath shoved his latest opponent toward the door. “You two done making friends?”
Titus straightened, barely winded, and glanced around the room. The place was wrecked—chairs overturned, a few bodies groaning, someone limping toward the exit. The jukebox still played in the background, completely unfazed.
Phoenix brushed dust off his shirt. “See? Peace restored.”
Wrath rolled his eyes. “You’re a menace.”
“Yeah,” Titus said, grabbing his beer off the table and taking a drink. “But he’s our menace.”
“What the fuck is going on here?”
Titus clenched his teeth. Of all the times for Viper to show up, it had to be now.
Fucking figures.