Lily leaned forward, her Titan arms wrapping around the base of the cannon. With a loud screech that was half scream, half groan, she tunneled under the base and lifted.
“No!”
My protest fell on deaf ears as Lily lifted the entire cannon from the base. It was too heavy. I could have told her that.
The ground beneath her feet crumbled.
She shifted, sliding down and backward with a jolt of movement, the heavy cannon still in her arms as the ledge broke into pieces under the weight.
“I said, I’ve got this.” Lily’s voice was a roar in my head as she bent her knees and arched her back, flipping the heavy cannon onto her chest, then moving it to her head. Then over.
She fell as the cannon fell, just a few meters behind as they both raced to sure destruction on the ground below.
“Lily!” I saw the future. Broken bones. Blood. Lifeless eyes.
I couldn’t do it. Not again.
The cannon hit the ground and exploded in a ball of flame that engulfed my pair-bonded mate completely. I saw nothing but fire.
Without fuel to burn, the flame flickered and died within seconds. I searched the ground, used the last of my booster fuel to fly down to the ground and find her. My mate. My pair-bonded mate. My life. My future. My everything.
I landed to find her in a crouch, waiting for me. She was unharmed, her Titan in perfect condition. She had flipped, used her boosters and landed in a crouch with perfect, Elite Starfighter timing.
“Lily? Are you all right?”
“Do. Not. Speak. To. Me.”
That was the last thing she said before rising to her full height. Standing toe to toe, we were of equal size. Equal strength. Our Titans identical except for the names etched in the exoskeletal armor and the warrior controlling them.
“Lily?”
Turning on her heel, the Titan Athena and her warrior driver ran into the battle raging behind me. I followed. I would always follow.
Lily
How dare he?
How dare he?
If I weren’t using my giant metal fists to punch the rocky base of the last cannon into dust—Darius’s cannon, the one he’d been assigned to take out, the one he’d ignored to chase after me like I was a helpless child—I would be beating the hell out of that man instead.
Had I been nervous to drop onto an alien world? Yes. First out of the gate? Bigger yes. But the moment my Athena’s feet hit the ground, something had happened.
I’d become the badass fighter in the game again. I wasn’t Lily the Librarian; I was Elite Starfighter Lily in Athena, her Titan goddess of war, and I was ready to kick some ass.
“Lily? Are you well?”
Of course he had followed me.
His Titan’s fist landed near mine, and the stone base the ground cannon was mounted to crumbled on one side.
Darius reached back to punch it again, but I shoved him out of the way.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
“What am I doing?” I yelled back, so furious I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples. I had a raging headache, and I tasted blood in my mouth from biting my cheek. “What am I doing?”
Back home, I didn’t have a temper. Such a display was unladylike. My mother had made sure I knew how to control myself, hide what I was feeling, from a very young age.