Page 90 of All Superheroes Need PR
Roland gives my waist a gentle tug, but with his newfound muscle mass, I topple against his side. “Sorry,” he whispers to me quietly before pitching his voice louder to the others. “I turned into a monster overnight. I don’t think kicking my ass is gonna go the way you hoped.” He exhales fire through his nostrils and tries to run his hand back through is hair, only to hit horn first.
I elbow him in the gut, but he’s not paying me any attention. Instead his gaze is trained on the horizon. “What the ...”
I look up and see a distant point on the horizon start to get closer and closer. It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane, it’s ... I gulp hard and clutch my sword tighter. “That’s not one of the bad guys, is it?”
“No ... I think it’s ... the good guy.”
“The good guy? Who?”
Roland huffs through his nostrils and squeezes me more tightly against his chest, and we both watch as, seconds later, a Forty-Eight Champion I’ve only seen one other time in person lands only twenty feet from us.
“What the fuck?” I blink in the sight of Taranis’s surprised face, and I don’t feel any of the nerves that I should. After all, why would I? He’s now only thesecond-best-looking male on planet Earth. He glances between me and Rollo with eyes that aren’t pink or sparkly but boring, even if they are purple.
“Wyvern?” he says, voice cracking. My brothers are filming him, Luca approaching way, way too close. Taranis’s skin crackles withelectricity that shoots out at Luca when he gets within touching distance of Taranis and knocks Luca onto his butt.
Rollo grunts. “Something like that.”
Taranis scoffs again. “The fuck happened to you?”
“I found what I’d been looking for.” He looks down at me, and I blush.
“Are you high? Is this some acid trip? What the fuck does that mean?” Taranis throws his arms out to the sides and runs a hand over his hair. His jaw clenches, and his uniform glistens. He looks incensed. I giggle.
Margerie crosses her arms over her chest. “It means he fell in love, you idiot.”
Taranis turns toward her, his skin crackling dangerously, and Margerie lifts her gun, pointing it straight at one of the most popular and powerful people on the planet. Charlie, of all people, grabs Margerie’s arm and tugs her to his side.
“What the hell does love have to do with it?” Taranis says.
“Everything,” Rollo answers softly, looking down at my face as if I’m the only person in the world. “Only everything.”
EpilogueRoland
“You’re sure about this?”
“Oh my gosh, for the last time, yes. Yes. It’s been three weeks. I’m not waiting anymore. Plus, we’ve done it once like this already.”
“But I didn’t know then ... and wasn’t ... paying attention ... and things have happened since. I think there’s, like ... it’s gotten bigger,” I huff finally, gesturing down at my pants like an imbecile.
My threat seems to have the opposite effect. Her eyes get big and drop to my crotch. She swallows audibly.Giddily.“Really?”
“That’s not supposed to be an incentive. I could hurt you ...”
“And if you hurt me, we’ll stop ...” The way she’s squirming in her leggings isn’t helping. It isn’t helping at all.
Since I reverted, I’ve noticed strange things about myself. Not strange because they’re new; they’re not. I remember them from my life on Tratharine, but I’m using them in entirely different ways now that I’ve reached full maturity and now that I’m here on Earth with the woman I traveled the cosmos to find.
For example, my enhanced sense of smell. My Tratharine leaders would have expected me to use this power to hunt down prominent humans and crush them ... but I’d rather use it to breathe in the smellof herthere. She smells fucking incredible. She squirms even more, standing behind the couch looking at me with too much hope and desire to let down either.
I give her a slow nod. “Come here.”
She sucks in a breath, but her eyes sparkle damn near more brightly than mine. She twists her hands together and takes short steps until she’s standing in front of me in front of the couch. Her hair is a billowy cloud around her face, so many different shades of brown. I learned recently that she dyes it to look like that, and I find the whole damn thing fascinating.
“You’re really pretty,” I whisper as I cup her face. I’ve gotten better at using my hands over these past three weeks. Three weeks of utter fucking chaos after my new makeover.
The SDD and the COE and even the VNA have all demanded interviews and tests—all of which I’ve declined. I don’t need anyone knowing who doesn’t need to know that it wasn’t an accident, or an inevitability, but meeting Nessa that changed my life. Don’t need that heat falling onto her shoulders.
Emily happily kept her data to herself, and Mr. Singkham exchanged his silence for a vow from Emily that she wouldn’t inject him with a cocktail of infections at his next physical. The weapon remains in our possession too. Everyone thought it was a spare helicopter part that Nessa was keeping for sentimental value. No one knew that she could light it on fire with her touch, or that I could either. I could lift it after she unlocked it.
