Chapter 5 Ezra

Ezra

This is a fucking mess.

Smoke rolls through the street in thick, choking waves, curling around overturned cars and shattered storefronts like it belongs here. Glass crunches beneath my boots with every step. Somewhere behind us, something is still burning—plastic and gasoline mixing with that other smell. The one I know too well.

Death.

Bodies are scattered across the pavement like debris. Humans. Limbs bent wrong. Faces frozen mid-scream. They never see it coming. They never understand what’s hunting them.

How in the hell did a Titan get here?

Not one.

Three.

Titans don’t wander into cities for fun. They’re not random disasters. They’re hunters. Grey, cold-skinned abominations that stink like rot and wet stone. Smooth, eyeless faces with nothing but hollow pits where sight should be. Mouths full of jagged, decaying teeth that look carved from bone. They’re everything wrong in this world shaped into muscle and hunger.

And our job—my job—is to keep them away from humans.

It’s usually not difficult. Humans grow up blissfully ignorant, believing monsters are fiction, mythology, bedtime stories. We make sure it stays that way.

So how did three of them end up in the middle of this small city?

Why cause this much destruction?

And why that diner?

My arms tighten slightly around the girl I’m carrying.

She weighs next to nothing. Light enough that I barely feel her, though the warmth of her blood soaking into my shirt is impossible to ignore. She’s completely unconscious now, her head resting against my chest, her breathing shallow but steady.

Damien wanted to leave her there.

A liability, he called her. A nuisance.

Maybe he’s right.

But I couldn’t.

She’d been lying on that floor broken and bleeding, her ankle twisted at an unnatural angle, fingers clawing uselessly at tile while that Titan leaned over her like it was studying something precious. Not devouring her. Not tearing her apart like the others.

Smelling her.

When I reached her, she’d made the faintest sound—half groan, half protest—as I lifted her. Now she’s limp, the fight drained out of her body.

Her leg is still bleeding, the makeshift pressure I applied already soaking through. There’s a split in her forehead too, blood dried in her hairline. Her long blonde hair is matted dark in places, tangled and streaked red. Her freckled face has gone pale beneath the grime, lips drained of the color they had when she first walked up to our booth.

I noticed that then.

Noticed her.

I don’t find humans beautiful. Not usually. They’re fragile. Temporary. Soft in ways that don’t interest me.

But her?

Yeah.

She’s beautiful.

A movement slices through the smoke ahead of us.

Damien doesn’t slow. Neither do I.

We both know who it is.

Rowan steps out of the haze like he belongs in it, towering and broad, his movements fluid despite his size. His muzzle is stained dark, fresh blood still dripping from the metal and leather. The scent of Titan ichor clings to him.

He signs quickly.

Two down.

His hands shift again.

Killed the others.

I nod once in acknowledgment.

He looks down at the girl in my arms, head tilting slightly. His fingers move.

Who is this?

Damien lets out a low, irritated grunt. “A nuisance.”

I roll my eyes. “The Titan in the diner wasn’t trying to eat her,” I say. “It was trying to get to her. It leaned over her. It—”

Damien cuts me off. “No one heard anything. For all we know, it was just taking its time with the last person to eat in there.”

“It grabbed her,” I snap, more sharply than I intend. “It dragged her across the floor. It said something, I know it did.”

“Again, that’s not possible.”

I don’t argue that part. I don’t know if it is or isn’t. But I know what I saw.

“She would’ve died if we left her there,” I say instead, turning to Rowan as if that would explain why I'm carrying a human.

Damien stops walking.

I stop too.

He gestures broadly to the street around us, to the bodies littering the pavement, to the destruction swallowing the city whole. “Dead,” he says flatly, pointing to one. Then another. “Dead. Dead. All of them are dead, Ezra. You don’t care about them. So why care about her?”

I don’t have an answer.

That’s what irritates me the most.

I look down at her face again, at the faint crease between her brows even in unconsciousness, at the smear of blood across her cheek. Something tightens in my chest, something I don’t bother naming.

“She’s the only one it didn’t kill,” I say finally. “That has to mean something.”

Damien exhales sharply through his nose but doesn’t argue further. He just turns and keeps walking.

Rowan falls into step beside us, silent as always. He points at her leg, fingers flashing.

She's bleeding.

“I know,” I say. “We need to stop soon. I’ll bandage it.”

Damien groans and kicks a piece of twisted metal out of his path. “This is exactly what we don’t need.”

He’s not wrong.

Three Titans breaching a protected zone is already catastrophic. If word spreads that we lost control of this city, the others will demand answers. Explanations. Heads.

And now we’re carrying an unconscious human through the wreckage like she’s something precious.

Ahead, a building looms through the smoke—dark windows, door hanging open, no visible movement inside.

Empty.

For now.

“That one,” I say.

None of us hesitate.

We change course and head toward it, the weight in my arms feeling heavier with every step—not because of her size, but because of what this might mean.

Titans don’t act without reason.

And tonight, three of them came here.

For something.

Or someone.