Free Enslaved by Elisabeth Naughton

looked from face to face, then around the room, bits and pieces of what had landed him here spiraled through his mind.
    Shit. Gryphon.
    Titus closed his eyes. Pain pulsed along his skull as the scene replayed behind his eyelids. “Where is he?”
    “Who?” Phin asked.
    “The king of fucking France,” Titus said sarcastically. “Gryphon, you dumbass.”
    “Um… k-i-d .” Phineus lifted his eyebrows, pointed across the bed. “Remember?”
    “I’ve heard it before,” Max muttered. And I can spell that word, moron.
    Shit…what the hell do I say?
    Whatever you do, don’t tell him the truth.
    Thoughts spun out of control in the room. The first from Max—full of attitude and animosity. The second from Phineus, frazzled and desperate for a way not to answer. And the third from Callia across the room, clear and calm, the only one of the three who was obviously totally with it.
    Oh, fucking fantastic. The blow to the head Titus had taken when Gryphon had knocked him into that concrete wall hadn’t done shit to alter his gift.
    Irritation edged Titus’s already dwindling mood, kicked up his headache. He ignored Max and focused on Phin—whom he could see—and Callia—whom he couldn’t. “Stop pussyfooting around me, you two. You can’t block me from your thoughts, so you might as well just tell me what the hell happened to Gryphon. Nick didn’t kill him, did he? What happened out there wasn’t Gryphon’s fault.”
    “Considering what he did to you,” Phin muttered, “that’s pretty generous.”
    Titus remembered all too well Gryphon’s crazed eyes and the things that had been running through his mind when he charged those daemons. “Yeah, well, you don’t know what’s going on in his head. We’d already have you locked in the loony bin if it were you, pretty boy.”
    Phineus grinned again, his brown eyes crinkling at the edges. “I knew you were jealous of this gorgeous face. Admit it.”
    Titus snorted, then swore as another shot of pain rushed through his torso.
    “Okay, enough,” Callia said, coming back to the right side of his bed and holding out a cup with a straw. “Drink this.”
    As Titus took the cup from her hand, careful not to touch her, she turned to Phin and added, “Why don’t you take Max to get something to eat.” She looked at her son on the other side of the bed. “Are you hungry, honey?”
    Max shrugged, crossed his arms over his chest, and deliberately didn’t meet her gaze. “I guess.”
    The kid dropped to his feet and shuffled toward the door. While Titus sipped the juice, which tasted like heaven, he watched Callia watch her son. He didn’t need to read minds to know what she was thinking. Her I love you and I don’t know what to do to help you expression was written clearly on her face.
    “I’ll be back to sing to you later, smart guy,” Phin said as he pushed up on his long legs and scrubbed a hand through his short dark hair. “And this time I’ll serenade you with my pristine tenor. You want ‘T.N.T.’ or ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’?”
    “If you’re gonna come back here and sing, I want a lobotomy.”
    Phin winked at Callia. “He’s delirious with excitement.”
    Titus’s head fell back against the pillow as Phin headed out the door. “I’m gonna need more drugs. Preferably whatever you gave me before that knocked me out.”
    Callia turned and looked down at him, her hands on her slim hips, her eyebrows lifted in amusement. A stethoscope was slung around her neck and a pen was tucked behind her left ear. One he bet she probably forgot she’d put there. “I only gave you enough to keep you asleep during the surgery. With that head wound, I’d prefer not to give you more than you need.”
    Surgery. Shit. It really had been bad. No wonder his ribs hurt like hell. “What did you have to do?”
    She sat on the side of his bed. He shifted his legs out of the way so she wouldn’t accidentally touch him. “You had a punctured lung, couple of