(TAYLOR HEBERT) CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

For a second, nobody moved.

Taylor stood there, larger than anything else in the room, breath coming steady through a body that didn’t feel like hers so much as something she was wearing. The air felt different against her skin, thinner somehow, like it had been pushed aside to make room. And she could hear more than before: the rapid breathing, shifting feet, and the scrape of someone stepping back a little too quickly. But her attention was fixed on Lung. 

She had expected the transformation to trigger something immediate. A lunge, maybe, or a challenge, the start of a fight she’d already half-committed to in her head.

Lung didn’t move. He looked at her, really looked this time, and then gave a small, almost dismissive nod.

“Hm.”

That was it.

There was no posturing, or even a half-hearted attempt at violence. It threw her off more than an attack would have.

A beat passed, and then Lung reached to the side, grabbed something from the back of his chair, and pulled on a pair of pants with the same lack of urgency he’d shown in everything else. The effect was immediate. A couple of them let out breaths they’d been holding. Someone even made the sign of the cross.

“Leave,” he said with slightly accented English, without raising his voice.

No one argued. Muffled conversations stopped, footsteps shuffled, and the room emptied faster than she would have expected from people who had been laughing a minute ago. One of them lingered near the door, glancing between the two of them, long enough for Lung to point his head toward a corner.

“Bring a chair,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

A muttered acknowledgment, and then they were gone too, returning a few seconds later.

Taylor shifted her weight slightly, aware of the way the floor creaked under her. The chair that got dragged in looked flimsy even before it was set down, with its thin legs and cheap wood. It looked like the kind of thing that creaked under normal use, and undoubtedly wouldn’t survive her sitting on it like this.

She stared at it. Then she sighed, reached up, and tapped the faceplate at the center of her chest.

The green light came, the weight of her bulk peeling off her shoulders until she was just herself again, suddenly aware of how much space she had been taking up just seconds ago.

Lung raised an eyebrow at the transformation, but that was all he gave her.

Taylor took the seat.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then, “Seeing as you transformed back,” Lung said, settling himself more comfortably. “You are not here to fight me.”

Taylor nodded once, forcing her shoulders to stay loose. “Yeah.”

Her hands rested in her lap, fingers lacing together just to give them something to do. She drew in a breath, held it for a second longer than she needed, then let it out.

“I’m here to talk.”

He didn’t respond. He just watched her.

It took her a second to realize he was waiting.

“Oh.” Heat crept up her neck again, irritating in how familiar it felt. “Right. I…” she started, then stopped.

The words stalled.

She had walked all the way in here, past people who would have happily watched her get torn apart, stood in front of him, transformed, proved her point, and now she was stuck on the part where she actually said what she wanted.

There were probably better ways to phrase it. Something that didn’t sound like she’d just walked into a gang leader’s territory to give orders she had no right to give. But Lung didn’t look like someone who cared about careful wording, or the patience for it.

So she didn’t bother.

“I want you to stop,” she said bluntly. 

He leaned forward slightly, a slight crease forming between his brows.

“Stop what?”

“Drugs,” she said, before she could overthink it. “And trafficking. Women.” Her jaw tightened. “Especially women.”

For a second, nothing happened. Then heat rolled off him in a wave, subtle at first and then not, veins standing out along his arms, and a faint shimmer in the air around him like the start of something worse. Fire licked into existence along his shoulders, though it seemed more a warning than an attack. Still, her pulse had picked up, loud in her ears, and for a split second her hand twitched toward the watch before she forced it still.

Lung drew in a breath, deep enough that it sounded almost strained, then let it out in a thin stream of smoke.

The heat receded.

“Why?” he asked.

It took her a second. “What?”

His eyes didn’t leave hers. “Why do you want me to stop?”

“Oh.” She opened her mouth, then closed it again. 

That wasn’t what she’d expected.

She’d come in ready to argue, to push, to hold her ground against refusal or anger. This… this felt almost worse.

Because she didn’t have a clean answer. Because anything she came up with sounded so silly the second she tried to say it out loud. And she knew it wouldn't matter to him anyway. 

It’s wrong sat there, useless.

He was still waiting.

“…I don’t want it in my city,” she said finally.

Lung watched her for a long moment, the silence stretching out between them in a way that made it hard to tell what he was thinking, if anything. Then he leaned back again, the heat fading until it was just him sitting there, considering.

“What about the others?” he asked. “The other gangs.”

Taylor blinked.

She hadn’t… really thought past him.

It didn’t take long to answer anyway.

“The same,” she said. “I want them to stop too.”

Another pause.

Lung nodded once, as if that answered something.

“And if we refuse?”

The part she’d expected from the start.

In lieu of an actual answer, she lifted her arm, turning her wrist just enough for the watch to catch the light. Then she smiled, a little sharper than anything she’d shown since walking in.

Lung smirked.