Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (6 page)

Looking at her, Loki exhaled.

Feeling something in his own chest relax, along with a flicker of warmth for the Bridge herself, he nodded.

“Of course, Esteemed Bridge.”

“I really am sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, and meant it. “Thank you, Esteemed Bridge,” he added and meant that, too.

She gave another seer’s nod, a single, sharp jerk of her head.

Then she was gone through the organic flaps, entering the security station Loki himself had just left. Taking another deep breath, he let it out a few seconds later. Frowning as he thought over the Bridge’s words, even as a firmer resolution made itself felt in his light, he turned on his heel, walking with determined steps towards the lobby of the apartment building.

He pushed his way through the glass doors, and…

The daughter ambushed him on the other side.

She must have been waiting for him there. Either way, she stepped out at him, barring his way the instant he emerged from the relative brightness of the outside to the dimmer gold and red hues of the once-opulent building lobby.

“You!” she said, her voice already accusatory. “I want to talk to you.”

Loki felt his light reconfigure, turning immediately into a shield, even though the girl in front of him was slight, a bare sixteen years in age, and human.

Behind him, he heard a laugh. Loki turned, saw a group of infiltrators walking in the glass doors on the other side, including many Loki knew. Raddi walked in directly behind him, clapping him on the back as he passed with a barely suppressed guffaw.

Good luck, brother…
the younger seer whispered in his mind.
That’s what you get for going after jailbait human tail…

She is not jailbait.

What is she, thirty-five? At most?

That is full adulthood for a human, and you know it,
Loki sent back, gritting his teeth.
She has an adolescent child of her own, for the love of the gods…

Whatever you say, brother,
Raddi joked.
I bet Dante thinks her mom’s too young for you, too…

I highly doubt that is her complaint,
Loki retorted.

Raddi grinned.
Well, I’m positive that if you just explain to her how it really went down…how you met her mother when she was half-naked, tied up and being kept as a sex slave, and how seeing her like that brought up an overwhelming urge in your light to fuck her senseless, Dante won’t mind a bit, brother––

Loki shut the other seer out of his mind before he could go on.

Not before he heard the giggles of Chinja and Starlen on his other side, though, or before he caught Jax grinning at him from the opposite end of the lobby where he stood with Deklan.

Loki didn’t want to hear the rest, not with his light still swimming with reactions to the Bridge’s words, and the teenaged daughter in question glaring up at him, tapping her foot as she waited for him to deal with her.

Truthfully, though, Raddi’s words stung.

Maybe in part because the seer’s jabs skirted awfully close to some of Loki’s own misgivings around what he’d done in the field that day, as well as his lingering guilt at how he’d reacted when they’d first found Gina. It didn’t help that he’d intended to go visit her at that very moment, and had in fact intended to do more than simply talk. Even now, as his eyes studied the face of Dante warily, his light looked for her mother’s almost obsessively inside the construct.

He’d let all of this go for too long.

He’d been trying to do the right thing, but that felt misguided now, too.

Anale’s words echoed in his mind, as well.

You are well and truly fucked, my brother…
the infiltrator said smugly when they landed back at the carrier after he’d first brought Gina back.
Just wait until her daughter finds out. She’s going to rip you a new one, brother, then stomp on your cock…if she doesn’t just sic Vikram and the Sword on you for fun…

The Sword and Vikram had been surprisingly understanding about it, though.

Dante had not.

Even now, after the teenaged human had directed the other seers to conduct multiple scans on her mother’s light to ensure no wrongdoing had occurred, Dante still seemed to view Loki as a kind of sex-drunk pervert who intended to not only break her mother’s heart, but to possibly wound her physically in the process. Dante didn’t know much about seer sexuality or physiology, but apparently someone had told her enough that she had concerns.

Serious, serious concerns.

The situation would have been far different of course, if it hadn’t been mutual between Gina and himself. Loki knew the limits of his own ability for self-deception. He could say with some confidence that he would have left Gina entirely alone if she had not wanted him. He would have found some way to make that permanent, too, possibly with the help of other seers to banish her from his light…or at least to keep her safe from any temptations he might have to pull on her, or try to turn her head towards him.

Truthfully, he probably would have requested a reassignment.

China perhaps.

Yet almost from the very start, Gina had been as transfixed with his light as he had been with hers. Moreover, Gina didn’t mind that he was seer, even after he got drunk enough with desire to confess his age to her. He knew such a number probably felt more abstract to her than anything given how he wore his age compared to a human, but still, it demonstrated that she wasn’t as turned off by their differences as he had feared.

She wanted to have intercourse with him.

She’d asked him for it, outright.

She’d asked him many, many times now.

She said she trusted him. She said she thought he was a good man…a good seer, anyway, she’d laughed, which had made his pain worse, almost unbearably worse, even apart from her actual words. Her unearned and complete trust in him only made his own feelings more intense.

Even so, he had restrained himself.

He restrained himself despite Gina’s wishes. He restrained himself in the hopes that Dante might grow accustomed to the idea before he lost himself in the physical side of his pull towards her mother.

So far, however, Dante had not softened towards him in the slightest.

And yes, it still bothered him.

When Loki told Gina why he wanted to wait, she had only thrown her hands up in exasperation, although Loki could tell his concern touched her, too.

Gina thought Dante was simply “being a teenager.” She argued that her daughter would not get used to their new relationship until they acted like the adults and didn’t succumb to her “bullshit psychological blackmail,” as Gina put it. Gina further said, with somewhat more warmth in her voice, that Dante had been protective of her since her father left.

Gina also explained (with somewhat more embarrassment), that given some of the things Dante witnessed while growing up with a young, single mother in a not-great part of Queens, her daughter likely genuinely feared that Gina didn’t have the best taste when it came to picking men…with good reason, Gina implied.

Loki didn’t probe that unspoken commentary too deeply, given the intense feelings it evoked in him.

Nor did he want to think about it now.

He continued to walk towards his lover’s daughter as he thought all of these things, his body tensing the closer he got to her.

She had been waiting for him.

He was sure of it now. He could feel it on her light.

She had been standing here, turning over aggressive words to yell at him once he emerged from that security station. What he couldn’t decide was why. She had to know he was due to leave Bangkok soon. Dante did tech support for all major missions now, including those tracking Shadow’s Network, so of course she would know. She would further know that he would be on assignment for months and out of reach of Gina during that time.

What could she possibly have to say to him, given that?

He didn’t have to wonder for long.

“I suppose you’re going to see my
mom
now?” Dante hissed once he was close enough. “You get your papers to roll, so it’s off to guilt her into getting you off before you go?”

Loki blinked at her, startled.

Then he flushed.

“Did you
ask
the Bridge for this?” Dante snapped. “Looking for a way out, now that shit got serious…‘Loks’?”

Loki glanced down, saw her small, white hands clenched into fists.

“…I guess you’re probably done with her anyway, right?” Dante stepped closer to him and he backed off. “Is that it? Huh, ice-blood? You bored? Is that what this ‘mission’ is really all about? You want some new human tail to hunt?”

Loki felt his face warm even more.

Truthfully, her initial accusations weren’t all that far off from what he’d been thinking. Well, assuming he understood them correctly. The last few things she’d said just confused him, and made him wonder if Dante was accusing him of fixating on her mother or of simply being some kind of predator of human women more generally.

“Well?” she hissed. “Which is it? You on a suicide run, hoss? Or you just making a fast run out of a domestic bliss kind of thing?”

Loki’s frown deepened.

As he looked at the teenaged human, her mother’s words came back to him. Once they had, he saw the fear in Dante’s eyes, maybe for the first time.

Her looks confused him, too, he was forced to admit. If Dante had been a seer, she would have been approximately thirty or thirty-five years old.

He reminded himself that the relationship with Gina was consensual. Even Dante must know that by now. If he had been lying to himself on that particular point, through delusion or whatever else, someone would have pulled him aside. He would have gotten a stern talking to by someone, if not more than that. Vikram, most certainly.

Likely the Sword.

But all Loki had felt off of Vikram was amusement…and a small tinge of jealousy, once he tasted the edges of Gina’s light.

But thinking about that only got Loki’s blood up more.

“We will talk,” Loki said, focusing sternly on Dante’s face. He made the decision even as he said it. “We will talk now…and settle this thing, cousin.”

He walked towards her, reaching for her arm, but she jerked it away, raising her voice.

“Keep your fucking hands
off
me, asshole!”

Loki felt seers looking their way and stepped back.

Within seconds, he felt flickers of their light around the two of them as they made sure he hadn’t done anything inappropriate. Satisfied that he had not, they withdrew, but he felt a number of them lingering still in the nearby space.

Have caution, brother,
Vikram advised him.
She is only a child.

I know,
Loki shot back, speaking more from emotion than logic.
I think I have had a bit too much caution under the circumstances already, brother…

Vikram surprised him, smiling from behind the Barrier.
We have all been thinking that, brother. For weeks, if you want the truth. Do not let her bully you. She is used to being able to push others around. Even seers…

Thinking about that, Loki sighed.

He also agreed with Vikram’s words.

You are right,
he sent.
I have been a fool.

He felt a sharper pulse of amusement from Raddi.

We commend your restraint…
Raddi grinned at him in the Barrier space.
But yes. You have been a fucking idiot, brother. Any one of us would have slept with your foxy girlfriend by now…hell, we would probably be sleeping with her at this very moment. And yes, we heard her ask you for it…you lucky bastard…

Loki felt his face warm again, but did not answer.

Shifting his attention back towards the human girl, he was about to try and speak to her again, when he noticed she had her arm and hand held at a strange angle.

He couldn’t quite wrap his head around what it meant…

…when she punched him in the face.