Page 72 of Seer Prophet

“Di'lanlente a' guete.Does it matter when?” she muttered. “It is clearly far along.”

“Happened damned fast,” Jax added, maybe not to be outdone.

Loki did not look directly at any of them.

He just stood there, letting them feel over his light. He understood their concern. He accepted it, along with their scrutiny. He likely would have had a similar reaction, if the situation occurred with one of them in relation to a civilian passenger they had the collective responsibility to protect.

They needed to know they could trust him with her.

They needed to know he wasn’t about to do something crazy, something that might jeopardize the mission.

A few seconds after they finished scanning his light, Anale tried to break the tension, but Loki heard a thread of nerves in her voice.

“Cap’n’s gone off the deep end.” She gave Loki a good-natured punch in the arm. “Pull it together, brother. Or hell, ask her for it. Do we need to get you drunk?”

“Don’t tell him to ask her!” Illeg frowned. “Gods, Ana. We’re in the middle of an op!”

“Not to mention the Bridge would kill us. Assuming Dante didn’t kill him with her bare hands,” Jax joked.

“He mightneedto ask her,” Ontari muttered.“Dugra a’ kitre?look at him.”

“We can’t talk about this here.” Mika waved her hands. “Shut up, all of you. You’re all just making him worse, talking about him fucking her. Can’t you see that?”

Jax broke into a nervous laugh. Anale only shrugged, unapologetic. Her eyes remained fixed on Loki’s face.

“You all right, brother?” she asked again.

Loki shook his head, feeling his face get warmer.

He knew most of that was not from embarrassment.

“I’m fine,” he said tonelessly.

When the silence deepened, he took a step towards the Chinook, not looking at any of them.

“We should leave now,” he said simply.

Without waiting for their answer, he grabbed the guardrails on either side of the descended staircase outside the Chinook’s open forward hatch. Placing a foot on the second step, he yanked himself up, without looking back to see if any followed him. Even so, he felt the exchanged looks between the seers he left outside. He continued to ignore them once he was inside, and as he made his way deeper into the row of seats behind the cockpit.

He kept his mind blank to all of it, as much as he could.

He mostly succeeded by the time the rest of them began to file up the same staircase.

Loki deposited his weight in a window seat on the starboard side, about ten rows deep into the thirty or so in the main hold. He watched in his peripheral vision as the other seers made their way down that same aisle, choosing seats throughout the body of the Chinook and talking to one another in low voices.

Loki only intervened once. He clicked his fingers and waved a hand sharply towards the front of the plane. Rex had filed in after Holo and their human cargo, and seemed intent on sitting beside Gina for the duration of the flight.

“No,” was all Loki said.

He said it loudly, however.

After he spoke, Jax and Rex exchanged looks with Anale before all three of them burst into mutual laughter. Looking between them, Loki realized, clearly, the attempt was staged for his benefit. Even after he determined that fact, he still watched to make sure Rex relinquished his seat. Loki continued to watch as the large-boned seer walked towards the back of the Chinook, moving his bulk awkwardly through the row of navy-blue, cloth-covered seats with their individual headsets and plastic armrests.

The large seer winked at Loki as he passed, patting him on the arm, but Loki didn’t smile back.

Instead he fought another wave of pain, watching Holo seat himself next to the woman.

Loki did want to sit with her. He knew it wasn’t a good idea, and not only because every seer on the aircraft now watched his eyes and light with amusement.

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