Page 54 of Last Thrall of Asgard

“Have you grown too used to multiple partners?” Odin regarded me.

He had been watching me too. “Are you certain you and Loki aren’t related, instead of Aesir and Jotun?” I teased. “Imeantthat you are without your ravens. Your wolves. Your steed. It was said you never went anywhere without them.”

“What use have I for wolves when there will be no more corpses to feed them? What use have I for ravens when they have passed me every whisper I ever needed to know? And Sleipnir deserves to enjoy greener pastures after knowing too many of blackness and death. The rest is unknown, and so I freed them all of any service to me. They run wild upon the branches of Yggdrasil and travel through the realms as they please.”

That answered some of it, but I also had to mention, “You weren’t reborn with your right eye.”

The observation, however painful I thought it might be for Odin, didn’t seem to faze him. “Some losses, some scars, some stories cannot be rewritten, even for gods.”

Like Loki’s scars.

“I wasted my time as agreatgod trying to hang onto something I never let myself enjoy,” Odin continued. “I looked to the future, only the future, and how I might outlast it, rather than living in the moments I had. I failed my people instead ofleading them and became a slave to wanting control while never truly having it. You can understand that, can’t you, thrall?”

“If you’re telling me to accept my lot in life after all this, you can kindlyfuck off.”

Odin laughed again. He should have been the god I was most afraid of, but I was more afraid of losing something I’d never had, of losing something I might never know, when I needed to know.

Ineededto know.

What had Heimdall told Loki? What was my future? Was my assumption right? Was it wrong? If Loki did want me, why not admit it? What did he have to lose that he couldn’t admit that? Or was I chasing something, wanting something that could never be mine?

“Yes,” Odin said, and though it was to himself and not in answer to my thoughts, a part of me wondered if it was both. “You are perfect for this task, Oli. My ravens’ last message for me was to tell me of your coming.”

“Oh? How many of them?”

He didn’t laugh that time, but he did smirk and began to approach me in a way that reflexively made me back up and feel, finally, somewhat afraid. “Do you know why fate did not let me stop the war?”

“Why?”

“Because if I had succeeded in preventing the future, I would have been unstoppable. I would have been the tyrant the worst of my stories claim me to be. The All-Father should be more merciful, yes? A leader whose people want to follow him. I need some of that power again, some sense of control, but I do not need to be a tyrant.”

The feathers shot out from his malleable cloak like tendrils, like the branches of Yggdrasil, binding me like Mimir had beenbound. Only these tethers lifted me, swinging me up and over Odin and holding me aloft above the high seat of the god of gods.

“I do not need to be all-knowing or all-seeing,” Odin said, “only to accept that some things are beyond the control even of gods. It was in allowing that truth to unravel me that I failed. I will not fail again.”

The same soft, feather-tendrils wrapped around my eyes, blocking out my view and any and all light. I tried to not tense, to not show my growing fear. Odin said he didn’t want to be a tyrant. He wanted to be a fair, merciful leader, and I could only hope that also meant toward me.

Once again, my conjured clothes, more magic than fabric, surely, melted like a lick of warm flames had fluttered across my body and burnt them—but not hot, not searing or painful. The flames fluttered because they were carried by feathers.

Blind, naked, and suspended as if in a spider’s web, I dangled, as Odin, the All-Father himself, reached high enough to cup my cheek and low enough to fondle my balls. He ran his thumb up my shaft, then down, down beneath my sac, lower along the space of skin right before my pucker andpressed.

“Ngn!” It was more heightened by not being able to see or guess what he might do next. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t resist.

“Shh.” Odin petted my cheek. “A father, a king, agodshould be someone his people can rely on. I lost sight of that. I lost sight of everything. Do you believe I can be trusted, Oli?”

“S-should be? Yes.Canbe—”

“I can. Ican. If you agree to give yourself to me.” Odin pulled both hands from my body, leaving me to the feathers.

The lack of his touch made my cock throb, pulsing to further hardness at being denied. “How much of me?”

“Your soul is your own. Your freedom is Loki’s until your pact ends. I ask for your body for a time, but also for your trust. Can you trust that I will give us both what we need?”

If not for the tinge of desperation in his plea, I might have wondered why he asked. But in that faint waver of Odin’s voice, I understood.

He needed to believe he could still lead in good faith, even after he’d failed the other gods by failing to stop Ragnarök.

“I trust you, Odin,” I said, “for I do believe you are great. And great does not mean good, or perfect, or right, but if you attempt to be those things and still fail, you can be great to those who watched you try. Or, well,feltin my case.” Given I currently couldn’t watch anything.

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