Page 58 of Last Thrall of Asgard

All I had to do was seize him.

The following chapter contains:

Shifted/Werewolf-like Sex, Knotting, Switching, Edging, Intersex Rep, and Mirror Use.

Chapter nine

The Swindled

OLI

Iconsidered literally seizing Loki, gripping him about the waist and making him listen, but he would only blast me away again. For a moment, I didn’t dare move or breathe, because then he would realize I was back, and I wasn’t yet sure how to begin.

Trust had to be earned, but even earned, it was difficult for the person trying to trust when they barely trusted themselves. I had to be willing to lose.

I had to be willing to fail.

And still try.

“I’m not going to push anymore, Loki.”

His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t turn around. Not yet.

“All I want is an answer to one thing, the only thing that matters to me after all I did for you, for them, for… me. What doyouwant?”

“You already accomplished what I wanted, remember?” Loki said it, detached and cold. “We had a deal. You completed it.”

“Then why don’t you look happy about it?”

At last, he turned, his lips spreading into a mad,falsegrin. “Are mortals so dim that they can’t recognize a smile?”

“Are you so dim that you think I’d believe a fake one?”

His expression wavered, but he held on to the mask. “As I said, I have what I wanted. Now you can get what you wanted.” He tried to grab my wrist, to undo the magic binding our pact, but that would mean the end. That would mean I’d be sent back to Midgard and never see him again.

I put both hands behind my back and lurched away. “They forgive you,” I said. “All of them. Even if they didn’t say so outright, it was clear to me from every encounter. Heimdall. Balder. Odin—”

Loki vanished, and I knew to spin around, finding him behind me, trying to grab one of my wrists by trickery.

I lurched away from him again.

“Enough!” Loki ported behind me, but again, I evaded him.

“Why?”

“Oli—”

“If you wanted forgiveness, to be welcomed into Asgard again, you have it! Why won’t you accept it?”

“Because I don’t deserve it!” Loki bellowed with such force that I was magically blasted away again, but not into another realm, just enough to stumble backward. The force also billowed his unbraided hair, revealing his scars, which he immediately covered and turned away from me.

“You’re still scarred. Even after being reborn. Because you don’t forgive yourself for what they represent. That’s why you’re angry. Why you grew angrier after each god you sent me to. You thought helping them, proving to yourself that they forgive you, and in a manner only you would have thought to seek forgiveness, would make you feel better. But you don’t, do you?”

Loki turned his scarred half further away from me, and I pulled my hands from behind my back to reach for him.

He grabbed my wrists with the reflexes of a snake.

“No.” I twisted to get out of his hold, but he wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t grip me properly, something I assumed he needed to break the pact between us, or I’d already be back on Midgard, so I kept twisting, kept struggling to be released. “Stop. Will you just stop? Loki! Why are you so insufferable?”

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