Page 36 of The Fanged One

"I don't know. Maybe he wanted to just be himself and not Havi's son. Taranis knew, but I don't know if the other knights did," Arne replied, his golden eyes lost in thought. "Perhaps he left Asgard for another reason and not this idea of Loki's."

"In the myths, he is meant to become the new king of Asgard after Ragnarök." Von quickly scribbled something down. "We will leave him as a follow-up question for now."

"It could have been a part of the plan I wasn't meant to know," Fenris admitted. "As I said before, only Loki knows how everything fits together."

Von tapped his pen on his notebook page. "All of our human stories are clearly bullshit too, which doesn't make any of this easier."

No one was eating. Ciara had set her cup down, and Tor's eyes had gone the same flat winter gray they always did when he was preparing to fight something.

"Those rumors and stories started because of the Norns." Fenris leaned back in his chair, his eyes focused somewhere else. "They wove the version of the story that every skald sang and did it so cleanly that even most of the gods believed it. Each of the gods who paid was given only the piece of the plan they needed in order to play it. My father was the only one who held the whole thing together because he was the architect. He went into the ground, and has been there ever since, waiting."

"Waiting for you?" Linnea guessed.

Fenris nodded. "If Havi and Freya are to be believed, then yes. I was to wake when it was time to find Loki and bring him home."

Von finished writing and tapped the page. "This is a lot to take in all at once."

"And there's more," Arne said quietly, and every head swiveled toward him. "I talked to my mother last night, after we got back from Ritual. I called her and asked about why she had been sneaking off with Havi."

"And it's not to shag him?" Von guessed, brows rising.

"No. Apparently, my father was a part of this plan of Loki's too," Arne replied in a frustrated growl. "The rune mark Havi put on his brow when I was small was a binding spell. It made my father play the villain, side with Morrigan, and make war on Havi. He had to agree to it willingly for it to work, and he did, but he didn't know how long he would have to wear it, or what it would cost the people he loved. The mark has been removed, and Havi himself took my mother to Breidablik to show her and to apologize. My father has been in Baldur's hall this entire time and not in a prison."

"Vili," Fenris said, with a soft smile. "He was always kind to me, and I don't know him as anyone else. I'm sorry that you never got to see that side of him."

"Me too. From the sounds of things, he and my mother have been…working things out. We elves only find our mates once, and it almost killed Alruna to be apart from him," Arne said and cleared his throat. "It's up to her whether or not she wants to forgive him for his bullshit. I'm staying out of it."

"Always a wise move when it comes to anyone else’s relationships," Von said after a long moment. "So Loki is alive but hidden. If you're destined to find him, then there must be a way to figure this out."

Fenris nodded. "Yes, but I have no idea where to start looking."

"And the dark is coming." Von chewed on the end of his pen, lost in thought. "Baldur is the weapon, and Loki is the only one who can pull the trigger because Loki is the only one who knows how. Tricky mess."

Fenris's eyes warmed, and a smile played about his mouth. "That…is definitely the best description of my father."

18

Tor had been silent for Fenris's entire story, but now he leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. "And the úlfheðnar? We are meant to be your kids or something. I want to know what the truth is before the rest of this gets worse. The cult that wanted to resurrect you was stopped, but that doesn't mean there won't be fanatics who will see your return as some kind of sign of their supremacy. They will all think that they are your army."

Fenris shook his head. "They aren't. The úlfheðnar were Havi's before they had anything to do with me. He gathered nine of his best shaman-warriors and gifted them with the magic to shift. His blessing, his power, not mine. Their children inherited the ability, and so on down the bloodline."

He ran a finger along a scratch in the table's worn varnish and didn't lift his eyes from it. "When I agreed to be bound, my human wife and our children needed somewhere safe to live. Havi placed them among the úlfheðnar so they could grow up with others who could shift too. They wouldn't have survived in the human world alone, and my wife had no idea how to handle wolf children."

"So the úlfheðnar were always Havi's warriors, and your children were fostered into it," Ciara said, her breath coming out with a whoosh. "They had been made by magic, not blood after all. I guess it is one less mystery to ponder. I can't imagine how Ulfheim would react to the news."

"I vote for getting someone else to tell them that the myth must have tangled over the centuries while we are away on our epic quest," Layla chimed in.

"Somewhere along the way, the fostering must have become a founding, and the úlfheðnar started being called my children directly." Fenris shifted in his chair. "I can see how it could happen. Stories drift. Names blur. Thousands of years is long enough for any truth to become something else."

Tor growled with rumbling frustration. "Linnea almost fucking died because that lunatic cult believed⁠—"

"Tor. Don't start," Ciara said quietly, her hand going to his forearm, and she looked at Linnea.

Linnea had barely heard anything past, Human wife and our children.

The words sat in her chest. She turned them over, and the picture assembled itself without her permission. A wife. Children. He had agreed to be bound for thousands of years so she could be safe and raise their children among wolves.

A wolf would only ever do that for his fated mate, Linnea thought.