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Chapter 69

Chapter 69
Loki woke to soft sounds nuzzled up to him. He smiled before he felt Cephera's hair through his fingers and realized it wasn't Cephera's. His eyes flew wide and he found himself alone in her bed with the damn wolf.
The pup nuzzled his chin and whined. Loki pushed it away. "Dammit Cephera." He cursed. He heard the sound of water being interrupted.
"Loki? You're awake." She called from the archway where her bathroom lie beyond.
"Yes." He grumbled not loud enough for her to hear. He pushed the wolf away from him harshly. "Stop that." He demanded as the wolf nipped at his fingers playfully. Loki stood and went right for the bathroom. Cephera was sitting up in the bath looking half relaxed. "Why did you leave me alone with him like that?" He asked her trying to not become angry and presumptuous.
"Oh Loki I'm sorry, but..., well look." She pointed, on the edge of the bath stood the wolf, his head cocked completely to one side staring in an awkward manner at Cephera in the bath. "He follows me everywhere. This is the first private, well semi private bath I've had in a month." She explained. "When I first woke I thought you coming to me was a dream and I was in my absolute joy to realize it wasn't, but one doesn't realize how much the little things count until you lose them. When I got up to go to the bathroom the pup stayed with you. That has never happened so I took my chance."
She seemed sincere. It didn't seem she has plotted a way to force him to spend time with the 'child'. He hadn't even thought how he would treat that situation yet. "Out." Loki ordered the pup. His ears fell and his back dipped, his tail curled between his legs and he slunk across the floor looking back over his shoulder with big sad eyes.
Loki felt another pang of guilt and the feeling surprised him and angered him. "Out!" He ordered again until the wolf disappeared out the archway.
"You don't need to yell at him that way." Cephera frowned.
"You're too lax with him." Loki warned as he slipped from his pants and into the warm water.
"Are you still angry with me?" She asked changing the subject.
"No. I knew what you would do before I gave you that choice and I gave it to you anyway. I know you well Cephera, you're soft. I should have known the moment I saw those... babies," he forced the word, "that you would become attached immediately. Always wanting to save the world a little at a time."
"Not the world Loki, but those in it unable to help themselves." She corrected. "What now?" She asked him her eyes hopeful.
"They are here now, there is no changing that." He replied. He wasn't pleased with that, but to rip those 'things' from Cephera now would be cruel. She clearly had connected with them.
"I'm sorry." She lowered her eyes.
"Don't be, I accepted you for who you are, soft or not. I may not agree with your decision, but I cannot condemn you for it. You meant well." He pulled her closer to him. The soft skin of her breasts pushed against his chest as she turned to embrace him.
The stirring from below was just a reminder of how long he'd gone without her touch and the urgent need to reconcile that problem stormed his groin.
He kissed her. Deep and passionate he allowed his mind to be taken off past event and enjoyed the pleasures of the present.
***
"She will be the end of you." Thor insisted. "She's weak of mind and heart, you should be done with her. Leave her to those monsters and let her hold the shame they carry."
Loki scowled at his brother. "I'll not leave her for such a simple trifle. She has strength to take on things no one else does." Loki defended Cephera fiercely.
"Foolishness is not strength. She is bound to take you down with her. Think of what the people will say once word of this reaches the streets, if it hasn't already." Thor glowered. When had he turned on Cephera so harshly?
When Loki had mentioned going to see Thor he had wondered why she looked so solemn. Now he knew.
"She is where she belongs, at my side." Loki flushed with anger that he kept buried.
"At your side yet you cannot control your own woman. Take a firm hand with her Loki or she will in future once more go against your will."
"Since when have you justified creating a slave of your paramour?" Loki was appalled. They certainly hadn't gotten that attitude from their father, who had never and would never lay a hand to their mother.
"Since I saw the havoc she is willing to unleash in this house. She needs to learn her place and stick her nose out of things that do not concern her." Thor was thundering his words, this situation had truly unsettled him.
"She's to be my wife, I've decided." It would have been a lie, but as he said it he knew it was the right thing. She was a rare woman and he would not relinquish her to any other.
"Than you are a bigger fool than her." Thor spat in disgust. Loki didn't reply, he left Thor's private quarters. He'd promised Cephera that he would come see her where they kept his children. She insisted they needed names and Loki couldn't deny this was true if they were to stick around.
He entered the room to screams. "Just cut it!" Cephera was yelling.
"No, she'll let go." Seraphina insisted.
"Cut it or she'll pull it out." Cephera hissed. Loki walked in to the room to find Cephera bent over the lounge chair, a large chunk of her hair captured within the skeletal hand of the half baby girl. A narrowed eyed look on the child's face as she pulled relentlessly at the strands.
Loki strode across the floor but before he'd reached them the girl saw him. Her eyes narrowed more and her hand jerked making Cephera cry out loudly as the hair was tore from her head. Cephera fell to the side, landing to the floor.
Loki bent down to her and checked the damage. She was bleeding at the base of her neck up along behind her ear. A superficial wound, one she could heal from without aide.
"She-devil." Seraphina was growling at the child, a child who looked to be the equivalent of a human five year old. They grow fast, Loki realized.
Loki stood and turned on the girl who stared at him defiantly. He wasn't sure how to proceed, he'd never witness such a thing from a child her age. "Be warned, if you can understand me, do such a thing again and you'll find yourself without a roof to protect you." Loki hadn't expected her to understand, but the flash of amusement in her eye told him she did.
Her green orb was ageless and full of depth, there was more to this girl than a simple child, perhaps more to them all.
"It'll grow back, stop fussing." Cephera shoo'd her sister away. Thor's words haunted Loki momentarily, but he pushed them away. Cephera was standing up now, a cloth to her bloodied neck.
"She's a she-devil." Seraphina told Loki.
"What else has she done?" He asked.
"Nothing of note. That's the worst of it..., so far." She crossed her arms and scowled at the girl child.
"And what of you, just last night you were ready to defend Cephera and now you sit and watched." Loki scolded the dog who sat watching on the floor. The pup looked between the little girl and Cephera an apologetic look in his eyes.
"He won't touch his siblings." Cephera told Loki. Loki sighed.
"You'll be okay?" He asked her looking again at her wound.
"I will." She nodded grimacing as she did so. "She is not fond of me."
"She's not fond of anyone." Seraphina corrected and Cephera frowned. "It best to leave her to her own thing, unfortunately that gives way to things dying."
"How so?"
"See her skeletal hand? A bird flew in here yesterday and she caught it. She transferred it to that hand and sucked it life's breath away. She has the touch of death, your mother says so. She makes plants die too."
Loki shivered remembering that was the very hand to hold Cephera's hair, the same hand that still clutched the strands in triumph. "She can control it though?"
"Seems so." Seraphina was keen to answer the questions as Cephera seemed slightly embarrassed. Perhaps she'd been hoping for these 'kids' to make a better impression on him.
"Hela," Loki said. "We'll call her Hela" Cephera looked up as if surprised at his announcement and then she smiled. He looked back down to the wolf, "Fenrir." He noted but the pup was oblivious. He'd begun to eat his tail. "The other one?" He asked.
Cephera was eager to show him. She took his hand and led him to the next room over. Loki looked into the waters and curled at the bottom, seemingly asleep was the leviathan Cephera had told him about. He looked much better than the slimy mess he'd been when Loki first laid eyes on him. "Jörmungandr."
"That's a mouthful," Cephera said with a delighted laugh.
"Jör, for short perhaps." Loki was still not at ease with any of this, but for her he would try. There was only one thing left now. To speak with his father.
***
Loki entered the throne room with his stomach in knots. Would he be denied a marriage as Thor was? Granted, himself and Cephera had been together for longer, even if it wasn't all romance at first. It didn't have to be this year, but if they were to take care of the children as though they were a family he would at least do it right by giving her the title of wife.
If his father approved of the engagement then all of Asgard would know of Cephera's standing as Loki intended. Unlike Sif and Thor who had no formal announcement. He prayed that if anything were to go right in his life, it would be this.
"Father, I wish to speak with you." He announced. His father was standing with his advisor Tyr, a man Cephera held little affection for. Apparently he'd approached Cephera, filling her head with scenarios of Loki's 'supposed' body snatching. Trying to feed her reasons to leave. Loki tried not to glare. Had he not know Tyr since his childhood, he would have thought him behind the attack on Loki. But Tyr was a weak minded fool, not capable of even basic magic. His talents lay with words and politics.
Odin put down his battle scroll, word from the battle-lines no doubt. His father was dressed in full armor leading Loki to believe that he would be traveling soon to tend to his army and the war currently waging in the lands of Muspelheim. As far as Loki heard the fire demons had been marching on foot in hopes of reaching the mountain pass, the old ways into Asgard. The rainbow bridge was not the only way around.
However, the Asgardian forces had pushed them back.
"Leave us." Odin ordered Tyr.
"Remember what I said." He warned uncaring if Loki heard. Odin nodded and Tyr left.
"I was wondering when you might grace me with your presence." His father descended the stairs to speak to Loki on equal flooring.
"I was in thought." Loki replied.
"So your mother said. It's been rumored that yourself and Cephera have reconciled." There was a hint of a worried smile behind his fathers semi passive look.
"Word travels fast, as usual." Loki cursed the servants. They could never stay quiet within the palace walls.
"I suppose you know how I feel about them all staying here?" Odin cocked up a greying eyebrow.
"She had told me of your concern and dislike for the children."
"Only for my treaty with her father, I would have forced her to return home, taking them with her if it so pleased her. She's lucky to remain." Odin admitted and it horrified Loki. He hadn't realized how much his father wished to see the black magic children gone.
"My reconciliation with her includes my acceptance of them." Loki held his ground, shoulders back, head tall.
"Does it?" Odin sounded surprised.
"What's done is done. They live and develop more personality by the passing day. They may yet one day aide Asgard in ways our warriors cannot. To have such beasts help in battle against any who may appose the kingdom." Loki offered his ideas in hopes to sway his fathers mind.
"That remains to be seen." Odin replied stiffly. "But that is not why you are here." Odin continued.
"No, it's not. I wish to gain permission to bestow the title of intended upon Cephera and later, wife."
"You wish marriage?" Odin considered it. "It would tighten my alliance to be sure, but her presence here has caused disruption."
"Enough to cause problems?" Loki doubted it and by the look on his fathers face he knew it wasn't that big a deal. The disruption most likely meant Thor.
"If you are serious of your intent, then know this. If you cannot succeed in wrangling in those 'children', them, you and Cephera will be exiled from Asgard. I do not believe in prophecies, but I will not take chances with my peoples safety."
"We will see them to appropriate behavior." Loki promised. Odin's eye glistened with thought.
"Then I'll allow this paring, perhaps in this situation the sooner the better." Loki was slightly taken aback by that, but he didn't argue. "I will speak with your mother on preparation for the proper herald party of this news and then perhaps, next year we shall see you wed.
Loki bowed lower than he'd ever done to his father. His heart raced with anticipation to finally ask Cephera for her hand in this 'Union', as her people called it. He left unable to hold back his excitement as a smile split across his face.

Notes

Comments

@fraychan
Then I have done my job well. :p

Yasumi Yasumi
6/15/15

Your cliff hangers wound me D:

fraychan fraychan
6/12/15

@fraychan
Keep that adrenaline pumping, still a lot to come.

Yasumi Yasumi
5/14/15

Oh god I can't even describe how happy this chapter made me. I'm feeling a slight adrenaline rush haha

fraychan fraychan
5/12/15

@fraychan
I agree, things have could been so much different if things had just come to light sooner.

Yasumi Yasumi
5/7/15