People in the wrong place!
As Ash’s eyes met his, Loki felt it. The pull that everyone talked about. Suddenly he was jealous of the bloody hound that was at her side because it was closer to her that he was. Her scent, minty, fresh, not the artificial kind of minty scent you get from toothpaste but natural, like a patch of wild mint in a tree trunk, with that indescribably witchy note. The urge to protect her, no longer the big brotherly urge and feelings caught him unawares. Before he really knew what he was doing, Loki had pushed Blaze and Mark out of the way, given the warriors on the door such a glare that they moved back without him needing to interfere. He stood before Ash, looking down on her.
Ash watched silently, the butterflies in her stomach a familiar friend. She watched as Loki made space for himself by her side. Looking up into his eyes, his beautiful, bright green eyes. A head or so shorter than Micah had been, his shoulders were easier to reach, but his arms were just as capable of supporting her, of holding her and comforting her. But no, no, she couldn’t allow herself to get lost in the deep green of his eyes of the lemongrass tainted with nail polish scent she could smell pulling her towards him. She needed to get into the dungeons, she needed to deal with this problem, she needed to avenge her mate, no, her first mate’s death, and all the misery of the pack in the year since she had been here. My god, had it really only been a year? It felt like so much longer.
“Loki…. we need to be in there, we really need to get in there now!” Ash told him urgently.
It took Loki a few moments to shake himself free of the feelings he was experiencing and nod softly. Gesturing to the guards to open the door.
***********************************************
Ash placed her hand on Loki’s chest, over his heart, looking as if she had the world on her shoulders. Even as she felt the strings of a new, fragile bond extending between them both, she turned away from Loki and dashed down the stairs into the dungeon. The rest of the group following in her wake.
Loki followed behind his mate, the young woman who was 24 hours ago his little sister, but even as his brain acknowledged this, he knew that the only reason he referred to her as such was because of his attraction to her. Loki remembered the first time he saw Ash, she was unconscious in the hospital, as pale as the sheets around her, except for the shocking red hair against the pillows. He had known then that he had to guard his heart carefully. Hurrying to keep her in his sights as she ran determinedly towards the cells, he wondered what they would find. Something was drawing her onwards, some magical force beyond his understanding, but he trusted her, trusted her knowledge. If Ash said they needed to be here then they needed to be here.
Finally the dark, damp corridor opened out into an equally dark but slightly lighter room, thanks to the single strip light buzzing overhead. There were 10 cells lining the room. Reportedly the hardest to escape from in the werewolf world, this dungeon was dreaded by criminals and rouges alike. It was part of the reason why the pack had so little problem with either crime or rouges as a rule.
Ash circled the room, her eyes wide and crazy, she shook the bars of each cell. When she got back to rest of the group she looked at them, every inch the possessed mad-woman the humans had accused her of being at times, “they are gone, both of them, gone! How? How did they get out? Who got them out?!” She demanded of no one in particular.
“What did the message say?” Blaze asked, while Loki and Shadow each completed their own search of the room.
“it said that abominations will be culled, that the innocent will be freed from their confinement and something about the dead having either earned it or they were collateral damage of war. Urm” Ash paused and scratched her cheek “it said that, that I should return to my roots before its too late, that I endanger anyone I am near and that the wolves should watch their back” Ash shook her head, “basically, some maniac said that he and his buddies have done everything, the demon rouge attack, the attack that killed the others and setting this plague loose on us. He threatened to kill me a couple times and several other people including you guys, and said that he was freeing the assassin and kit.”
Mark and Blaze stared at her, “How the hell are you still standing?” Mark asked.
Ash shrugged “adrenaline?” She suggested before her body began to shake and her face lost all its colour. Loki managed to reach her side just in time to catch her as she fell.
***********************************************
Loki had ran, Ash cradled to his chest, at full speed to the now empty clinic. Ignoring Blaze’s calling that he could probably heal her there. Again the only being that could keep pace with them was the hound. Shadow was their constant companion on the journey and into the clinic.
Loki stood in the doorway, with an unconscious Ash in his arms. “This is becoming far too common an occurrence, room 3” Jessy said from behind a computer screen. “I’ll phone the doc”
Loki nodded blindly, heading down the corridor to the room Jessy indicated. He lay Ash on the bed, arranging and re-arranging her limbs and blankets over and over until the doctor finally arrived about 15 minutes later with Blaze and Mark who had already filled him in as they walked.
Everything seemed to happen very suddenly once the doctor arrived. Ash was quickly and discretely changed into a gown, blood tests taken, she was hooked up to IV’s and monitors that beeped reassuringly with every heart beat.
The results however were slower in coming. It was nearly an hour later before Loki saw the doctor again. Blaze was in the corner meditating, the hound was lay on the bottom of Ash’s bed and Mark had gone to update Xavier about the situation.
“Ok, so there is nothing major to panic about here folks. But there is news and young Ash here will have decisions to make when she comes round.” The doctor began as he walked into the room holding a clipboard. “So she is slightly anemic but that isn’t too unusual in pregnancy, which I assume is news to everyone here, and I’m fairly certain that we can be sure of the father too,” he paused here to let the news sink in “I’ll need to do an ultrasound but I would rather wait until she is awake, just in case her magic objects. I dont think any harm will be done by waiting. Otherwise everything is good, it seems that Miss Faye is in good health.”
Loki didnt know how to respond, on one hand, his mate was pregnant with another mans child, but on the other, that child was his niece or nephew. He paced the room like a caged wolf, running his hands through his hair. The minutes turned to hours and his demands of how long she would be unconscious for became more and more critical.
***********************************************
“Pregnant?! No! I can’t be… I can’t… Archibald said… and we only… it was only once…. I can’t be pregnant” Ash said, shaking her head in complete disbelief.
Even after the doctor had shown her the foetus on the ultrasound, the blood test results and a positive urine pregnancy test Ash was still trying to find a reason for it not to be true. How could she raise Micah’s daughter without him? Because her grandfather was clear on that, her first born child would be a girl, a daughter to carry on the tradition of reading and recording the histories of the supernatural world.
it took days for her to accept that she was actually pregnant. As for Loki as her second mate? Either there was a reason for her to be in this pack or they had done something to piss the goddess off because there was clearly someone pissed off with her.