Bile rose in my throat when my hazy gaze landed on where his knot plugged a woman’s yawning entrance wide, and finally everything came back to me in all=too-vivid detail.
Annabel.
My Annabel.
My sobbing, distraught Annabel whose distress alone had yanked me from the depths of unconsciousness.
Black rage slammed over my mind so instantaneously and completely that every ounce of fear and regret I’d experienced since claiming her vanished. Instinct alone got me to my feet faster than my concussed head would otherwise have allowed.
Without hesitation, I followed the momentum and threw myself on top of Bjarni, roaring like a beast, intent to maim.
“Get off her! Get off my mate!” My fists weren’t as coordinated as they would normally have been, but I got a good few whacks in on the blond giant who’d penetrated my woman before he managed to rear up and throw me off.
I thudded to the floor, my shoulder impacting with the hard surface heavily enough to cause the floorboards to groan.
I was on my feet again in an instant, prepared to resume my attack, when Bjarni held up a hand.
“Stop!” he shouted. “We’re fucking tied, you imbecile. You’ll hurt her!”
Hurt her. Hurt her?
Those two words echoed in my throbbing head, pausing my already raised fist mid-air.
“Modi. Modi, stop.”
That voice.
I stared at the bed, blind to anything but the girl twisting toward me underneath Bjarni’s bulk.
He growled unhappily, but didn’t move to stop me as I stumbled forward like a puppet on a string, that tight ache in my chest pulling me toward her. I fell to my knees by the side of the bed, reaching for her face.
“Annabel?” I murmured. The adrenaline in my blood was waning again and my vision was turning blurry once more. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said, her voice soft despite its rasp. “I’m not hurt.”
I frowned, the throb in my chest telling me an entirely different story. I pressed the hand not cupping her cheek to my ribs, rubbing them. “I…”
The silence between us seemed to stretch into eternity. The painful tugging in my chest was easier to manage now that I was close to her, but it still felt… wrong.
My bond to her, I thought, my dazed mind still having difficulties grasping at any one concept. It was my mating bond.
I rubbed at my ribs harder, my breathing turning ragged.
I’d claimed a mate.
A human, mortal mate. A woman I barely knew. My brother’s woman.
Stars above, why?
I stared wide-eyed at Annabel, the sensation of being inside of her echoing in my dazed memories.
She had felt like home. Or so I had thought at the time, because she was the first woman I'd ever penetrated. I had not paused to think—I had acted on blissful instinct when I bit down on her neck, marking her as mine for eternity.
Who knew my lifelong, noble aspirations to never screw a woman would lead to mating the first one I stuck my dick into? Fucking priceless.
And stupid. So, so stupid.
I regretted it the moment my brain returned to a semi-functioning state and I realized that that gnawing, aching, tender new thing in my chest was a leash directly from my immortal soul to her mortal hands.
I'd claimed my brother’s mate.
I'd claimed a mate.
I'd claimed a mate who belonged to three other men.
And I regretted it. Stars above, how I regretted it. But there was no going back. Mate claims were for life. Every alpha learned that at his mother’s teat.
That now horrifically familiar void in my gut opened up again, sucking me down in a spiral of despair.
“Modi.” It was a pained whisper, an achy spasm in my chest drawing back my attention to the girl on the bed in front of me. Her face was drawn and tears fell silently from her red-rimmed eyes as she looked at me—and I knew she felt every ounce of regret in me as keenly as I felt the turmoil in her.
But it wasn’t just pain that radiated back at me from our bond this time. It was anger.
It took me a moment to realize that the sensation didn’t originate from her—it came from Bjarni. I felt him through my connection with her. As if things were not messed up enough already.
“You ungrateful piece of shit,” he growled, his voice low but still threatening. “You have regrets? You, who took her the moment I turned my back? You have some fucking nerve.”
Of course. I felt his rage—he felt my emotions too.
My face burned. I was unsure if it was with anger or shame. I latched on to the anger nonetheless.
“Don’t say another word, Lokisson, or I might forget your connection to the girl and toast your sorry ass,” I hissed. It was an odd sensation, seeing him on top of the woman I had claimed—I wanted to tear him apart for claiming what was mine, but at the same time, that horrid bond in my chest shuddered at the thought of hurting him.
Hurting him would be hurting Annabel, and myself.
Gods be damned, this was a complicated nightmare!
“Guys. Please… Please don’t.” Annabel’s hoarse voice snapped both our attention to her in the blink of an eye. “I can’t… Everything is so messed up, and I can’t contain it. I know this isn’t what any of us wanted, but we didn’t have a choice. The Norns saw to that. Please, can we just… focus on our task? This isn’t going to get any easier with you two fighting, and we have a job to do.”
A job. I had been so laser-focused on saving Magni’s ass I had not cared about anything else—right up until I sank my teeth into Annabel’s neck.
I blinked as I stared at her wan face, suddenly realizing that my entire world had shifted in more ways than one. I still loved my brother, sure, but all I could think about at her mention of our task was that, Loki or no, once my brother was free from Odin’s righteous fury, Ragnarök was still here.
Annabel was still going to die.
Sick terror clenched my gut, followed by immediate, white-hot determination. No. I was Modí the Brave, son of Thor, slayer of Jotunns. I was never going to let that happen. I could not.
“We have to stop Ragnarök.”
“I know,” she said, wincing when Bjarni rolled them over and his coital tie pulled on her abused opening.
She looked so small in his arms, so… frail. Exhaustion painted every line of her face, bruises covering her skin from where he and I had held her in place while we took our pleasure from her mortal flesh.
She was the epitome of an omega: small, weak, and built to submit. Yet supposedly the Norns had decided that she would be the key to ending Ragnarök.
This tiny mortal.
Our bond flickered in my chest, pulling me from my musings. I frowned, rubbing at my ribs, but before I could process the alien sensation, Bjarni nuzzled at Annabel’s messy hair and emitted a low rumbling noise.
A fucking purr. He was purring for her, soothing her frazzled mind and body as if he had no care in the world. As if this situation was in any way normal.
I had not purred for her after I took her.
I stared at them as the bond instantly relaxed and Annabel’s eyelids fluttered, intense jealousy mixing with relief at the absence of tension in our connection. It was so easy for him—Hel, he would probably have claimed her even if he wasn't caught up in some ridiculous web of Fate and family obligations.