Page 23 of The Fanged One

She unlocked her phone and held it out. There was a picture of a small, swaddled boy, dark-eyed with a shock of bright red hair on a head that looked too small to support it.

"Oh, my gods, he has so much hair," Linnea crooned, zooming in on the picture.

Layla giggled. "Chrissy said Oberon cried worse than the baby did."

"I'm glad they are okay. We were all so worried about how a human and fae baby pregnancy would go." Linnea handed the phone back, swiping away a tear before it could fall, and accepted that she was going to be yet another person who was going to spoil the hell out of him. "Have they named him?"

"Not yet," Ciara said, and her grin turned evil. "Maria and Bridget are trying to convince them to call him Gary."

"Gary. The fae prince."

"And Quinn is pushing Trevor."

"Quinn only wants that because she's obsessed with Trevor from Castlevania." Like Linnea, Quinn believed every situation could be helped with the addition of vampires. They'd bonded over them like nothing else over the years. Vampires were only second to dragons in Quinn's fantasy-loving heart. Linnea could only imagine the argument she was putting up, started laughing, and found she couldn't stop. "Oh gods, poor Elise."

"Arawan and Imogen had to go back to England so Arawan could do a god thing and bless the baby," Layla explained.

Linnea sat up. "What, like Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty?"

That set them off again, and it took a full minute to bring them back to normal.

"Tell me he is doing the actual bestow a gift on the infant thing."

"Imogen is probably going to make him whether he wants to or not. Gods know what a baby present from a death god is going to look like," Layla said, and her expression turned thoughtful. "Probably a baby-sized magical battle ax that matches Imogen's, I bet."

"Just what a growing fae prince needs," Linnea replied.

The men came back with the drinks. Von was leading them, with three glasses spread between his long fingers, Tor behind him carrying three more, Arne and Fenris bringing up the back with another and a heavy bottle of mead.

Somewhere between the couches and the bar, the atmosphere had shifted. Tor was no longer glaring at Fenris, which Linnea took as a victory. Fenris's eyes found hers on the way back to the couches, the corner of his mouth lifted half an inch, and her chest went warm.

"Move over, my little witch," Von ordered.

Linnea slid down the couch to make room, and Fenris sat beside her without comment. Her thigh pressed against his, and she was suddenly, stupidly aware of every inch of him. Fenris sipped his drink and relaxed beside her.

Mine, her wolf said, low and pleased. Sitting next to me. Where everyone can see.

Shut. Up.

Von dropped into his throne, crossed his long legs at the ankles, and lifted his glass. "Now that we all have our drinks, why don't you tell me what the fuck is actually going on?"

"Havi and Freya told me that you can help Fenris and me find Loki," Linnea said in a rush, ripping it off like a band-aid.

Von choked on his drink, coughed heartily, and set his glass down. "Excuse me. Sorry. I am fine. What the fuck?"

"Maybe let's start at the beginning, little sis," Arne suggested, grinning. "Before Von has a conniption."

"I'm not having a conniption!" Von growled. "I'm just…surprised."

Linnea sipped her mead and started from the night she had woken from the dream of Fenris walking from the Hall of Nowhere, and how she knew she had to go to check out if what she had seen was real. She spoke quickly of Fenris finding her, breaking into Havi's cottage, the seidr-call to Freya, and how she and Havi had golden bind-runes burned across both their tongues.

She told it the way she would have told it to Gudrun, fast and stripped down. She skipped the part about Fenris in her bed in wolf form, cutting his hair when he was only in a towel, and summarized the drive to Oslo and their arrival at Ritual. She didn't mention the dance or the make-out session, and Von only grinned but didn't out her.

"The Norns have bound Havi and Freya's tongues," she said, getting to the part that really mattered. "They can't tell us Loki's location, and the work of finding him belongs to us. Freya told me that Fenris can't do it without me, and that we needed to come and see you, Von, because you know the most obscure information and stories about where Loki was imprisoned. We have to find him because there's a darkness coming that is going to eat the sun and the stars and all of us too."

Fenris cleared his throat. "The only thing that can defeat this darkness is a dying-and-rising god, which is Baldur. The only one who might know how to wake him is Loki, because it's his enchantment that Baldur is under. He knows the most about Ragnarök because he had the same vision as Havi, Freya, and the Norns. They can't tell us more about it, but Loki can."

"What makes you so sure?" Von asked.