Chapter Fifteen Loki

T he darkness was almost more than I could bear. Even in my wolf form, I couldn't see jack fucking shit. Even my ears were made useless by the sound of the river beside us, burbling over the rocks and echoing through the cave. All I had left was my nose and my paws to guide my way. I felt like half a wolf.

But there was some comfort to be found in the dark, mostly in the form of the large white wolf beside me. Heimdall was always shoulder to shoulder with me, his nose giving me gentle nudges when I started to accidentally stray toward the water again. He made sure there was stone between me and the river at all times. I felt a rush of affection every time he did it, adoring the care and attention he was giving me. However, I had to remind myself it was only temporary. Falling in love with him would do neither of us any good. Not when that cave was going to come to an end eventually.

I pushed those thoughts from my mind though. There was no time to dwell on such things and I had to pay attention. Heimdall was always just slightly behind me, letting me lead the way. He trusted me to get us both out of there and I didn't want to let him down. Besides, one slip up and I wouldn't even get to enjoy what little time we had left together. As silly as it was, the thought of curling up against his naked body once more was what drove me on and kept my nose to the stone.

Even if we had to remain on opposite sides, I wanted him to live.

So, we traveled that way, making our way through the dark at a snail's pace. After the pit and the raging river, I tested each step before I took it. Slowly but surely, we made progress, the light behind us disappearing until we'd been going for over an hour. My muscles shook from the exhaustion, but I kept driving us forward. There had to be something ahead. My nose continually caught whiffs of fresh air and wet leaves. The way out was close, I could feel it in my bones.

It wasn't until another hour had passed and I was on the edge of collapse that the first pinprick of light appeared in the distance. Even for how tiny it was, I found it too bright to look at directly. Two hours in all-consuming darkness had made me nearly blind. Or at least that's what it felt like. I had to squint as we got closer, the light shimmering in the distance. Heimdall saw it too, giving out a little yelp of excitement. But he stayed at my side, always keeping himself between me and the river. His tail wagged so hard that it thumped against my hip and even in my wolf form, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. He was like a puppy.

However, as we neared the light, I realized it wasn't coming from a hole in the ceiling or even the wall. It was coming from under the water. We approached the edge of the river where the light glimmered, careful not to step over the edge. There we could see the water was extremely shallow, only six inches deep or so. And while the opening to the outside was several feet long, it was only a few inches wide, making it impossible to squeeze through even in our wolf forms. Every few seconds the water made a strange sucking sound as an air bubble fixed the pressure difference from the water spilling out of the cave. And that's when I got the strong scent of wet leaves and damp earth.

But as I looked around, I realized that the cavern we were in had no other exit. We'd come to a dead end. The only way out was through an impossibly small gap. And going backwards wasn't an option. There was no exit that way either.

Taking a step back from the water, I let my wolf form fall away. Bones snapped and popped as I got to my feet, all the fur gone from my body. Heimdall followed suit, his thick naked body rising up in front of me. Those green eyes came to rest on me, and I was happy to see that there was enough light reflecting from under the water to give everything color once more.

"Can we get out?" he asked, looking down at the gap under the water. "It… It looks sorta small."

There was a definite tinge of fear in his voice. After nearly getting stuck last time, there was no way I'd be able to talk him into squeezing through another tiny hole. Not that it would matter with this one. It was too small for anything bigger than a rabbit or a trout.

"I don't know," I replied honestly, kneeling down at the edge of the river.

Bracing myself, I plunged my arm into the icy water and stuck my arm through the gap. I hissed through my teeth as the cold enveloped me, but I didn't pull back. Working my arm under the stone, I curled my fingers up on the other end and I gasped.

Instead of finding more stone or water, my fingers broke the surface, cold autumn air nipping at their tips.

"It-It's outside!" I stammered, pushing my arm down to the shoulder in the water. "I can feel it!"

Heimdall was already at my side. "How far?"

"I can just barely reach it." I pulled my arm back, the skin numb from the cold. "Maybe… two feet? A little more?"

Heimdall's excitement was gone the moment I spoke. "Two feet…" he uttered, shaking his head.

"That's not far!"

He looked up at me, all hope gone from his expression. "If we had a pickaxe, we might get out eventually. But two feet of solid stone with nothing but our bare fingers?"

I stared at him, the reality of the situation slowly sinking in. In my excitement I'd neglected the fact that we didn't have any tools or, you know, a jackhammer just waiting to be used. If we had, we probably never would have traveled through the dark in the first place. We would've just tried to dig our way out. Suddenly I wished I still had my phone. Maybe this close to the surface I could get a signal. But it was long gone, lost up a freezing cold river with a fast current that we could never win against.

We were trapped.

"This… This can't be it, right?" I said, desperately searching for some thread of hope to hold onto as the panic welled up inside me. "There's gotta be something we can do."

Heimdall was quiet, averting his gaze from mine. Hot anger suddenly streaked through my system, filling me from head to toe. I couldn't believe he'd just give up like that. After everything we'd been through and all the things we'd survived, he was just going to quit at the finish line? How could an Alpha be that pathetic? And why would I ever want to be mated to someone like that?

"You can give up if you want to," I snapped. "But I won't. Not yet! I've got too much I still need to do…"

Flashes of my life back with the Hati pack raced through my mind. I thought of all the times I'd been awful to Thor and Baldr since my father had died. How every time one of them tried to help me with my grief, I lashed out and pushed them away. I was so mad at them for acting like nothing had changed, for moving on when the world had dropped out from under our feet. And, as if I was thinking clearly for the first time, I realized that they'd been trying to help me because they wanted to grieve with me. They weren't trying to force me through it because they thought it was annoying. They wanted all three of us to get through it together.

But I'd done nothing but be horrible to them, especially Thor. Sure, I didn't agree with his choice of mate, and I hated that our secret was shared with humans and werewolf hunters to boot. However, that didn't mean I wanted to die without talking to him ever again. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for the way I'd acted. Hell, I wasn't even sure I wanted to even take the pack from him anymore.

The looming reality of my impending death made me rethink everything all at once. Within seconds I was so confused and angry that I didn't know what to think anymore. I wasn't sure if I even wanted Tyr dead. It was a sudden and harsh realization that all I'd ever wanted was to quit hurting. To be free of the pain of the nightmare my life had become.

And now, none of it mattered. Whether it took days or weeks, I'd be lying dead in this cave next to my mate, the one I never got to spend any real time with. Instead of happy days in the sun together, we'd have to spend our final days experiencing the worst moments of each other's lives.

I couldn't accept that though. Not yet. I had to try.

Without a word, I sprang into action, practically diving into the shallow river. Freezing cold hit me like a thousand needles all over my body, but I forced myself to stay. Heimdall cried out, but I pulled myself away from him, working my way across the river with my arm jammed up under the gap. I had to push my head underwater in some places, barely taking a breath as I searched for a wider area that we could slip out of. There was one spot where the wall was thinner, but not by more than six inches. However, the gap itself remained roughly the same size all the way across the river.

Heimdall sat on the edge, watching me intently as I resurfaced, gasping for air. But I ignored him. On the other side of the river, I found another ledge above the water. I crawled up, icy water streaming off my skin in rivulets as I searched the wall, blindly grasping at anything that might help. The cavern went further back than I expected, the darkness taking over quickly until I couldn't see my feet any longer.

"Loki?" Heimdall called. "Come back! There's no way out! You're gonna freeze to death!"

"Fuck you!" I yelled, my harsh cry echoing through the cave. "I'm not just gonna fucking give up like you!"

"Loki…"

"Just leave me alone!" I shouted. "I'm not ready to die yet! Not like–"

But my words were cut off as I took another step and this time, I didn't feel stone beneath my feet. My body tilted forward, all my weight falling into darkness. I cried out just as my head collided with the wall. Bright white-hot pain filled me from head to toe and then there was nothing. No falling, or my body hitting hard rock.

Only darkness.