pride. Then Odin’s lips pulled up in a feral snarl, and my entire being seized with horror as he lifted his staff and sent out a shockwave, blasting the four alphas around him and Trud’s slumped, half-unconscious body off the dais in a scattered heap.
“Brace, Anna, brace! Brace!” I roared, wrapping my magic around her in a protective cocoon and steeling it with every scrap of my willpower.
The impact from Odin’s next strike made me drop to my knees and vomit bile. Annabel shrieked somewhere past the ringing in my ears, and I crawled toward her, pulled by instinct to make sure she was unharmed. Golden light encapsulated me, followed by soft fingers darting over my face.
“I’m okay,” I croaked, because she was okay, and that was all that mattered. “You have to take more. Don’t be afraid—take what you need, Annabel, and end this.”
“No more playing the defensive,” she whispered, but despite her decisive words, there was a tremble in her voice.
“You know she can’t win,” Odin said, his voice nearly gentle. He walked down the stairs, his staff still lifted to keep the others pinned to the floor.
“What happened to you, Grim?” he asked as he stopped perhaps ten yards from us. Every muscle in my body tensed in preparation for another strike, and Annabel’s magic thickened around me and the others, but Odin simply cocked his head.
“You were so determined you would never mate the girl, and were—dare I say—eager to take her life, but then I find you here, in my home, nothing but another dumb alpha enthralled by omega cunt—throwing away your own life as well as your brothers’. I thought you would give anything for them to live? That was our bargain, I believe.”
“What happened is that I opened my eyes,” I spat. “Annabel, now.”
I felt the yank on my magic as my mate pulled power from all of us, sending a ball of pure, golden energy right at Odin.
He waved his hand, clearly expecting for it to dissipate, but the light didn’t so much as flicker before it impacted with the god-king.
And for the first time in perhaps millennia, Odin flinched.
The force of Annabel’s magic was so strong he was forced to yield ground to keep from getting knocked off his feet. He braced with a leg behind him, his ravens screeching, and stared at us with an expression of utter disbelief and rage.
I wet my lips. That Annabel had affected him at all was quite the feat, but whatever damage she’d done was limited. A ruby trail trickled from one of Odin’s nostrils, bathing his mouth in red, and though part of me reveled in the fact that my mate had essentially backhanded the most powerful of gods, another part dreaded what might come next.
All in all, she had him pegged—Odin was, at heart, a bully. Perhaps he had not always been this way, but eons of watching his followers turn from him had planted a bitter seed in his brain. This betrayal was the fruit that seed had bore, all rooted in a desire not just for power, but for recognition.
Annabel’s magic might not have been enough to destroy him, but it now threatened to shatter the illusion of omnipotence he had worked so hard to maintain—the same illusion upon whose altar he’d been willing to sacrifice the nine worlds.
Looking at him now, I knew exactly the kind of person he was. He was my mother, beating a child to make herself feel powerful while proclaiming it was for my own good. He was my stepmother, so eager to have the upper hand over someone—anyone—she’d rape a vulnerable teenager. He was my father, so concerned with his own schemes and pride that everyone around him became little more than cannon fodder.
Odin was every god and Jotunn and creature I’d ever met who was so small and sick inside they needed to gain power through fear, rather than love. I’d almost become that person myself; only Annabel’s patience, devotion, and courage had saved me. I no longer needed the walls I’d once built around myself to keep others at bay. I no longer saw compassion as a weakness, no longer believed a façade of perfect control was worth killing for.
But Odin didn’t know her love. He hadn’t known any kind of love in ages. This—Ragnarök, his ability to destroy and reshape our universe—was all he had.
So when he turned from us, staff still raised, I knew it wasn’t a retreat. He had