touch. “I’m sorry I dropped you.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Mimir chirped. “Though I must say, even Hel looks better right-side up.
“Are you okay?”
He chuckled. “I’ll be fine. It takes a lot more than a roll over some rocks to shake me. Now that time a pack of mountain trolls kicked my head around like a ball for a day…”
“Annabel. The ring,” I snarled, my patience waning. Even a stubborn human couldn’t be this thick-skulled. I knew her heart far better than I’d ever wanted to. It was weak and soft. She cared too much for her mates to risk their deaths.
“Where to now?” she asked, not taking her eyes off Mimir.
“West,” he said. “But it won’t be as easy as the boat.”
“We don’t really have a choice, do we?” she replied, glancing at the remains of the rickety rowboat I’d destroyed.
“I suppose we don’t,” he agreed.
“West, then.” She turned to the narrow path that had brought us down to the beach and began walking. Despite the surety in her steps, her exhaustion made her stumble.
And yet she kept walking. Away from me.
“Annabel,” I growled. “You’re being foolish. Whatever escape he has promised you, you won’t find it. You will die out there without protection.”
She stopped and finally looked at me. Her eyes were hard—and determined. “Fine. I will remove your ring, Grim Lokisson. On one condition.”
I lifted my brows. “What do you want? More truths?”
“No. I want you to feel exactly what it is you’re throwing away. I want you to truly know the pain you’re inflicting on me, on your brothers, on Modi and Magni. You say you know me? I don’t think you do. Whatever this soulmate connection you claim we have is, clearly it isn’t worth a damn to you. But I know one thing that is. I know one way of showing you that I am strong enough to stop Ragnarök and save not only your brothers, but you as well.
“I will remove your ring and return your magic to you, Grim, after you claim me as your mate.”
Ten
Grim
“Claim you?” I stared at the clearly insane omega, the roar of blood in my ears almost making me believe I might have heard her wrong. But I hadn’t. The anger on her face spoke the truth more clearly than her words ever could. She wanted me to suffer. She wanted revenge for what I’d done to her—what I would still do.
She was more devious than I’d given her credit for.
“Yes. If you want your powers back, if you want to protect me, you will claim me. So I guess the question is: How badly do you want to ensure your brothers live?”
I would give anything for my brothers’ lives. I had given everything. But this? No.
Stars above, not this.
“Are you that desperate for a fuck?” I sneered.
Annabel laughed, a derisive sound that grated against my skin. “You can attempt to shame me all you want. I am not bargaining with you. This is not a negotiation. It is the only way I will remove the ring. Agree or don’t. You have until my next heat to decide.”
“You’re bluffing,” I said, wishing my throat wasn’t dry with the knowledge that no, she wasn’t.
“Watch me.” Casting another dark look in my direction, she turned back around to the path leading back up the cliff and into the woods.
I bared my teeth at her back, a snarl forcing its way out of my throat, but Annabel simply kept walking. Away from me.
West.
I pushed myself to my feet, falling in behind her. I should have kept her bound with my powers. Should have hidden her away in some cave and sealed the entrance until I could return to my brothers and break their bonds to her. But I hadn’t. There was no way out of Hel for the dead—everyone knew as much. Even Odin’s wife Frigg, the god-queen herself, had been unable to save her son from my sister’s clammy grip.
And yet Mimir had known of one.
I clenched my hands into fists at the memory of Annabel clawing her way across the stony beach toward the rickety old rowboat. The oceans surrounding Hel were vast and dangerous beyond measure, yet the prophet had wanted her to cross them in a wooden rowboat, though no doubt some ancient magic had been woven into its timber, allowing a dead woman and a bodiless fool to escape.
Wherever he was guiding her now, I would stop her. After the trick they’d played on me with the