The Last Shifter (a Loki romance)

Chapter 46

We spent the remainder of the day bonding with the hatchlings. The hatchlings that were growing at an incredible rate. Now that I had control of my mind, I could teach Loki how to communicate with them.

"So...they find words difficult to understand?"

"To them, it's just a bunch of garble."

"But you were able to communicate with the Fire Demon."

"The Fire Demon had spent much time observing the Fire Giants and spoke broken English. Plus she was desperate and I used images as background noise."

"Alright, alright."

"These are baby dragons who have paid minimal attention to us when we're not looking at them."

"Where do we start?"

The sun had long since set and the stars and moons were shining multicolored light down on us and we had made almost no progress. Loki was too impatient when he failed to tell Hathwari what to do while I taught Plantino and Edelstein to track scents and stalk prey. Loki and I wouldn't be capable of providing all three of them as they got older and their appetites spiked. Frigga had informed us that she had begun introducing meat into their diet. The more Loki got annoyed, the more Hathwari refused to listen.

"I give up!" He finally shouted, "I'm done." He got up and began to storm off.

"Loki wait!" He turned.

"How is it that you can tame two, easily, at once, and I can't even get one to lay down!?"

"Communicating with dragons takes practice, Loki. You should've seen me during my first few days with Kayerith. Besides. I didn't have an instructor. Come back to it tomorrow but don't give up."

"But Kayerith was older than mine."

"Yeah, about as old a human two-year-old. It's called the Terrible Twos for a reason."

"And you would know this because...."

"Because I babysat to earn money when I was younger."

"Oh." He looked back at Hathwari and his brow wrinkled. All the spunky little hatchling did was march in the other direction. Instead of getting mad, Loki's face fell and he sighed.

"I'll never do it."

"You just have to keep trying. She's stubborn." He sighed again.

"I'll come back to it tomorrow." He replied dejectedly before leaving through the maze. Seeing him so down about this made me want to do something that I shouldn't. I looked at the green hatchling and let myself into her mind, trying to find out why she was so resistant to Loki but she was just naturally wild. So, I stayed in the garden for another hour working with her and convincing her to listen to Loki.

When I finally returned to our chambers, Loki was fast asleep in bed, not even stirring when I climbed in. The next morning, I was the first to wake up but as I moved, a husky voice stopped me.

"Mmmm." Loki gravitated towards me, "Where were you last night?"

"I took the long way back."

"Stay."

"I must see if there is any news."

"Five more minutes." Loki had his arms around my waist like a steel vice, leaving me no choice but to lay down again. Five minute quickly turned into ten. Then fifteen until I finally hauled us out of bed to start the day.

So it was for the next week. Once it was confirmed that Loki and I were officially recovered, we could leave the palace. We didn't go far, normally just down to the beach with Kurt and Apollo. Exactly seven days after we returned, Thor, Odin, and their bodyguards came back too and began their recovery from the long extreme heat exposure however, not before informing the entire kingdom that Thor had been the one to prevent catastrophe on Muspelheim by negotiating with royalty for the return of the egg of a Fire Demon and the last of its kind and by extension, the extinction of a rare and powerful species. He neglected to mention that I had been the one to realize what the problem was, or that Loki had supported me as we convinced Odin that we were telling the truth. According to him, Thor had done it all single-handedly when in truth, it had been his cannon to shoot me down.