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It didn’t help that he could feel the woman wanting to leave now, too.

His living light had grown more tied to hers over the past hour, not less.

His light sank deeper into hers, even now?more and more with each passing minute, until that fact grew openly uncomfortable.

He didn’t seem to be able to do much about that, either.

The other seers had definitely noticed.

A few gave him glances Loki knew he was not meant to intercept. He saw them look between his light and that of the human; he felt side conversations he was not supposed to overhear. He tried to pretend he didn’t see those looks or hear those murmurs, but again, it mattered little.

He could not hide what his light was doing, not in this small of a construct.

Luckily, most of them seemed to find it amusing more than alarming.

Only Illeg and Jax seemed less amused.

And Anale, to a milder degree.

Loki knew all three were close to Dante. Their warier reactions stemmed primarily from a desire to protect their young cousin. They would do their best to protect the woman who gave birth to Dante, as well. Even if that woman was a full adult in human years, being in her early- to mid-thirties, at minimum.

Loki grew uncomfortably aware of the female’s eyes more and more on him, too.

He knew that might be his fault.

She could not help but react to his light’s interest in hers.

Of course, if she had felt differently about him, or his reactions to her, it would have caused a different reaction in both of them, but as it was, he found himself looking at her too often, and more often than not, he found her returning those looks.

Truthfully, a part of his mind was already contemplating how he might find some way to talk to her alone. Not only without the others listening… out of earshot of the entire construct. He wanted no one to listen to them speak.

He remembered what Tarsi’s cake had told him, all those months ago.

It prophesied a love for him, during these dark days.

Loki had not been gifted a glimpse of her, this love of his, but he’d distinctly felt her to be female, and human. He’d been turned on by the vision?he had, in fact, spent most of the night kissing the Bridge’s human aunt, he’d been so turned on by it?but he hadn’t felt with any confidence that he’d met the woman whose light he tasted in that vision.

Now, his hunger wanted to confuse him on that point, too.

He fought to focus on the mission to D.C., on how best to approach from the air, how close they should get, but his eyes found an excuse to look in her direction, again and again. Under the pretext of looking at Holo, the buildings behind where she stood, even the sky, his eyes lingered on her long, jagged-cut dark hair and noted her body as slim-hipped and muscular, but wiry. She had medium-length legs, and they looked strong and toned under the black jeans.

Even apart from those strange, silver rings, her clothes interested him.

Somewhat dated, the dark-colored clothes were of a style with which he was only passingly familiar, including those dark stretch jeans and a black and white band T-shirt from a New York rock band.

She dressed herself in front of him in that back room of the apartments where they found her. Loki looked away, of course, along with the rest of the seers, but he’d been aware of her, the whole time she covered herself, even as he pretended he wasn’t.

He felt her aware of him too, even then.

She’d been deeply embarrassed to be found that way.

Embarrassed and sad and fearful that they would tell her daughter.

Even in those first few moments of contact, listening to Anale explain to her in English who they were, why they were there, Loki only wanted to comfort her in some way. He wanted to reassure her that none of them judged her, that they would not betray anything to her daughter she did not want known.

Loki found himself remembering Vikram describe her over the comm, right before they went into that warlord’s den near Prospect Park. Vikram sent real-time images, in addition to the verbal description, although he confessed he was forced to steal the former off Dante’s network queue. For the same reason, none of those images were clear or recent, since Dante pilfered what she could off hacks of government security files.

According to Vikram, Dante herself described her mother as “kind of a middle-aged rocker-type chick, like old lady cool,” which both Holo and Jax found extremely funny.