Packless Monsters

Chapter 58

"When I ask it of her"

When I ask it of her?

Loki was... planning on asking you to marry him?

When... not if... he said "when"

And Loki was nothing if not careful with his words.

He wanted to ask you to marry him.

You couldn't believe it. Why would he want to marry you? It took you what felt like a long time to remind yourself that just because your old pack didn't value you for anything more than you ability to procreate didn't mean that Loki felt the same way. He didn't even just value you for your abilities. He valued you for yourself, for your personality, your wit and intelligence, your ability to keep him on his toes. In short, he loved you for you, nothing more, nothing less.

You shouldn't have been surprised that he was contemplating asking you to marry him.

Your thoughts were interrupted by Loki storming out of the throne room. He stopped short when he saw you and you saw him try to school his expression. You went to him and wrapped your arms around him, letting your peace and calm surround you both. You felt him relax as his arms wrapped around you. He nuzzled your hair, taking in your scent and that seemed to calm him further.

"It's alright, Lo," you told him softly, gently as he held you for long minutes.

"How much did you hear?" he asked just as softly and you could feel his tension returning at the realization that you might've overheard his confession that he wanted to marry you.

"Your Father doesn't like me," you told him with a careful amount of whine in your voice that he would think that was everything you'd bothered to listen to, without you having to lie to him. As you'd said before, werewolves were good at lying with the truth.

"No. He doesn't," Loki said softly, sadly. "But his opinion hardly matters to me, and has mattered less since I found out he had lied to me about my birth parents my entire life. He will get over it."

You stood up on your toes to kiss him "I'm sure it will. So what shall we do now that that trial is over, oh high and mighty god?" you teased, hoping to lighten his mood.

He laughed. "I was planning on taking you to go play outside, annoying puppy," he told you warmly. You wrapped your arms around one of his.

"Let's go then," you told him brightly, nearly bouncing in excitement to see more of his home. He chuckled and led you out of the palace into the gardens. The gardens were beautiful and smelled amazing and were full of so many new flowers, things you couldn't even imagine before now. "They're so beautiful and smell so lovely," you told Loki brightly as you explored the paths through the gardens. You leaned down to smell one of the wonderful new flowers. "I've never smelled anything like them!" you added in delight.

He chuckled. "You are adorable, little wolf," he told you warmly, enjoying watching you with the flowers instead of looking over them himself. Of course he didn't, these were the gardens he likely grew up playing in and probably knew like the back of his hand.

You flushed at his comment, though. "What? I've never smelled flowers like these before," you reminded him a bit defensively.

He chuckled again. "Adorable curious puppy," he teased as you went to go investigate more unfamiliar flowers.

You spent the whole day in the gardens and even had a picnic lunch, enjoying the day outside in the fresh air that wasn't of Earth. It was all so different, but wonderful.

You made it back inside the palace for dinner and Loki lead you right up to the head table to sit between himself and his mother, right alongside the royal family. You knew it was making a statement that you were sitting there, and you couldn't help blush at the implication. You didn't belong among royalty and yet Thor and Frigga accepted you there as if it were perfectly normal that a girl with wolf ears was sitting among them. At least it was fairly normal for Thor. None of the court seemed to think it was weird that you wore your wolf ears, instead, they seemed in awe of you and you kept hearing whispers about how lucky they were to have a lady wolf in their presence, how honored the Midgardians were to have such beings living among them.

After dinner there was dancing and you understood why Loki had demanded you learn how to dance with him these past few months. You were nowhere near good at it yet, but you could make your way through the moves and weren't tripping over your own feet. Loki was also a strong lead and kept you from looking too terrible. While you weren't the best dancer, it was a lotof fun to dance with him, and you could see how much he loved it. You saw it when you were learning to dance with him as well. He had insisted it was one of the few things he loved on Asgard and one of the things he'd sorely missed.

You danced the night away with your Loki, occasionally dancing with Thor or one of his idiot friends, but most of your dances were with Loki, which is exactly how you wanted it.

After the last dance of the night, Loki pulled you to him and kissed you well in front of the entire court. You kissed him back just as well and didn't mind at all that you had an audience.

Loki led you through the palace halls, though you were dead on your feet as you walked. It had been a long, full day and you had to admit that Loki had worn out even your boundless energy. Loki led you into a gorgeous suite of rooms. "These are my chambers. Mother set up a suite of rooms for you, but I thought you would be more comfortable not sleeping alone," Loki told you with a smirk. You couldn't argue with that, you were an incorrigible cuddler. Plus this was a strange place and you didn't want to be alone in a strange environment. You'd been hurt to much to trust that easily.

You were so dead on your feet that Loki had to help you out of your dress and into one of his tunics to wear as pajamas. You curled up with him in the bed and were asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow, a warm, happy smile on your face.