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“Which is?”
“That people change.” He waved his free hand between them. “Just look at us.”
Hunter had needed to cry about it, mourn over the loss, but now that he had he felt a lot more centered again. It sucked, but that was life and Meg…She’d been dead to him a long time.
“Keep letting me in on the meetings,” he said. “Don’t leave me out of the process.”
“I already told you I like when you’re there anyway,” Odin admitted. “That won’t be a problem. But if there’s an actual attack, you don’t get to come.”
He wanted to argue with that but paused and thought it through before nodding in the affirmative. When Odin quirked a brow in mild disbelief that it’d been that easy, he explained.
“I’m not a Shout so I have no power,” though he could call on Odin’s a bit, which was something they still needed to discuss, “and I’ve only been training again for a couple of months. I’m not nearly strong enough or skilled enough to take on a high-standing member of the Frost family if we run into one unless there’s a blaster in my hand. I’ve got my pride, but I also don’t have a death wish.”
“Let’s also agree not to talk about you dying from here on out.”
“Why?” He grinned. “Make you nervous?”
“Huntsman.”
“For the record, you aren’t allowed to die either.”
“Right,” Odin drawled, “something about how I pulled you back into this life and now I owe you.”
“That,” he tightened his fingers around the other man’s, “and because I don’t like the idea of losing you any more than you like the idea of losing me.”
“Neither of us is allowed to die,” Odin hummed and then motioned to the cooling water with his chin. “Which means we should probably get out before we catch a chill.”
“Like a cold would be enough to kill you,” he snorted. “Besides, you can just wave your hand and heat it back up again.”
“I’m not a magician.” Odin stood, pulling Hunter up with him, and then reached for the attached shower head to rinse the suds off of them quickly. “Wait here.”
Hunter shook out his damp hair and stood in the center of the tub while the Dominus exited and went to grab towels. He glanced over to watch him go, frowning when he noticed something different. “What’s that?”
There was fresh ink on Odin’s spine, harsh lettering Hunter couldn’t read surrounded by swirls shaded from light gray to pitch black. It started between his shoulder blades and ended just above the swell of his ass. It was also healed which meant he hadn’t gotten it too recently, but it hadn’t been there the day Hunter had been abducted.
“Odin,” the floor felt like it was dropping out from under him as a dark thought filled his head, “what is that?”
He paused with his hand reaching for one of the white towels, his back still to Hunter. When he didn’t immediately respond, that was more than answer enough.
“You didn’t.” He swallowed and his vision seemed to get cloudy as panic overtook him for the millionth time. “Tell me you didn’t.”
The Shout tattoo was unmistakable, and Odin’s reaction only solidified that’s what it was, and yet…Hunter didn’t want it to be true. There were only two ways for a Shout to gain new ink and one was through bloodletting of a blood relation. Odin only had one family member left, and a tattoo of that size and that shade…It would have taken a lot more than just a spoonful of blood. Which meant…
“He was already gone,” Odin’s voice came out low and soft, almost inaudible. “He had been for a long time. I was holding on to a ghost.”
Hunter’s legs went out from under him and he dropped unceremoniously back down into the bath, splashing timid water and the remaining layer of mostly gone bubbles over the rim. It hadn’t been that long since he’d learned that Ander Snow, Odin’s father, was actually alive. Everyone on the planet thought he was dead and that Odin had already inked his ashes onto his body, taking his power for his own.
Only, that hadn’t been the case at all. Odin had kept his father comfortable, hidden at a hospital under a false name.
“He wasn’t coming back,” having heard the commotion, Snow finally turned around to face him. “The doctors told me that from the start, I was just too stubborn to do what was necessary. If anything, I should be thanking you for finally giving me the push I needed.”
“You murdered your father because of me.”
“I did it for you,” he corrected. “And it wasn’t murder, not really. He was gone, Huntsman. Braindead. There was only a body with no one in it. And besides, he would be glad it happened this way. He’d be proud that his power was used to help save my Whisper.”
That may or may not be true.
They would never really know.
