This Time Around (Sequel to All Over Again)

Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

McKenna stared at Ward and shook her head. “Are you that stupid? You want Loki to come here? You wouldn’t stand a chance. He’s not about to help you.”

“He will. Unless he wants to see the two of you shot in front of him.”

Selig squeezed her hand so tight she had to bite back a wince. “Trust me, Ward. You do not want Loki anywhere near this stone.”

“Yes, I do. He knows how to make it work and I need that knowledge. And as long as he thinks you and that brat are in danger, he will do anything I want him to do.”

She swallowed hard. If the case held the true Tesseract, she’d be only slightly more afraid than she was right then. That stone had such power where Loki was concerned, she would fear for her own safety. She didn’t know about Selig, whether or not Loki would possibly hurt him as well, and she really didn’t want to find out, either.

“Drop the gun, Ward, put your hands in the air, and get on your knees, now.” Coulson stepped into the room his gun raised and trained on Ward’s back.

McKenna breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, that sigh died when someone dressed entirely in black came up behind Coulson and hit him in the back of the head with something. Selig wrapped his arms about her leg as Coulson hit the floor like a sack of sand.

“What should I do with him, sir?”

Without looking over his shoulder, Ward said, “Take him downstairs. I’ll deal with him later on.”

McKenna hugged Selig tighter to her leg as Ward then turned to her. “Get comfortable, princess. You’re going to be here for a while.”

With that, he took the fake Tesseract and left them alone in the room, closing the door firmly behind him.

“Mommy?” Selig tugged on her shirt. “Was Uncle Grant telling me the truth about Daddy? Did he do all that stuff, really?”

McKenna sighed as she crouched to scoop him up. “Sweetie, he is not your uncle. He is a horrible man and we share no tie whatsoever with him.”

“But was he lying about Daddy?”

As she gazed down into her son’s innocent blue eyes, her heart broke. She didn’t want to tell him the truth. Didn’t want him to ever see Loki as anything other than his daddy. But at the same time, she didn’t want to lie, either, because the truth would eventually come out and Selig would then be twice as angry, just as Loki was when he learned the truth about his own origins.

She moved across the room, as far away from the door as she could, and sank to the floor still holding him. “Selig, you’ve heard us talk about how Bestefar and Daddy didn’t speak for a very long time, how he made Bestefar so angry, right?”

Selig nodded. “Yes, but no one ever said why.”

“You’ve also heard us talk about how angry Daddy was about a lot of things for a very long time, right?” She waited for Selig to nod, then smoothed his hair away from his forehead. “Well, he did some things then that he’s not exactly proud of now and he hurt a lot of people in the process.

“But, he isn't like that any more, Selig. He loves you and your sister, and me and Bestefar and Unca Thor and he would never hurt anyone unless they did something to the people he cares about.”

“But he hurt people?”

“Once, yes.”

“Just like Uncle… Grant?”