Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3) (8 page)

“Hi,” she breathed and wanted to shake herself. She could do better than that. “Want to come in? I thought you two were resting.”

Oliver tilted his head to study her, and Gibson ran a hand over his heart. “What happened when we were gone?” the bear asked.

“You’re hurting,” Gibson added softly.

Well, crud. Apparently, being with the Omega and a very observant Foreseer meant she’d have to be careful with every emotion. Some things were meant to be her own until she could work through them.

“I’ll be okay,” she said and put up both of her hands. “Let’s just leave it at that for now. I need to work through a few things and then I can talk about it.”

“If that’s what you want,” Oliver said, his voice low.

Gibson shifted from foot to foot. “Yeah, sorry about that. I’m still getting used to all of these things. I don’t know how I’m supposed to help people eventually when right now it feels like all I’m doing is intruding.”

Mandy sighed. “We’ll find a balance. Now, do you want to come in? Or do you plan to occupy my porch until my roommates come home.”

Oliver’s eyes flared. “I forget you have roommates sometimes.”

“It can’t be helped,” she said simply.

“That much I know,” Gibson said after a moment. “We’re actually here to take you to the den center. Holden wants a meeting.”

“Why didn’t I hear about it?” she asked. “And why would I need to go unless it’s for the entire den. I don’t usually attend high-ranking meetings like that.”

“It’s for most of the den,” Gibson answered. “And we’re here to ask you to go, hence why you’re just hearing about it now. It wasn’t a planned thing. And since I’m going, well, they want you there, as well.” He paused. “Actually, I think you might have been invited anyway. You’re more than you think you are, Mandy.”

She studied his face and nodded. “Okay, then. Let me put on some shoes.” She wasn’t sure what had gotten into her recently, but she didn’t like that she continually doubted herself. She was proud of her place in the Pack. She was needed and accepted. Yet as soon as she thought of herself next to these invaluable men, she kept putting herself down.

That needed to stop, and yet she wasn’t sure how considering she didn’t know why she kept doing it in the first place.

When she stepped out onto the porch with them, Oliver stopped her by cupping her face. “What is it?” she asked.

“You are far more important to us, to the Pack, to yourself than you give yourself credit for,” the big bear whispered. “I wish you would see that.”

Gibson gripped her hip from behind and leaned forward, his lips near her ear, the warmth of his breath sending shivers down her spine. “We see you, Mandy. We always have. We might have stayed away for our own reasons, but it was never because you weren’t worthy. You’re more than all of us. You’re the glue, the reason our beasts can breathe. You might not go to war rooms and fight in the battles that leave us bloody, but that doesn’t mean you’re pushed to the sidelines. Just remember that, okay?”

Tears filled her eyes and she nodded. Oliver lowered his head then, brushing his lips against hers, once, twice. “Good,” he whispered.

He pulled away, and Gibson cupped her jaw and tilted her head toward his, capturing her lips with a kiss of his own. “We’ll keep saying things along those lines until you start to believe it.”

She sniffed, annoyed with herself for getting so emotional. “I used to,” she said honestly.

“And then things shifted,” Oliver said. “It’s shifting for all of us, but we’ll get through it together. That’s why we’re here, after all.”

“Now let’s head to the den center before Holden and the other Alphas get annoyed.”

“The other Alphas will be there?” she asked then winced. “Well, duh, since Oliver is going and his Alpha isn’t Holden.”

Gibson smiled softly and took her hand. Oliver took the other, and they started down the path toward the den center. “It’s confusing with the three Alphas who have to work as one. And with all of us mating each other, bear, cat, and wolf, it alters the politics.”

“What does that mean?” she asked, fear slowly filling her. “I remember some of the elders telling me that before the Verona Virus hit, the Packs would mate with one another and then the couple or triad would choose which Pack to align themselves with. But you’re an Omega, and Oliver’s the Foreseer, it’s not like the two of you can switch.”

They both squeezed her hands, but she couldn’t relax her wolf.

“There have been times when mates are from different Packs and remain that way for reasons of their own,” Oliver answered. “We are not the first to deal with this. If I remember correctly, there was once a bear, cat, wolf triad.” He smiled at that. “The politics in that would have been far more complex than what we’re dealing with.”

She relaxed somewhat, but not enough. “If you say so.”

“I do,” Oliver said.

She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped as the scent of death hit her.

“Shit,” Gibson hissed and pulled Mandy behind him. She didn’t stop him since she wasn’t a fighter, but it galled her that she couldn’t help against whatever was coming.

“What is it?” she whispered. “Who is it?”

Oliver moved forward and lifted a fallen branch, letting out a curse of his own when he revealed the source of the scent.

Mandy peered around Gibson and let out a gasp. “Oh, God, it’s Claire.”

Claire had once been with Holden, their Alpha, but never as a mate. That hadn’t sat well with the female wolf, and she’d done all she could to gain the power needed to be worthy of Holden. Yet that’s not what the male wolf had wanted at all. Instead, he’d fallen for a human-turned-wolf, and had mated Ariel soon after they’d met. Claire hadn’t taken it well at all—an understatement to be sure. She’d ended up telling the SAU how Ariel had come to be part of the Pack, starting the series of events that had led to the internal war they were in the middle of now.

Humans hadn’t known how shifters were made until Claire had spilled the truth. She hadn’t thought beyond her needs, and had endangered them all. Instead of thinking shifters were only born, not made, humans now had another reason to take shifters, to study them. They had even tried to make shifters of their own using kidnapped Pack members, and when that hadn’t worked, they’d gone so far as to take Anya’s two bear cubs.

The SAU was now crumbling from within because their manic experiments had failed, but countless lives had been lost in the process. The Unseen were working on their own path to free themselves from secrecy and liberate those with brands and collars from their own fate, but it wasn’t easy. And frankly, Mandy didn’t even know all of it.

Claire hadn’t been sentenced to death by Ariel because the Alpha’s mate had wanted Claire to see all the pain she’d caused. Yet it seemed death had found her nonetheless.

“We need to find Holden,” Gibson muttered.

“No need,” Holden said from behind them.

Mandy turned at the sound of her Alpha’s voice and lowered her eyes.

“I can’t scent anything on the body,” Oliver said suddenly. “How can that be? I only scent death and Claire.”

Cole came out of the shadows then, the feline Tracker and the shifter with the best sense of smell in the den. He crouched over the body and inhaled, letting out a curse of his own. “You’re right, Oliver. The scent of whoever did this is muted, much like it was when Gibson got hurt.” He narrowed his eyes. “Someone is playing games.”

Mandy gripped Gibson’s hand at the memory of his injury. She looked up at him and wanted to curse herself. “We need to get you out of here,” she whispered.

“I’m fine,” he bit out, his face pale. There were too many people feeling intensely. He had to be in pain, but he wouldn’t leave, not yet. Damn wolf.

“You know what else is missing?” Oliver said, his voice low. “Where are the SAU guards? They weren’t here for Gibson, and they are mysteriously absent now. The scent might be of shifter on Claire and Gibson before, sure muted, but shifter nonetheless. Yet the SAU isn’t here.”

Mandy narrowed her eyes. “If the SAU is going through issues of their own, it might mean they haven’t noticed,” she said and lowered her head as all eyes turned to her.

“You’re right, little wolf,” Holden said, his voice low but anything but calm. “It seems we’re in the center of two storms.”

And what would happen when the storms fully collided? Mandy wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Oliver rested his head in his hands; his forearms steady on his thighs as he sat in his large oak chair. His body ached from lack of sleep, and frankly, lack of release, and yet he couldn’t think about that now. What he
should
be doing is trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with his visions and why he couldn’t see beyond the misty tendrils of death and into what would actually come to be.

He hadn’t seen Gibson’s injury.

He hadn’t seen Claire’s death.

And he sure as hell hadn’t seen Gibson and Mandy in his life.

He could still see the wide, vacant eyes of Claire as she stared blankly at the sky; her body cold and covered in cuts and bruises. There wasn’t a single claw mark on her, worrying him more than it should. If a shifter had been angry enough with Claire for what she’d done to the den or for another reason, he would have thought they’d have used claws and teeth to kill her.

Instead, someone had used a knife to slowly bleed away her life. He might not have liked Claire, nor the decisions she’d made in the heat of the moment, but she hadn’t deserved to die the way she had. The fact that Holden, Soren, and Gibson hadn’t felt her die along Pack bonds told Oliver that there was something going on far beyond a grudge against a woman who had made a terrible mistake.

Yes, it could have been the SAU that had taken her life and even hurt Gibson, yet Oliver wasn’t sure. That wouldn’t explain the hidden severed bonds and shifter scent on the body. The fact that it was a
muted
scent so no one could tell what kind of shifter it was, let alone
who
it was, meant this went far deeper than a guard with a knife.

Only he couldn’t figure it out, and his body hurt from vision after vision. Visions that didn’t seem to be helping anyone. All they did was take a little bit more out of him and keep him up at night.

Usually, he couldn’t see the deaths of those he loved, those in his family. He’d never seen Anya or the cubs fully in his dreams before. Yes, when the cubs had been kidnapped he’d known something was wrong, but it was more of what would have happened
after
that had brought on the visions of fear and death. The fact that he’d seen the cubs clear as day in a vision along with Cole worried him.

Add in the fact that he’d then seen Gibson and Mandy, and he just wasn’t sure anymore.

“If you keep thinking so hard, you’re going to break something,” Gibson said softly as he slowly made his way into the room.

Oliver looked up at the other man and held back a curse. “You look like hell.”

“I feel like hell,” the wolf said simply.

“I told him to go to sleep, but he won’t listen to me,” Mandy said as she walked in with two mugs of tea. “These are for you and me, Oliver. Gibson will get some after he sleeps off the weight of emotions he just felt.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, he smiled. “She told you.”

Gibson let out a little growl. “Fine, I was going to head to my place anyway. I need to hide away for a bit and just sleep it off.” He looked between them. “Stay here, will you?” he asked Mandy. “Just…be together, or I don’t know… You guys need time alone to see who you are as a couple.” Oliver’s brows rose. “We’ll each have time as couples and then later as…well, as a triad, but I think the two of you should at least talk or something.” He ran a hand over his face. “And now that I’ve mucked that up because I’m too tired to think, I’m headed over.”

“Are you sure you’re okay walking by yourself?” Oliver asked, aware that Mandy had gone quiet beside him.

“I’ll be okay,” Gibson answered. He leaned forward and kissed Mandy softly, then Oliver. Oliver’s bear stretched at the sensation, loving the taste of this wolf. “Just…be, okay?”

He left them then, his hands in his pockets but a resolve about him that Oliver liked.

“Did he just tell us to have sex?” Mandy blurted once Gibson was out of earshot.

Oliver laughed then, his whole body shaking. He reached out and gripped her hand, pulling her close. Thankfully, she’d already set down the tea or that would have burned. When she tumbled into his lap, he kissed her temple, relieved she laughed with him.

“Yeah, I think he did.”

Mandy blushed, her cheeks pink and very, very alluring. “I assumed we’d uh…you know, between the three of us first.”

“We can wait to do that,” Oliver said, his voice serious. “Or you and Gibson can find each other first.” He paused. “I don’t know if it’s a vision or just what I feel, but I think it has to be you with one of us first. Not just me and Gibson. You’re the glue,” he repeated from before.

“You say that, and yet I don’t know if I quite believe it.” She ran a hand through his beard, and he did his best to memorize every plane of her face, every scar, every bit of her that made her Mandy.

Her wolf might crave the man near her, but that didn’t mean the human fully knew him. Yes, she might want him as a woman wanted a man, but she needed to know him, needed to see how she fit against him—literally and figuratively.

He slid his hand up her thigh to rest on her hip and stared down at her. “Gibson is part of this, yet, without him, I don’t think our beasts would be as…intent as they are. But the same could be said of me I would think. But without you? Without you, there wouldn’t be a glimmer. Your inner strength is what brought us here, and I know without you, I’d still be sitting in my room, trying not to pass out from the weight on my shoulders. And Gibson? Well, I don’t think he’d have been over here at all without you.”

She squirmed in his lap and he let out a soft groan. She froze, and he knew she felt his erection under her butt, causing her to blush. He knew she wasn’t a virgin as the den was too small for secrets, but he didn’t want to think of her past experiences. He just wanted to think of her.