Free Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3) by Alexandra Ivy, Carrie Ann Ryan Page A

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.

 

Chapter 6
     
     
    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