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

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.
    Mandy swallowed hard and licked her lips. Oliver’s gaze fell to the motion and he stared once again. She lifted her hand slightly to cup his face rather than his beard and tilted her head. The line between her brows deepened, and he wanted to smooth it out. She only did that when she was thinking hard about something.
    And she always seemed to be thinking hard around him and Gibson.
    “You can’t blame yourself for what happened,” she whispered. He hadn’t expected her to say that, and from the way Mandy blinked, she hadn’t expected to say it either. “Claire died because someone wanted her dead, or she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t your fault you didn’t see it. You’re so hard on yourself, Oliver. You can’t control when a vision comes to you, and you can’t control how deep