I don’t like sharing my bed with anyone.
There’s never been an exception to that rule.
The idea of having another body lying with my own all night is abhorrent, exposing in all of the worst ways, and I was never going to take the risk of having a nightmare and my shadow creatures tearing someone apart just because of the demons in my head. The only person I had ever let enter my rooms before all of this Bonding shit was North, and only because there’s a small part of me that feels as though I owe him.
He carries a lot of weight on his shoulders, thanks to me.
The only reason I had allowed Oleander to sleep in my bed, both back at the Draven mansion and here in the Sanctuary, was because my bond had insisted on it. I’d fought it every step of the way. In the end, the threats it had whispered to me, the things it had promised to do the moment it took control of my body, all of it was more than enough to have me conceding on this one issue, cracking the door open just the tiniest bit to let her peer into the space I take up in this dark hellhole of mine. I was so sure that I would stay firm in my beliefs and keep her out of my head.
I was wrong.
I’m also glad I was wrong.
I wake up next to Oleander, her face turned in towards mine even with North wrapped around her like a blanket. Her lips are so close to mine, close enough that when she sighs in her sleep, I feel her breath like a caress over my skin. The neck of the shirt that she’s wearing is pulled low on her body and shows off the smooth lines of her neck and shoulder.
I want to ruin the skin there, mark her up, make sure that when she walks out of this room, everyone knows exactly who it is that she belongs to. I want to keep her here all day, to own her time and her body and every last one of her thoughts the way that she’s come to own mine.
I want all of those things to myself, and my brother lying in the bed with us is the only thing that stops me.
There’s a text message from Gryphon waiting for me on my phone, a reminder that we have a debrief waiting for us this morning about the meeting with the non-Gifted leaders. I’ve found more than enough references to the void-eyed gods in the new documents that need to be discussed, so as much as I loathe sitting around talking about shit instead of doing something about it, I’m eager to get to this debrief.
We can’t ignore what I’ve found any longer.
We can’t just sit around on our thumbs waiting for things to happen to us instead of taking action, no matter how cautious everyone else wants to be. Better to go in with everything we have at our disposal, and with Oleander, that’s a lot of fire power.
I carefully get out of the bed and make my way to the shower, avoiding the shadow creatures still sleeping away happily. They’ve become more docile and sleepier since my death, but the power that Oleander’s bond had sent me at the Wasteland had perked them back up. I know that it’s temporary, that getting back to wielding my own Gift will right things, but it’s still jarring to see them act like that.
The fact that they allowed North and August in here last night without a fight is telling.
When I step back out of the shower, my hair wet and Procel sitting happily by the door waiting for me, I hear it. I wait for the burn of repulsion in my throat or even the curling pressure of jealousy in my gut, but there’s nothing there. No reaction except for maybe desire to join in.
A foreign concept, if there ever were one.
The bathroom door is still open where I’d left it like that, another anomaly, and with a single step forward, I can see them both there in my bed, Oleander’s head thrown back as she bites her lip to hold in her moaning. She’s grinding herself against North’s hand where it disappears into the front of the boxers she’s stolen from one of her Bonds. My brother’s face is hidden, tucked into the crook of her neck as he gets off on the pure experience of pleasuring his Bonded.
She looks magnificent.
Her cheeks are flushed and her lips are red where she’s biting them. Her body moves on its own as she writhes uncontrollably, liquid and wanton as she climbs higher and higher. Her eyes meet mine across the room, her eyelids flaring wide as another moan ekes out from between her lips. I hold her gaze until her eyes roll back in her head as she comes, her head falling back onto North’s shoulder and her thighs clenching against his hand as though she’s trapping it against her clit.
North’s fingers fuck her through the orgasm.
He doesn’t stop pleasuring her, doesn’t falter as he ruthlessly drives her back to the edge and keeps her mindless with ecstasy. One of his shadows moves to tug the fabric of the shorts down her legs, stripping her lower half until she’s on display. I’m trapped in my own body as I watch North’s fingers plunge into her cunt, the wet sounds of her pussy echoing through the room and drawing me over to her.
She’s keening in his arms, practically weeping as he keeps going until she’s begging him for mercy, the overstimulation leaving her a twitching mess amongst my sheets.
I’m expecting him to fuck her.
I wouldn’t even get angry at him for doing it. When he finally stops and lets his fingers slide out of her, he turns his face to murmur something in her ear, brushing her hair away from her face as he coaxes soft kisses out of his Bonded. This feels more intimate than watching him fuck her, something softer and more private, but neither of them seem concerned that I’m still watching them together.
When North gets up and leaves, I finally find myself able to move again.
I can’t stop myself from going to her, from taking her by the ankles and dragging her further down the bed to eat her out, enjoying the pained moan she gives me. The taste of her cum is addicting, and I don’t stop until I’ve given her the same amount of orgasms that North had, until her legs are shaking, her hands are fisted in my sheets, and she’s mumbling prayers for mercy.
She’s a boneless mess but still, the moment I climb back onto the bed, she’s rolling over to me, a little shy as she wriggles down to fist my cock. When I settle back, more than happy for her to be touching me, she licks a stripe from the base to the tip. She’s made brave by my head lolling back on my shoulders, humming happily under her breath when I groan as she swallows me whole.
Whoever taught her that did a great fucking job.
I want to lie back and let her go, to see what it is that she wants to do to me, but I can’t help myself. I get a fistful of her hair, enjoying the sight of the silvery strands running through my fingers, and I tug her down my length a little quicker, pushing and pushing until I can feel my own release racing towards me.
I’m being rough, I already know. I can’t help it. But by the way she’s moaning and wriggling against my legs, Oleander likes it. She’s getting off on it as much as I am. When I lift my hips to hit the back of her throat as I come, she swallows reflexively, taking every last drop as I grit my teeth around my shout of pleasure.
She was fucking made for me, a gift I do not deserve.
When we arrive at the meeting room in North’s office, the space I’ve been using to lay out all of my research texts and compile as much as I can about the gods, North looks the calmest and most relaxed I’ve seen him. He’s calmer than I thought would ever be possible, considering the threats we’re all still facing.
Gryphon notices it straight away as well, raising his eyebrows at him as he pours himself a cup of coffee from the small pot he insists on having. His taste in coffee is horrendous. Both North and I refuse to drink anything that isn’t an espresso or a cappuccino brewed in a very particular way. Gryphon prefers the drip kind that is basically sewer water. It’s something he likes to pretend comes from our upbringing and isn’t just that we have functioning tastebuds where he appears to have nothing.
“Who would have thought all you needed was a sleepover in your brother’s room to cheer you up? We should mark a few more of these in the calendar for you,” Gryphon says with a smirk, and North doesn’t even bother to pretend to be upset about it.
“I’ve spent months knowing that she was hiding something from us all, that she couldn’t fully be invested in our Bonded Group because of it. I’m not going to try to deny that I’m pleased that it’s all finally over with and we’re not going to be walking into any more fights with the Resistance without everyone firmly on the same page.”
That’s North, always pretending that he’s only ever thinking of the bigger picture. Gryphon and I are very aware that truly he could give zero fucks about the Resistance when it comes to his Bonded. It would have been driving him insane to not know something about her, anything. He would happily take up camp in her mind the way that Gryphon did just to know every little inch of her, because he is a possessive, obsessive asshole like that when something gets under his skin and, boy, did Oleander get under his skin.
I can no longer throw stones.
She’s under mine as well.
“I’m surprised she didn’t insist on coming down here, as well as the other two,” Gryphon says as he stretches out on one of the seats, his back popping from where he had spent the night propped up against a wall in the hallway fussing over her. I could make a joke about it, but I find myself uninterested in needling either of them about her anymore. I’d much rather save that energy for finding a way out of all of this for us.
“Gabe and Atlas had insisted on her staying behind with them. She wanted to discuss her parents’ accident with them herself,” North says, happily keeping everybody on the same page, but I don’t want to sit around talking about this without her here.
It feels as though we’re all casually gossiping about her trauma. I’d already promised to take this to the grave, so not a single word will ever pass my lips about it.
Not even to my brother or Gryphon.
“What happened with the senator? Other than her digging into things she shouldn’t be and trying to use them against you. Did you get anything worth using out of the woman?”
North’s eyes narrow at me a little and then he shrugs. “She’s non-Gifted. There’s not a huge amount we can get out of her… other than the families that the Resistance have been after. There’s potentially Gifted amongst their ranks who had been taken as children, but the brainwashing has already happened and there’s not much that we can do for them.”
I nod and then scratch the back of my head, tugging a little on my hair there as I try to focus my brain on picking up any tiny scrap of information that might help.
North stops to look around properly at the books and papers spread out everywhere. The whiteboard that I’ve been taking notes on is in a dead language that only myself, and now Oleander, can understand. It’s mostly so that if anyone stumbles in here, they’re not going to be able to spy on what it is that I’m doing.
There’s too much at stake.
North says, “Have you managed to find anything? Any little thing that might tell us what the fuck we’re supposed to do with Gabe if he shifts again?”
I shrug and tap one of the piles of paper that’s a printout of an ancient text that has been scanned through and sent to me. The text is the oldest one I’ve ever seen, possibly as old as the written word itself, and it had been arduous to translate the language. It’s deader than the one I’m using to take notes.
“I found a reference to a ‘Dragon God’. I’d assumed that it was a Shifter that had turned into some sort of lizard. Maybe it was a Gifted who was a traveler and could have easily been shifting into something that just wasn’t native to where the text was written, but the text refers to his ‘cold, dead, black eyes’. I think it’s the one and only time that the dragon has walked the earth before.”
North blows out a breath and nods. Gryphon thrums his fingers on the table. He has a lot of his own feelings about Gabe changing that he’s keeping to himself, but I’m sure he’ll voice them when he’s ready.
I know exactly how to get him ready.
“For now, I’m keeping a tally of when and where the black eyes are showing up… and what abilities may have been exhibited, because the shadow creatures are not the only Gift I’m seeing.”
It works like a charm.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gryphon says as his eyes snap to mine, and I shrug back.
“There’s references of a ‘black-eyed being’ who could force his enemies to play along with his deepest fantasies, a being who could force men to take up his own stances on things. There’s also a being who could cut men in half with his mind alone. I’m still trying to figure out what Gift that could possibly be but, regardless, that Gifted was burned at the stake for his crimes. He cried out that it was the demon living inside him that did these things, that he had no control of his Gift when the instances occurred.”
Both of them look equally shocked and calculating at this news.
“How much of this do you think the Resistance knows?” North says as he pushes up out of his seat and walks over to the large window, looking down at the city he is slowly building, the last relic of the goodness within the Draven line that no one ever seems to acknowledge. They just cower in fear of the shadow creatures we control.
“There’s only so much that we could guess, given what we know,” Gryphon says as he raises his cup of terrible coffee to his lips. “We have two Resistance members locked in the cells under the Tech Center. Now might be a good time to be a little more creative in our questioning.”
North sighs and shakes his head. “Any more creativity and we cross the line with what we had promised Atlas. I’m not going to bring dishonesty into our Bonded Group. We’ve fought too hard for it to lose it now.”
