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.”
Chapter Nineteen
Oli
I'm expecting Gabe and Atlas to have questions or some sort of reaction to my admission about my parents’ death, but both of them are more concerned with my reaction to North's revelation than the news itself.