Page 22 of Oracle
Seth rode my orgasm out to its full extent before stilling and finding his own release. He pressed a kiss to my temple, and murmured, “Good, Kitten,” before letting one of my legs drop before the other, tentatively letting me down to find my own footing.
I felt like a newborn giraffe the way I stumbled, but Jameson caught me and pulled me to his chest. “So, did we top the last orgasm?” he asked, victory clear in his tone. The cheeky bastard knew they had.
This felt like another rhetorical question I didn’t feel the need to answer. “The important part is that I feel our bond. It’s blazing in my heart like a live electrical wire,” I admitted.
He leaned down to kiss my forehead before resting it against mine, and whispered, “I love you, Kira.”
CHAPTERNINE
CALEB
For all of my jokes and fake confidence I boosted, the truth was that I was worried Kira didn’t have enough in her heart to give to seven different men. That was a lot to ask of anyone, and I was sure our group was a handful to manage on her own.
Seven men who all wanted her time, attention, and love. Talk about being torn in different directions.
There was a clear opening in what our group needed, though, and I was more than happy to fill that void. It was my natural tendency to try to make light of a situation in general, so providing comedic relief to everyone was easy.
But was it enough to feel like I provided something valuable enough to win her heart? Probably not.
I needed time with her away from the group, desperately. I wanted to date her and get to know her like I would have if she had no other mates. But it seemed that wasn’t in the cards for us with being in the midst of a war.
I wanted to know her favorite color, her favorite animal, her passions, her fears. I wanted to know everything that made her, her.
Bowls and silverware clattered as the scraping of the wooden bench pulled me from my thoughts. Everyone was getting up to leave the dining hall, but I had zoned out at the end of our conversation and didn’t know where we were going now or if anything was expected of me.
It had seemed like we had been wrapped up in meeting after meeting, and if we weren’t in a meeting, one of us was in the prayer room with Kira, keeping an eye on her while she was unconscious. Of course she had woken up on Morgan’s shift. She probably felt like none of us cared enough to be there with her when she woke, and that hurt me immensely to think of.
I was wondering if that was the reason she had been so distant at first, but didn’t want to admit it.
Pushing to my feet, I grabbed my own empty bowl and followed Luca to put them in our waste bin. After he deposited his, he turned to look at me as he moved, allowing me space to put mine down on top of his.
“What’s going on, Caleb?”
“Nothing,” I muttered, hoping that maybe just this one time he would drop it.
The fucker was too damn good at reading people, and it was infuriating at times. Sometimes I wouldn’t even realize something was wrong myself before he asked, startling me.
“See ya later, boys,” Milo called out as he waved to us, the last of our group to leave the room outside of Luca and I. A genuine smile graced my face as I waved back at him.
At first he had been a bit elusive and cagey around us, but over the week Kira was asleep, we had all bonded over our joint misery and fear. It was easy to see how we all fit together in a pack status, and it felt right that we were all together. Even Morgan ended up feeling quickly like a little sister to us all.
Luca surprised us all, though, when he offered to braid her hair for her one night when we were all getting ready for bed. It shouldn’t have shocked us, seeing as he had two little sisters that he loved fiercely.
He cleared his throat as he leaned against the wall. “You can’t bullshit me and you know it.”
I rolled my eyes in exaggeration as he narrowed his own gaze on me, searching my face for any hint of what my mind was dwelling on. “Okay, Nancy Drew. You can stop your investigation now,” I teased, knowing he was a safe place for me to open up, and it was probably healthy for me to get it off my chest instead of festering internally.
Wes, Luca, and I were a tight-knit friend group despite not growing up in the same packs. Honestly, I felt like the only reason we even continued to come to the Summit was to see each other and get into mischief.
Well, myself and Wes got into mischief while Luca growled his disapproval.
Perhaps it was truly because the Fates knew we had to be here one day to meet our mate.
Crossing my arms across my chest, I asked, “Do you think it’s possible for Kira to want us all equally?”
He couldn’t hide the fear that flashed in his silver eyes and the way he physically flinched ever so slightly. I had a feeling that he had some similar thoughts and insecurities to my own.
Lifting a large hand to rub the stubble on his cheek, he sighed loudly, his shoulders and chest heaving with the movement. “I don’t know how I fit into her life. This has all happened so quickly. I want to say that I know with certainty that it will all work out and that we’ll live as one happy family. But seven men? We’re bound to drive her insane, and how is it possible to divide your love equally? There has to be a favorite…right?”
