Page 19 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

Maxim

“No, I will not sit down,” I say fiercely to my mates, all of them, for at least the fifth time. “I will not stop pacing and I will not be calm. I will not welcome another male into our harem no matter who my reckless mate has now bitten!”

Barefoot and vengeful in the ripped jeans and tee shirt I have dragged over my body to cover the shame of my hideously scarred back from the alarming intruder in our bedroom, I keep one eye on the demon at all times.

But I underscore my promise with a ferocious glare at Vasili.

Wrapped tightly in his black silk kimono, tall and silent as a pillar of granite lurking near the window, Vasili gives my pacing and agitated body a cold blue stare. One perfectly groomed eyebrow lifts in disdain. This is the look Zara calls the Romanov eyebrow.

Tonight, I am in no mood for it.

I bare my teeth at him—always my most infuriating and difficult mate—in a snarl.

“For once,” Zephyr grates out, “that dragon and I are in perfect accord.”

If I am agitated, Zephyr is furious. While I lunged for a shirt to cover my scars, he reacted to the demon’s appearance— his mortal enemy, of whose nearness he was clearly ignorant—by lunging for his eyepatch to cover his own deformity.

(For so he perceives it, his missing eye, the only flaw in his deadly Dark Fae beauty.)

Now he lunges for his swords.

“Don’t you dare draw a sword in this bedroom, Your Transcendence,” Zara says to him, for at least the third time. That is the name she gives him when she is irritated. “I mean it. No bloodshed. Talk first.”

“Talk.” Naked and quivering with barely contained rage, the Unseelie grips his crossed swords (which are still sheathed, but barely) and sneers at the enemy demon.

His nostrils flare wide with scorn. “The only words I intend to speak are the banishing spell that will send this treacherous creature back to the hell that spawned him.”

The kraken—Mordred, he whose webbed feet and bronze skin and ink-blue hair exude the decadent scent of rum spice and molasses that perfumes the air in this bedroom like the reek of sex—shifts his thickly muscled frame. His clever purple eyes narrow at Zephyr.

The creature looks crafty. I do not trust him.

If that kraken moves against any of my mates—even Zephyr, who is (temporarily) Zara’s but not mine—I will destroy him!

A dragonish growl rumbles from my chest. The kraken’s gaze shifts to me. Casually, he reaches into the room behind him and produces a trident, taller than he is, capped with three wicked prongs capable of disemboweling a shark.

Or a dragon.

I drop into a defensive crouch and measure the weapon’s range with a wary eye. I wonder how far he can hurl it.

“Oh, dear.” Naked, Lucius leaps from the bed.

“Yeah, no. Let’s not be hasty. That goes for you too, Max.” Hastily, my queen scrambles to her feet, then pulls her Academy bathrobe around her lush and fertile nakedness. “Aquaman, you put that thing away. I mean, where did that trident even come from?”

“Happens I was holding it when my new master over there summoned me through the veil. That’s how a summoning spell works.” Mordred gives my Vasili (who is still inscrutable) a cheeky grin and a wink that infuriates me all over again.

How dare this kraken leer and grin at my mate with those dimples?

At least, in obedience to my queen’s command, the kraken leans that menacing trident casually against the wall. Still, I notice that he keeps it well within reach.

I resume my pacing, careful to keep my body solidly between my Zara and this strange sex demon lounging in our doorway.

Meanwhile, Zephyr has positioned himself near the wall so that none of us (including Vasili) lurk in his blind spot.

It is a telling choice.

Whatever tentative bonds of trust might have been woven between him and my mates in this bedroom before I arrived, those bonds did not survive being ambushed by his enemy. The very air we breathe is thick and the silence frayed with broken trust.

“Neo, baby,” Zara says with a sigh, “go find Ash for me, okay? We really need him.”

Already buttoned into his chinos, Neo nods and pulls a polo shirt over his broad shoulders.

Instead of leaving at once to do her bidding as I expect, he hurries to me. He interrupts my pacing by the simple act of planting his warm hands on my tense shoulders and gazing into my scowling face with his worried eyes.

“Hey, Max,” he says softly. “Take a breath, okay?”

He is my Neo. He must never be made to worry.

For his sake, I breathe.

My mate’s reassuring scent of sage and lavender and hand-milled soap seeps through me. As always with him, the gentlest of all my mates, my raging dragon is soothed.

My beast greets Neo with an affectionate grumble.

I cannot resist running my hands over Neo’s solid and reassuring warmth to ensure he is well. Finding no injury on any part of him, I growl in relief. I rub my cheek against his, to scent him and claim him, especially before this intruder.

Knowing shifters as he does (for we are a tactile race), my mate kneads my tense shoulders with his steady hands and tolerates these possessive claimings with patience.

“That’s good, Max. You’re doing great. Just keep breathing, low in your belly, like when Zara does her yoga. I’m gonna go find Ash. Don’t kill anyone while I’m gone, okay?” Neo says earnestly. “You’ll really upset Zara if you do.”

Without waiting for me to agree, because I have not and will not—I must keep my mates safe!—Neo gives me a quick warm hug, then trots purposefully toward the door.

It is not so easy to remain angry after being hugged.

Still wrathful and damp with rain, my long hair dripping on Neo’s father’s carpet, I sneak my queen a concerned look. Truly, all this excitement cannot be good for her. Or Vasili.

Especially if (as I suspect) they are both pregnant.

Surely, at least one of them (or, in Vasili’s case, his dragon) is clutching. That is what you call a dragon who is carrying a clutch of dragonets.

A warm flood of tenderness for both of them—Zara and Vasili, both mine in every way, and for our coming offspring—swells my heart to overflowing.

My love is chased by a surge of protective worry.

We must manage this business of the Dean’s Challenge and kill the rival queen quickly, quickly.

Only then can I rush my mates to my dragon lair, hidden deep in the Siberian tundra, and tend them and spoil them and cosset them, and protect them both while they are breeding—

A sudden exclamation of disgust from Vasili, who is now sneering at me in a horrible way, reminds me sharply to guard my thoughts.

Very quickly, I have learned to guard my thoughts on this entire matter from Vasili.

He does not yet know his own mind.

For once in his fiendishly clever life, he does not know what I know.

“Yeah, what Neo said.” Zara gives the belt of her robe a firm tug to knot it, then divides a warning look between me and Zephyr. “No killing. And you put pants on, Your Radiance.”

Ronin, who has no modesty and is indifferent to his own nudity (a condition which normally pleases all of us), grunts and tosses his own leather pants at Zephyr.

The garment falls unheeded to the floor at Zephyr’s feet.

Lucius exhales a sigh of disappointment. Our headmaster’s intelligent sherry-gold eyes plead with Zephyr for restraint.

Unmoved, the naked Unseelie grips the complicated harness that holds his crossed swords in both hands and glares furiously at the demon.

Vasili says that Zephyr is our enemy. All the same, a naked Zephyr is a splendid sight, every muscle and sinew tight and quivering under olive skin, pubic hair a vivid lick of green between his thighs.

His jade eye burns, incandescent with hatred.

“Fuck’s sake,” Ronin mutters. “Best hurry right back with Ash, will you, love?”

Neo gives us all a worried look, locks onto my scowling face and mouths Easy, then ducks into the hallway and vanishes.

At least, that one of my mates is safe.

I give a satisfied snarl and resume my pacing. I am marking my territory. Establishing a clear perimeter between my precious mates and that demon.

If Mordred dares to cross it by a toenail, I will slay him without mercy.

Lucius, who is quickly buttoning himself into his linen pajamas, gives the entire scene (including my pacing, Vasili’s lurking, Zephyr’s silent fulminating, and Mordred’s lazy smirking) a keen look. Then Lucius murmurs in Ronin’s ear.

Still wearing nothing but his own golden skin and a lush mane of midnight hair that is tousled from the rough sex he has clearly been having, Ronin grunts and saunters across the bedroom to Zephyr under the demon’s interested eye.

“Right.” Ronin scoops up his fallen leathers with an agile foot and offers them to Zephyr. “These’ll look wicked on you, Zeph. Good to wear in a scuffle too. Go on, then. I’ll mind your swords for a tick.”

I find it highly unlikely the Unseelie will yield those swords for any amount of time in his enemy’s presence. But Ronin’s powers of persuasion are potent.

Especially when he is naked.

Zephyr drills the demon lounging in our doorway with a hard look, then jerks his chin in a short nod and snatches the pants.

While he shoves his legs into the leathers and wrestles the garment over his hips in a silent fury, Zara hurries to fill the charged silence with a few jumbled sentences of hasty explanation for the demon’s presence in our bedroom…

a summoning ritual, the magical artifact retrieved, then the biting… that I am barely able to absorb.

When I do, I jolt to a halt and whirl toward Vasili. His graceful frame skulks against the glass doors, face cast fully into shadow, beyond the circle of light from the bedside lamp.

“You.” I scowl ferociously at my foolish mate. “You dared to summon this infernal creature out of Avalon into our world without consulting or warning any of us… and then you bit him?”