Page 20 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

“I’m running out of ways to say this.” Vasili’s tone drips with acid. “But let us try once more, do .”

“Indeed.” Zephyr buttons his leather trousers with aggravated motions and glares under his spill of green hair at Vasili. “Let’s.”

“That .” V jabs a finger precisely toward the demon’s love-bitten neck.

“Is not. A mating bite. He isn’t joining the harem, he’s hired help.

For fuck’s sake, he’s brought us the Horn of Ceres!

Snatched the prize of the whole contest right out from under Cleo’s nose.

If he hadn’t, both this contest and this delightful little rebellion we’re leading would be over.

They’d be crowning Cleo queen of the witching world as we speak. ”

Zara taps her sparkly toes on the carpet and looks thoughtful. Of course, this is presumably not the first time she has heard this argument. She does not feel angry in our mating bond.

She is listening to Vasili.

And she is thinking.

Hard.

“For moon’s sake. I should have known.” With a look of abject disgust, Zephyr snatches his swords back from Ronin and swings the harness across his bare shoulders.

As his single eye drills into Vasili, his tone shifts from wrath to bitterness.

“Another of your twisted plots to punish me for the so-called misdeeds of my past with Ronin. With any luck, you must’ve fancied my demonic cousin would slay me and spare you the trouble.

I knew ’twas too much to hope you might finally have begun to tolerate my presence. ”

“Well, since you mention it…” Vasili murmurs, his face still in shadow. “You have a cock that won’t quit, I’ll give you that. You fuck like a porn star. But there’s still no place for you in this harem.”

Zara’s dragon voices a chirp of annoyance.

This is one of the evocative bird-like sounds my queen has begun vocalizing since she has grown accustomed to her dragon. Her turquoise eyes narrow and her sparkly toes tap.

Her annoyance with Vasili crackles through our mating bond like static.

“Bloody hell.” Ronin too swings around to give Vasili an irate look.

His tawny face ignites with wrath. “You still feeling threatened by Zephyr then? Better not be for my sake, mate. Because him and me, we’re solid.

We’ve worked it all out. He’s forgiven me for knifing him in the eye.

And I… I’ve forgiven him. For all of it. ”

“Until the next time he ghosts you for four years and lets you believe he’s dead.” Vasili sneers. “Have you also forgiven the role that guilt over his supposed death played in your sister’s suicide?”

Dragging the late Gwendolyn Pendragon into this mess is a very low blow. Even for Vasili.

Ronin’s shoulders hunch and his face goes tight in a rictus of old grief.

Even I stop glaring at the demon long enough to glare at Vasili.

How could he ever hurt Ronin?

As for the Dark Fae King, he bristles with barely contained fury. “Serpent, hold thy wicked tongue. The state of affairs between Ronin and myself is naught of your concern, Vasili Nikolayevich Romanov.”

Now Zephyr is lapsing into ancient Fae. And he is threatening Vasili. Neither is a good sign.

“The devil it isn’t,” Vasili says shortly.

Ronin crosses his muscled arms over his chest and scowls at Vasili. “You know what, mate? I don’t bloody need your protection. Not against Zeph. So you can drop this angel of vengeance bullshit and piss off.”

Saints of the northern steppes.

By this point, no one (except myself) is even watching the demon. As for that spawn of Satan, now leaning comfortably against the wall, Mordred appears ready to settle in with a bowl of popcorn (assuming he eats popcorn, because krakens typically consume raw fish) and enjoy the show.

“Sweet Jesus. What. A. Mess .” Zara voices an unhappy groan and gives our feuding mates a pensive look. Her big aqua eyes are clouded with concern.

My precious queen. In our mating bond, she feels so sad.

My dragon growls in protest. Exerting all my will, I cease my pointless pacing, range myself close beside Zara, and wrap a protective arm around her tiny waist. She slips her arm around me and tucks into my side with a sigh of relief.

Very discreetly, I spread a sheltering palm over her lower belly.

Beneath my hand, surely, she is clutching our dragonets.

The rich musk of caramel and vetiver and birchwood fills my head. Christ, she is drenched in Vasili’s mating scent. Under her bathrobe, I sense, her thighs are slick with Vasili’s seed. The fresh mating bite decorating her neck, too, is Vasili’s.

My Vasili.

But he is also her Vasili.

And he is Ronin’s Vasili.

This time, our vengeful, spiteful, secretly insecure Vasili has truly caused a mess.

As furious and alarmed as I remain to find a strange male lurking about our harem while both Zara and Vasili are (hopefully) breeding—as difficult as I find it to think clearly with this truckload of testosterone flooding every cell and synapse in my mating rut—I am slowly grasping the reality that my outraged sentiments are not the current focus of anyone’s concern.

No.

The biggest danger by far to the integrity of my queen’s cobbled-together harem—as always—is the gaping rupture of distrust and suspicion the sex demon’s presence has not only exposed, but widened, between Vasili and Zephyr.

Lucius too takes his place beside Zara and addresses this crisis with his resolute voice. “My dears, let’s all be as practical as we can. What’s done is done. The demon is here. And he is, for the moment, our ally. The question now becomes, where do we all go next?”

Well.

As to that, after my midnight flight over Icarus Island, after what I saw from the air and learned on the ground, I have something to say.

“If we are speaking of battle tactics—” I begin.

The bedroom door flies open, and Neo drags Ash inside. Warily, I fall silent.

Asher Apollo Aurelius.

Prince of the Light Born Fae.

The Seelie Prince is Zephyr’s ally and thus Vasili’s rival (and, I suppose, mine), so I do not know him well.

Wearing naught but a pair of faded jeans that cling to his thick thighs, with rainwater dripping down the broad slabs of his chest and trickling down his chiseled six-pack abs, the Seelie fills the doorframe with his wide shoulders.

A circlet of black ivy, spiked with thorns and daubed with crimson blood, is inked around his bulging biceps.

His spiky head of pewter hair nearly bumps the ceiling.

Ash drags a big hand down the craggy planes of his face, pushes rain out of his eyes, and blinks at the impasse. His keen silver stare shoots straight to Zephyr, bristling in the harness of his crossed swords, then to the lounging demon with his trident.

“Ash,” Zephyr breathes, low and lethal. “Did you know of this… this calumny?”

English is not my first language and that is not a word I know.

But I presume he means the demon.

“Hiya, Sparrow. Good to see ya, kid. For real.” Ash slings a towel carelessly around his wet shoulders and saunters right over my defensive perimeter, pausing to press a tender kiss on Zara’s worried forehead. She rises on tiptoe and leans into his touch.

My possessive dragon rumbles a growl of warning.

“You too, Max.” Ash gives an easy nod to me and my growling dragon as he ambles past.

But he knows better than to touch me.

He knows I am Vasili’s ally (because I have sworn to be, and a dragon honors his word) and not his.

Clearly, Ash’s goal is to reach the fulminating Zephyr before the Dark Fae King combusts.

As Ash closes the distance between them, I see the immediate effect of his nearness on his consort.

The deep furrow smooths between Zephyr’s green brows.

The worst of the deadly tension eases its grip on his lithe body.

Ash sweeps the armed Unseelie into a rough embrace, then swings around to face the room. The smooth maneuver places his own formidable frame between his lover and the demon.

“Dramamine,” Ash announces to the room with a grimace. “Been a while since I did the whole boat thing. I was turning green up there. So I popped a few of those little pills.”

“A few?” In the midst of fetching clothes from his own suitcase for Ronin, Lucius creases his brow in a worried frown. “I believe the prescribed dose is a single tablet.”

Ash hitches his massive shoulders in a wry shrug. “Yeah, well, like I said. Knocked me out cold. Didn’t move a muscle, even though Xhevith musta flew right over me bringing Sparrow in. If not for Neo coming to wake my ass up, I’d still be lights out.”

“I checked the storm anchor while I was out there,” Neo pipes up helpfully. “I was worried it might be dragging again, but it’s holding. The weather might be clearing up. It’s mostly just heavy rain now. I’m gonna see if I can maybe get a weather report on the VHF.”

Without waiting for a reply, Neo ducks back out into the storm.

“Ash,” Zephyr says tightly. “Did. You. Know.”

“About the squid over there?” Ash looks resigned. “Yeah, sure. I knew. He brought us the thingamajig, didn’t he? Says he caused all that ruckus with the insurrection back on Avalon cuz he was bound to it by his last summoner. Sounds like your great aunt Blossom.”

“Blossom?” Zephyr scoffs. “Don’t be absurd. She must be two hundred years old.”

“Whoa. Did you just say two hundred ?” Still tucked protectively against my side, Zara looks dazed and a little horrified.

“Yep.” Ash gives an easy nod. “Unseelie witchcraft extends a Fae’s life. Mad old Maeve was way up there in the triple digits herself. But Great Aunt Blossom’s kinda feeble. That’s what Sparrow’s getting at.”

“Auntie Blossom can’t piss without a bedpan and a nurse, but she inherited your mom’s old spell books, cuz,” Mordred says to Zephyr. “Besides, good old Uncle Puck egged her on. With those two holding my summoning leash, what’s a demon to do?”

“Puck.” Zephyr’s nostrils flare. I can nearly see his pointed ears twitch. “Fuck.”

We all wait for more, but Zephyr is not forthcoming.