Page 3 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

I’m one hundred percent loyal to Zara. So, obviously, I agree. But the words I’m about to say float right out of my head and evaporate like ether.

That’s because the shattering full-on visual of Ash viewed from behind, with that stunning black-and-pewter angel’s wing tattoo inked across his broad shoulders and plunging down his corded back, is really distracting.

Not to mention the way those faded jeans hug his bubble butt.

If he’s feeling tender back there from the way I reamed him last night (while he simultaneously fucked Zara and made her come so hard she summoned lightning), he isn’t showing it.

I wonder how long he might need before he could take my dick, bottoming out inside his tight heat, again.

I mean, assuming he ever wants that, without Zara urging us on.

And, gosh, I really need to stop thinking about his ass and reaming him like I’m obsessed with the guy or something.

I mean, he’s the Light Fae Prince.

And the visiting Potions prof at the Icarus Academy.

I’m First Boy on the Dean’s List. Ash is, like, faculty.

Not my own personal fuckboy.

I’m already blushing and breathless and tingly and, gosh, now I’m getting hard. So hard my dick is shoving against my zipper and visibly tenting my chinos. Thank goodness Ash isn’t a telepath and can’t know what I’m thinking.

Neo Mercury, I tell myself sternly. Now is not the time to pop a chubbie, with Zara and Ronin night-diving for the Horn right now and probably in all kinds of danger.

First Boy, you need to keep your dick in your pants.

“They voted her in, didn’t they?” Ash murmurs. “Before the Aquarius chick showed up? Our princess is supposed to be the lawful queen in waiting.”

I clear my throat and stroll casually over to stand next to Ash. I’m really grateful for the solid comfort of his quiet company, but I’m super careful not to crowd him.

Through the rain-washed glass, the red cedar expanse of the main deck spreads below us.

“Sure.” I dredge up my mental study notes from our Witching World Law class.

“The Senate voted in Zara as Messalina’s lawful heir after Messy’s daughter died.

But now Messalina wants a do-over, to call a new vote for Cleo—who’s like this long-lost other daughter we all just learned about.

Calling a vote is within Messalina’s royal prerogative, as the current Queen, under the lore.

Still, the Senate needs to consent. We’re a constitutional monarchy and not a dictatorship. ”

Against the dim golden glow of the salon window below, a slim taut figure is pacing with a feral grace. By the crackling energy that sparks from his restless frame, plus the spill of moss-green hair falling down his back, I recognize Zephyr with no problem.

He’s the Dark Fae King, and he’s really hard to miss.

“That’s why Zara acing her finals is so important,” Ash says with an easy nod, but he too is watching Zephyr. “Our gal needs to win, and Cleo needs to lose. Once Zara wins the Dean’s Challenge—if she wins—that’ll help your dad keep the Senate in line.”

“And she has to do it with just her student team,” I remind him. “Faculty like you and Lucius and Zephyr can’t help—at least, not directly, or we’ll forfeit the contest and fail our finals. Even Vasili can’t help, despite being a graduating senior, because he’s also an adjunct prof this semester.”

“And none of those guys are used to sittin’ on the sidelines, huh?” Ash grunts. “That’s why we got trouble. Why we’re ass-deep in alligators on the Love Boat.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I agree glumly.

When he falls silent, I sneak a peek at Ash’s craggy profile. He’s all square jaw and Roman nose and furrowed brow. But his thoughtful silver gaze stays fixed on Zephyr—the guy he affectionately calls Sparrow—because Ash is the King’s acknowledged consort back in Avalon.

Those two are like the Fae equivalent of Romeo and Juliet. The Unseelie King and his Seelie Prince. Star-crossed lovers from two warring races. (Only hopefully, you know, with a better ending.)

Normally, those two are really cute together.

Which makes me wonder what Ash is doing alone up here, instead of down in the salon keeping Vasili from burying one (or more) of his hidden cache of knives hilt-deep in Zephyr’s back.

I guess leading this whole witching world rebellion has thrown us all off balance.

“Once Zara and Ronin are back,” I say slowly, “either with the Horn or without it, we really need to get home to the domus. Not only so we can sync up with Racetrack and Dez and Mallory and her guys. But also so I can reach my dad on our house landline. Before this storm blows the phone line down.”

“Yeah, I’ve been canoodling with the comms on this dreamboat.

” Ash runs an appreciative hand over the gleaming wood of the console.

“Looks like the storm—or maybe your witch academy hocus pocus—is messing with the radio and the WiFi. Heck, even the satellite phone. Can’t get that gizmo to work either. ”

“It’s not the storm.” I sigh. “The magical wards around Icarus Island extend for miles, and they mess with our electronics. Now that we’ve entered the contest, we can’t pass the wards without breaking the rules and failing our finals.

So the only ways to connect with the outside world are the post… which takes weeks… and the landline.”

Ash is starting to reply when the salon door below flies open.

Zephyr bursts into view, wearing the sleek green dragonscale armor he dons when he means business, double swords crossed over his slim back.

By now, it’s raining cats and dogs, so the rain just sheets over him and plasters his long hair to his head in seconds, until the tips of his pointy ears peek through.

The green eyepatch he wears over his ruined socket and feral face is a dark slash against his olive skin.

Totally undaunted by the downpour, the guy sprints down the companionway toward the foredeck, light footed and fleet on the rain-slick planks.

Suddenly a wickedly tall figure, rocking his usual punked-out version of the Academy uniform and a frosted shag of punk-rock hair, appears in the doorway behind Zephyr. Pale eyes, rimmed in smoky liner, flash like warning lights in a cold face.

My gaze zooms right in on Vasili.

Not only because he’s one of my alphas and by far the most difficult to handle. But also because he’s the most dangerous warlock on this ship.

Not to mention the least stable.

As he stares intently after Zephyr, V’s pretty face is chiseled ice. At his side, his lethal casting hand twitches.

Beside me, Ash sucks in a sharp breath. His big shoulders bristle and spread in instinctive threat.

Before either V or Ash can act on their various threats, Lucius too appears in the doorway and slips an imploring arm around V’s waist. Our wolf shifter headmaster definitely looks the part tonight, rangy but restrained in the Old World elegance of his seersucker suit and ascot, with his scholarly features all somber under his goatee and his dark Renaissance curls tied back respectably at his nape.

Whatever Lucius murmurs in Vasili’s ear seems to do the trick. Or maybe it’s the way Lucius rubs his jaw affectionately against V’s cheek to scent him and nuzzles V’s diamond-pierced ear.

Either way, Vasili’s casting hand relaxes. His malignant stare shifts away. Without saying a word, he uncoils and slithers back into his den like the pit viper he is.

Leaving Zephyr ambulatory and breathing.

At least for tonight.

Frowning, Lucius glances up at the captain’s cabin. His worried eyes, glowing red with restrained violence like Gary Oldman’s in Bram Stoker’s Dracula , pass over Ash and me in the window.

I raise my hand in a hopeful wave and mouth Hi, Lucius !

Lucius’ jaw unclenches. His stern mouth softens in a tender smile that’s just for me.

Between one crisis and another, the two of us haven’t had much together time lately, and I really miss him.

But I can see from the affectionate way he gazes at me that he still loves me.

Even if he refuses to bite me and be one of my alphas.

(Do not get me started, but I’m determined to get that bite.)

While I glow with wistful love for my headmaster, Lucius nods at Ash gravely, then dips back inside after V and gently closes the door.

A flicker of movement snaps my gaze to the prow. Zephyr bursts into view, scrambles down the bowsprit that juts over the churning sea at a dead run, then hurls himself from the bow in a lithe twisting leap.

I let out a yelp of alarm.

I mean, there’s a cyclone brewing. That sea is not swimmable right now, for real.

Especially for a guy wearing boots and dragonscale armor, with two swords strapped to his back, for cripes’ sake.

“Easy,” Ash murmurs. “He’s got this.”

“How?” I bleat. “Can he even swim?”

Before I can have an actual heart attack, a vast green shadow sweeps from the cliff and swoops under Zephyr’s falling form.

Then Zephyr’s big green dragon Xhevith soars for the clouds, letting loose with a skull-splitting nails-on-chalkboard screeeeech!

and the Dark Fae King clinging nimbly to his fighting harness.

Phew.

I’ve been so worried I forgot, just for a sec, that he’s a dragonrider.

“Guess that’s one way to finish a fight, huh?” Ash mutters. Together we watch as Zephyr and his dragon climb swiftly to vanish in the threatening clouds.

“Hopefully he’s gonna do like Zara asked?” I offer. “Flying decoy, like Max, on the other side of Icarus?”

Those two guys—Max and Zephyr—are two of the most visible warlocks in Zara’s harem, at least when they’re on the wing.

So their job is to draw Cleo and her gang of hunters away from the Emerald Grotto, where Zara’s new powers tell her the Horn of Ceres is hidden.

Max left, grumbling and suspicious, to do his part hours ago, like Zara told him (even if under extreme protest, due to the fact that Max is in the middle of a mating rut and really broody).

But Zephyr balked and wouldn’t go at all. Just flatly refused to leave his bride unprotected.

That exact phrasing is what set Vasili off.

Like our queen is Zephyr’s and not ours.

Like the rest of us aren’t strong enough to protect our cherished one without Zephyr.

“Hope so,” Ash mutters. “With him, it’s kinda hard to say.

Sparrow’s all up in his head about that demon.

” Neatly he collects my empty mug, rinses it out, then parks it next to his in the galley sink.

“He’s been pretty twitchy since Mordred showed up outta the blue like that for Zara, then skedaddled before the rest of us could nab him like we planned. ”

“Half incubus, half kraken,” I agree morosely, because Mordred the demon shifter has been on all our minds.

“Definitely doesn’t help that Zara still won’t tell us what he said—or did—when he materialized last night.

Plus Zephyr already hates that demon’s guts for trying to usurp the Dark Fae throne.

Just what we didn’t need following us from Avalon. ”

“Truth.” Ash slings a brawny arm around my neck (which is contact I have to remind myself firmly isn’t meant to be sexual) and steers me toward the door.

“Guess it’s safe for you and me to come out now.

Anyway, you gotta hop back in that dinghy soon for the pickup.

Maybe you can take poor Lucius with ya. Figure the guy could probably use a little breather from all that Vasili drama. ”

“That’s a safe bet.” My wry grin dissolves into a worried frown. “I just wish we knew where Cleo’s hiding. We really need to find her, Ash. Before she finds Zara.”