Page 35 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

Zara

“There’s no need to worry, my dear,” Lucius says for at least the third time, “and certainly no need to weep. Not over me, in any event. I’m quite well.”

“Bull. Shit ,” I tell my headmaster through a flood of belated tears. Once my dragon queen Hulk-smashed a few of those hyenas, zapped a bunch more with our lightning, then bullied the rest into flight, I swear, it’s like someone turned on a faucet.

Since I shifted back to human, I haven’t stopped crying.

“Language, Ms. Gemini.” As Lucius limps slowly across the ruined cavern, even though he’s naked and caked in rock dust with an arm wrapped around my waist for support, the guy manages a wheezy chuckle. “I ought to assign… detention.”

Well alrighty then.

If my headmaster feels recovered enough from his horrific injuries to joke (or even impose actual discipline, which is when he’s at his most yummy), the least I can do is meet him halfway.

I wipe away my tears, tighten my own arm around his waist (carefully avoiding his injuries) to take as much of his weight as he’ll let me carry, and say hopefully, “Detention with you in the crypt?”

“Try not to sound so delighted, you minx. You’re supposed to live in terror of your headmaster’s displeasure.” This time, his chuckle ends in a breathy gasp.

Damn it.

He’s putting too much weight on his half-healed leg.

The one a hyena savaged in its powerful jaws while Lucius was down.

Shifter or no, I’m fucking glad I Hulk-smashed that mangy hyena to a bloody pulp, for real. My inner dragon snarls in agreement.

“Slow down a little, Lucius,” I urge, shifting more of his weight onto my equally naked body, and trying to keep the growl of my lightning voice out of it. “Your injuries—”

“Are healing rather swiftly. One of the advantages of being a purebred shifter. Not to mention having received a mating bite, laced with fast-healing biochemicals, from another shifter.”

Oh, right.

Given all the shit going down in this Dean’s Challenge, I’ve briefly forgotten that Vasili and Lucius once swapped mating bites.

Lucius bit Vasili, way back in the first season of our soap opera romance, to trigger his recessives and bring on his first shift, so Vasili could rise to my dragon’s first mating flight.

V bit Lucius because he’s V—and Lucius’ alpha.

(Without asking, which was a big crisis at the time, but also very V.)

Anyway. I’m extra glad for it now.

Lucius and I might both be naked, barefoot, and covered in rock dust. But my headmaster’s voice is getting stronger and his steps more certain by the minute. Those awful gashes in his belly and flanks from multiple hyena bites are already healing.

“One thing to be thankful for, anyway.” I let out a sigh, eyeing the wreck around us. “God knows, we need one.”

Here’s another plus. Since the ceiling’s half gone, there’s plenty of light to see by.

But there’s also a major minus.

Half those pillars I wiped out when I shifted seem to have fallen across the tunnel where Neo and Mal and Jae (and hopefully V) have vanished.

I can’t see or hear or smell any of the others, literally none of them. Which is concerning as fuck. The outraged roars of Max’s dragon and Xhev’s nails-on-chalkboard screech went quiet a while ago, my nerves are so jangled I’m not even sure when.

Plus I’m picking up zilch in the telepathy department, which is not a good sign.

As for the Horn of Ceres and that sex demon we’ve entrusted with our prize? I eye the still black water of the reservoir with deep disquiet.

“Hold on a sec, Teach, okay? Just catch your breath. Think healing thoughts.” Gently I prop Lucius against one of the pillars that’s still standing. “I gotta check on something. I mean someone.”

“Indeed.” Moving carefully so he doesn’t reopen a wound, Lucius studies my worried face with his knowing gaze, then sweeps his tumble of curls out of his face into a tidy knot at the back of his neck.

That action is just so Lucius that he stops me in my tracks. My eyes devour my alpha—my wonderful, steady, strong, reliable headmaster that we all count on in so many ways.

My wise mentor. My precious mate. My wolf king. The one I just almost lost.

After all, he’s the reason I’m doing this, they all are. All my guys. All my loved ones. I’ve always known I don’t give a single shit about being queen for my own sake.

I’m not saving the witching world for me.

I’m saving it for them.

Not for power. Or greed. Or ambition.

I’m saving it for love.

Suddenly, my chest burns, my throat swells, and my eyes are overflowing.

Again.

“God, Lucius.” I hurl myself across the space between us, burrow into my mate’s surprised body, and throw my arms around his neck. My face tucks into his strong shoulder to breathe his familiar wolfish scent in deep.

“We could’ve lost you,” I mumble into his skin. “We can’t— I can’t—ever lose you. Not ever.”

He’s still barely standing, but he handles my needs the way he always has.

My alpha’s arms close around me, he nuzzles the scars of my mating bite where my neck meets my shoulder, and he murmurs soothing words like there, there and it’s all right and (my personal favorite) you’ve been such a good girl.

I mean, he isn’t my alpha for nothing.

He knows what I need and he gives it to me.

Same as always.

“I love you, Lucius,” I whisper into his shoulder and into his mind. “I mean it. You’re one of the first I knew I loved. You and Neo. You make the rest of us—all the psychos in this polycule—complete.”

“My dear girl, what makes us all complete is you. The way you love all of us. The way we love all of you. From your tender heart to your flexible morals, from your voracious sexual appetites to your appalling study habits. But most of all, for the way you take care of others.” He pulls in a breath and smooths a firm hand over my hair to settle me. “Speaking of others…”

“Yeah.” I pull in my own shuddery breath, lift my head from his tear-damp shoulder, and step back with a sniffle. “We gotta get our shit together. Those hyenas won’t stay gone forever.”

I’m working to clear my head and suss out what we’ll need to reopen that tunnel (which is probably some variation of me Hulking out again plus V’s telekinesis, assuming we can find him), while simultaneously eyeing that reservoir and wondering if we still even have the Horn of Ceres, because that demon’s been pretty quiet down there…

…when the black water ripples.

The surface ripples in a vee, like a massive arrow or a shark racing under the surface, carving a beeline down the channel, straight toward the jumble of pillars before the tunnel.

“Shit,” I whisper, all echoey in the stillness. “I really hope that’s Mordred—”

An inky tentacle, glowing a wicked violet with phosphorescence and thicker than a cruise ship anchor chain, shoots from the water and wraps around a fallen chunk of column. Then a tangle of tentacles uncurls from the deep. And the whole damn monster heaves into view.

That’s Mordred all right.

In, like, his kraken form.

He’s massive when he’s shifted, night-black and glistening under that eerie blue-violet glow, just a spaghetti of thick tentacles covered with indigo suckers that’s gotta make it easier for him to grip.

He’s like the monster in Lord of the Rings that erupts from the pond to drive Frodo and the gang into the Mines of Moria.

Even knowing that kraken is (theoretically) on our side, I totally understand the elemental sense of terror that sent those hobbits fleeing frantically into the mine.

Cruel beak gaping, the kraken hurls a whole pillar aside. Through clouds of rock dust, I glimpse a fast-moving streak of green dragonscale emerging from the rubble like a cork popping from a bottle.

My heart leaps into my throat and wedges in my gullet. Then a boiling murk of rock dust obscures my view.

Now chunks of pillar are whipping through the air, tentacles coiling and flexing, deafening booms of rockfall making my ears ring.

I try to shove forward (you know, to see better).

But Lucius grips me firmly, with an impressive show of shifter strength, and drags me behind one of the few remaining pillars into a meager cover.

I strain to peer around the column and see through the churning melee of flying rubble. Is that the violet glitter of V’s favorite combat boots, the ones he’s fucking wearing?

That does it. The suspense is literally killing me.

I bellow in the lightning voice, “Sweet fuck, Aquaman. Will you please hold up!”

The tangle of tentacles quivers and stills. From the sloshing depths of the reservoir, one dark round eye, burning with amethyst fire, rolls curiously toward me.

“Take it easy with that shit, will you? You’re gonna bring the rest of the roof down.

” Gently I detach from Lucius’ protective grip.

But I have to steel myself to move into plain sight, away from the safety of my alpha, and inch toward the kraken (flesh-eater, natch, I read about them in Elementary Monsters class last quarter) lying in wait in the black water.

But I’m the queen and I do it.

“You take it easy,” I tell that kraken in my queen voice. His beak opens like he’s gonna talk back, so I raise my hand to silence him. “I thought I saw—”

“You did see…” a familiar voice murmurs “…us.”

The silky purr of Vasili’s voice is followed by the actual Goblin King.

He emerges from a billow of rock dust, atypically disheveled, looking like some 1980s rock star straggling home from the club after an all-night bender.

His gilded shag of hair is tousled, his cuffs are stained with dried blood that I devoutly hope isn’t his, and he’s got a goose egg swelling over one eyebrow like he’s been in a bar fight.

Zephyr scrambles through the rubble at his heels, deft and graceful despite being coated with dust like he’s been rolled in flour, crossed blades jutting over armored shoulders, eyepatch slashing through sharp Fae features. A worn backpack dangles from his hand.