Page 44 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

Zara

“I honestly think I’m going to hurl,” Neo mumbles, pretty much saying what we’re all thinking.

Standing with my arms wrapped tight around my fated mate who’s quivering with suppressed emotion, feeling the fear and horror in his brawny arms wrapped tight around me, I wanna say it’s gonna be okay. I really do.

Except I never wanna lie to him.

I’m afraid none of us will truly be okay ever again. Not after this.

After the shit we’re staring at? We’re all gonna need therapy.

Specifically: the unfamiliar werewolf, clearly very dead even if he hasn’t been for long, nailed to the ancient cross in this underground mausoleum.

Mallory’s own werewolf, Jae Labête, hasn’t stopped howling since he found the guy. Now, with Mal and Draco both wrapped tight around him, holding Jae together with the desperate strength of the love those three share, Jae sinks slowly to his knees before the cross, like his legs are giving out.

(If they are, I don’t blame him.)

Wretched, he bows his head so his beaded dreads hide his half-shifted face.

“Roy,” he growls, all hoarse and wolfish. Blindly he gropes to lay a hand-slash-paw on the corpse’s gnarled leg. “Roy.”

Then he’s howling with grief again.

“Oh, shit. Guess he knew the guy,” I whisper to Neo under the howling. Which makes the whole thing even more awful. I barely know our resident loup-garou, so I give Jae’s own mates the space to comfort him and wrap myself harder around Neo, who also needs comfort.

Vasili tucks in behind us and hugs us both tight, Neo and me, simultaneously lending us his alpha strength and guarding our backs. Our Goblin King has seen worse—hell, he’s probably done worse, even if he’s never actually crucified his enemies (that I know about).

But he doesn’t like when we’re upset.

And he definitely doesn’t like when we’re in danger.

“I knew the wolf as well,” Lucius says quietly, making the whole thing even more awful. “We all did, all the wolf shifters. Roy simply means ‘king’ in Cajun. This man is… was… Jean-Baptiste Boudreaux. King of the Cajun werewolves.”

“Roy, man.” Jae shakes his head and covers his face with his hands. I get the uneasy sense he’s fighting to stop howling and hold off his shift. His voice is thick with his wolf’s guttural growl. “Why are you even here, you?”

“May he rest in peace.” Lucius lays a steadying hand on Jae’s bowed head. Which Jae tolerates from him, since Lucius’ own wolf is, like, uber alpha. “All your king’s troubles are now ended.”

Our headmaster doesn’t need to say it, but we’re all thinking it. Too bad the same thing isn’t true for the living.

Some shifters aren’t totally sentient when they shift. They go feral, like Malky the great white from House Tiberius, who bit a chunk out of Mordred’s tentacle during our dive and gulped it down right in front of him.

Now I’m getting the uneasy sense Jae might be the same kind.

While the loup-garou visibly shudders under his mates’ protective clutch, Zephyr summons a flare of pale witchlight with a hiss. His witchcraft sets his Unseelie swords glowing like lightsabers. Then he prowls the shadowy confines of the tomb, blades held at the ready.

He’s checking the place out.

Securing our perimeter.

Hunting through the dark for our enemies like the wild animal he is.

Without a word of discussion, like he’s been guarding us his whole life, Mordred summons his trident into an outstretched hand and strides off in the opposite direction to do the same.

Right now, a little extra vigilance definitely feels like a good idea.

“Silver nails.” Lucius is, respectfully but thoroughly, examining the dead wolf’s body.

His calm demeanor steadies me too, despite the deep disquiet that seeps through our mating bond.

Deferentially, he peers at the grisly wounds that mark the clawed feet and outstretched hands of the dead werewolf.

Jean-Baptiste , I remind myself. That werewolf had a name. Probably a family. This is fucked up.

“If it’s any comfort,” Lucius murmurs, “I do believe the wolf king expired by other means.”

My Irish Catholic upbringing rises irreverently to the fore. “You mean a spear through the side, like Jesus?”

“No, Ms. Gemini.” Lucius, who’s a devout Christian himself, spares me a look of mild reproach from his whiskey eyes. “And before you ask, he isn’t wearing a crown of thorns either.”

“You mean he was killed before he was crucified?” Vasili stops rubbing Neo’s unhappy back and gives Lucius a sharp look. “Then why the silver nails?”

“The silver nails were likely… an insurance policy of sorts,” Lucius says, “against the legendary resilience of the loup-garou. To ensure the dead king would not… rise.”

Through his curtain of fallen dreads, Jae gives the corpse a haunted look. “Yaya, like a zonbi . This he could do, him. If not for the nails.”

“Oh, fuck me,” I whisper. The concept of that poor werewolf rising from the dead like a damn zombie gives me a cold shiver, like a ghost walking over my grave.

Respectfully, Lucius examines with his flashlight the gory row of puncture wounds that stipple the dead wolf’s chest. Including the puncture that drove through the wolf’s furry throat, which was surely the killing blow.

Under all the grizzled fur and dried blood and the tatters of the wolf’s ripped shirt, plus my instinctive reluctance to look at the grisly carnage too close, I’m only now noticing what Lucius apparently saw right away.

“What could have—done that to him?” Mallory says in a shaky voice, all the while pressing Jae’s half-shifted face fearlessly into her exposed neck.

“At a guess? It appears Jean-Baptiste stumbled headfirst into one of your new headmaster’s mantraps.

With injuries this severe, even this formidable creature’s passing would have been swift.

” Lucius’ flashlight plays over the deep row of punctures.

“Then he was brought here and crucified—after the fact. To what end, I cannot surmise. As an outsider, the werewolf king should never have been on this island, especially during the Dean’s Challenge. ”

“By the moon, we should not linger.”

Zephyr materializes from the shadows, blades gone dark, with a suddenness that almost makes me scream. Neo yelps in surprise. V levitates six inches and hisses like a stepped-on rattlesnake.

“Sweet Jesus.” Between the horror show ambience of these catacombs and the crucified werewolf, even a thoroughly lapsed Catholic like me has to fight the reflex to cross myself. “Zephyr. This is not the time to sneak up on someone. I coulda hurled lightning.”

Thankfully, since I’m still hugging Neo and Vasili both for comfort, my control’s gotten way better than the early days. I don’t actually electrocute anyone, even if my ponytail and uniform crackle with static.

V lowers himself to the ground, rubs my back and Neo’s to settle us down, and pouts at Zephyr. “For fuck’s sake, wear a bell. Must you creep around this tomb like a cat? You’re lucky I didn’t throw your radiant self through a wall.”

Zephyr sheathes his swords over his back, gives V a contrite look (which is definitely new), and touches my cheek with a gauntleted hand. That’s his version of an apology, because they don’t teach you to say I’m sorry when you’re the Dark Fae King.

I lean into his touch to convey forgiveness.

“Don’t keep us in suspense, Your Quintessence,” V says, more tolerantly (for him). “Did you find something to cause any particular alarm—aside from a crucified werewolf—while you were skulking about?”

I’m really expecting Zephyr to take offense at this point. But my Dark Fae King is totally focused elsewhere.

On me.

“I sense no other breathing creature in this particular tomb,” Behind the slash of his eyepatch, Zephyr’s face hardens and his jade eye narrows in warning. “For the moment. ’Tis an uncanny place, in truth. Neither alive nor fully dead. My bride, we should make haste.”

My shoulders straighten and my chin comes up.

He’s the king of his own realm, but he’s appealing to me as the queen of this one.

I’m the Fred Jones in charge of our Scooby gang, I’m the HBIC, not some bubble-headed bimbo of a Daphne.

And Zephyr’s right, we do need to vamoose.

But, very clearly, Jae Labête needs a minute to recover from the shock.

TBH, we all need a minute.

Besides, it doesn’t feel right to leave that poor crucified wolf just hanging there.

“ Helvitis. We can’t leave him like that.

” Accurately reading the room (probably because he’s been watching Zephyr and all his interactions with open suspicion this whole time), Draco rises to loom protectively over his huddled mates.

“Let’s get the wolf king down, já ? Make the man decent for now and bury him later. After the Challenge.”

“He needs to be buried on consecrated ground, him,” Jae mutters, still looking gray and shocky, but clearly working hard to pull his shit together. “Otherwise, with juju like his? He’ll rise and walk, he’ll be zonbi .”

Mallory blinks at him in concern. “Yeah, you said that before. I was hoping it was a figure of speech. You mean an actual zombie? Like a literal werewolf zombie?”

Jae snarls in agreement through his fangs.

“Oh, great.” Neo clutches our makeshift cat carrier (sparking a meow of complaint from the kitten) and looks anxious.

Sweet fuck, what next in this place?

I lean into my fated mate for mutual comfort. “Uh, yeah, let’s try to avoid anyone rising if we can.”

“We can inter him in one of these crypts temporarily,” Vasili murmurs. “Just for a few hours. Until we win the Challenge.”

But V’s distracted, not even looking toward where Lucius and Draco are gently lowering the crucifix with its gruesome burden so they can at least lay the dead wolf flat.

Which is hopefully not a prelude to some kinda Walking Dead situation, only with werewolves.

Vasili isn’t thinking about zombies at all right now.

He’s frowning at Mordred, who’s propped his trident against the looming bulk of a cobwebby sarcophagus.

The sex demon himself is huddled at the base, blue head bowed, tattooed arms wrapped tight around his knees.

Even from a distance, at a time when he’s clearly trying not to draw attention, I can see the demon shivering.

In the wavery light cast by our scattered flashlights, his bronze skin gleams with a sheen of sweat.

“Mating fever.” Looking uncharacteristically perplexed, V rubs a hand over his face. “Shit.”

This catacomb’s turned into a shitshow, but one thing is very clear. My priority—now and always—is the people who need me.

Right now, that includes Mordred.

“Yeah.” I sigh. “That poor demon isn’t doing too well. We gotta take care of that ASAP.”

Torn between the competing demands of the various guys who need me, I glance from Mordred to Neo.

“I’m okay,” Neo mumbles, still snuggled in my arms, face naked and defenseless without his glasses, whose broken frames are now tucked into his blazer pocket.

“Need to let the kitten out anyway while we’re, um, stopped.

She probably needs to pee. The two of you should definitely help Mordred. You can take my flashlight.”

There it is right there.

Like the nine hundredth reason why we all love Neo.

Our bookworm is just the sweetest, kindest, most generous guy in our whole polycule.

“Yes, he is,” V whispers, because that’s a thought I haven’t shielded. He drops a kiss on Neo’s worried forehead and exchanges a look with Zephyr that silently conveys the role of bookworm bodyguard to our resident Unseelie.

Zephyr’s chest swells under his dragonscale armor. He dips his chin in a lordly nod.

Neo’s already crouching at our feet, working on the zipper of his duffel. Zephyr sifts a proprietary hand through Neo’s soft curls and definitely does not look displeased to have our bookworm kneeling at his feet.

Before I can properly appreciate that dynamic, the Goblin King wraps his cool fingers around mine and draws me away from both the pet relief process Neo’s starting and the werewolf interment sitch that’s dominating everyone else’s attention.

Together we cross the mausoleum—me at a brisk trot because I’m worried about Mordred, V sauntering with a definite sway in his sexy hips. Sadly, his overall effect is kinda wasted. Mordred’s powerful body is all hunched up, hugging his knees and trying not to shiver.

When the beam of my flashlight plays over the kraken, Mordred flinches, then looks up through a curtain of sweat-damp blue hair. Behind his forked beard, his face turns savage with need. His purple eyes devour us with a naked hunger that makes my core clench.

“Yo, baby queen. Time to mosey, right?” That demon bluffs it out and tries to stand, but the guy has to sit down again in a hurry.

Fuck me.

Not good.

He’s so dizzy with mating fever he can’t even stand.

“Yeah, no. We’re just gonna hang here a little longer.” I hunker down next to him (the closer the better) and make my voice as gentle as possible, because anything V says is not likely to be sympathetic. “It’s okay, Mordred. Vasili and me, we’re both alphas. We know what to do for mating fever.”

“Lucky you.” V unbuttons his uniform blazer in a slow tease and smirks down at the demon. “This is about to become one of those days you write about in your sex diary, darling.”