Page 54 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

Vasili

“Well, darling, we’re certainly fortunate your wolf’s a strong alpha,” I say fondly to Lucius.

Because it’s important to praise your lover when he’s done something useful. And, no, this isn’t the first compliment I’ve ever bothered to pay him.

Honestly. What sort of man do you take me for?

Trotting purposefully before us through the catacombs, barely lit by the beam of my flashlight as I bring up the rear, Lucius’ wolf gives a yip as if to say, Don’t answer that.

Slinking along submissively at Lucius’ furry heels, Jae Labête is still flying his freak flag in fully shifted form. His coarse black fur is splattered with blood and his talons are dripping with gore. But most of it isn’t his.

That blood was shed by our enemies.

We spilled their blood on the ground for Zara.

As for myself, I barely bothered using my knives. Instead, I gleefully gave my telekinetic casting hand free rein and ground their bones to rubble.

How dare those little pissants fuck with my queen?

Fortunately for all of us, Jae’s non-sentient werewolf seems to accept Lucius as his pack alpha. Together, the three of us have dealt with that pack of hyena shifters we sniffed out, slinking along at our rear.

Permanently.

Of course, those mangy mammals stalking us through the catacombs were so few, they must have been little more than an insurance policy for Cleo.

Dispatched in case Zara sniffed out the ambush undoubtedly waiting for all of us outside the Vault.

In case Zara turned back before the Aquarius bitch could spring her trap.

Fortunately, we’ve planned a surprise of our own for Cleo.

Lost in the darkness ahead, Lucius’ wolf growls deep in his chest.

Instantly I shoot upward, the soles of my combat boots lifting from the floor, and pan my light ahead like a damn lighthouse.

Before me, the ceiling rises and the tunnel widens.

Instantly, I recognize the ominous dead-end shaft my little queen and the kraken jumped into.

Lucius’ wolf is sniffing along the rim and whining with worry.

My chest tightens quite unpleasantly. My tummy twists with actual fear.

Clinging grimly to my wits, I alight beside the shaft and shine my light down the hole, while my heart thunders as though the unruly organ is trying to burst through my skin.

But there’s nothing to see.

No dead kraken or drowned queen floating heels-up in the well.

My breath rushes out in a hiss of relief.

“It’s quite all right, darling,” I tell Lucius with a show of confidence I’m far from feeling, though I’m never quite certain how well my co-alpha understands spoken words in his shifted form.

“Zara and Mordred have surely reached the Vault by now. They’ll have slipped in through the back.

She’s a cat burglar, after all. She’s trained for this. She’ll be fine .”

I tack that declaration onto the end as reassurance for both of us. Still unconvinced, Lucius’ wolf leans over the edge and crouches, clearly tempted to jump.

Hastily I swoop down next to him and wrap my arms tight around his furry chest. Beneath my hands, his powerful body rumbles with continuous growls.

“Have you forgotten our plan?” I whisper in his tufted ear, which swivels to listen. “You and I and the rest of our mates will swan through the front door, straight into the Vault to crown Zara queen, like the Gemini kings we are.”

Of course, that’s assuming Max and Ronin and Ash and that green menace Xhevith have done their part upstairs.

But there’s no need to stand here in the dark spilling all our secrets.

The wolf peers down the shaft and whines, but at least he doesn’t bite my hand off. I hug his shaggy body, press my face into his ruff, and breathe in the comfort of his familiar wolfish scent.

Not that I need comfort.

My faith in Zara is unshakable and absolute.

And I don’t indulge in wishful thinking. That’s pointless. I’m Zara’s alpha. If she were injured… or worse… I’d know.

Christ, I’ve even bonded with the damn kraken. My bond with him is weaker, it’s still forming. I certainly never meant to give him a mating bite, and that’s a hill I’ll die on.

But surely I’d sense him too… if…

Crouched at the foot of the stairs, the Cajun werewolf rumbles his own guttural growl. I twist around to give the creature a narrow look.

Clearly, while Lucius and I were cuddling, Mallory’s pet monster has sniffed out the path to his own lovers, Draco and McSnicker, who went up those stairs with Neo and Zephyr.

Now the Cajun tilts back his long muzzle in a mournful howl.

That godforsaken lament sends shivers cascading down my spine. The ungodly howl wakes my inner dragon, coiled gravid and sleeping behind my sternum. She stirs and rears like a cobra, hissing with alarm.

Vasili, let us fly! Let us kill. We must protect our eggs!

Our eggs ? Merciful fuck.

I do trust those are Zara’s eggs we’re protecting. (Which makes them also mine.) But there’s no sense to be gotten from my genderqueer dragon when they’re in such a state.

Wings mantle and spread inside my skin. A serpent’s hiss climbs up my throat. Suddenly I’m clinging to my human form by my fingernails.

It’s literally all I can manage not to shift in the tunnel like a damn earthworm.

Lucius joins his voice with the werewolf, both baying at the moon we shifters can sense but not see, through tons of solid rock. Their mingled howl fills the tunnel and rings off the rock. I press my hands to my ears against the din.

My brain is my most potent weapon, and I need all my well-honed wits in the midst of this racket to think .

By now, we must be under the massive gothic cathedral that houses the Academy classrooms, perhaps directly beneath the faculty offices in the crypt. That’s where we’ll enter the Vault.

Still, the thought of all that weight and mass of rock suspended over my head is oppressive. And unsettling.

“For fuck’s sake.” I glare repressively at the howling wolves. “ Must we announce our approach to the entire Academy? Be quiet, darlings, do .”

Lucius’ wolf stops howling and gives me a hangdog look. His chestnut ruff bristles as he ducks his head and vigorously scratches one shaggy flank.

Christ.

If those mangy hyenas have given Lucius fleas, truly, I’ll be vexed. But not nearly as vexed as I’d be to find fleas on myself or Zara.

I must remember to insist Lucius de-louse before the next time we all share a bed.

Sparing me an evil glare with those glowing green eyes that would curdle anyone’s blood, Jae Labête too falls sullenly silent. Surely no flea would ever dare trouble that beast.

Suddenly, with a ferocious snarl, Jae bounds up the dark stairs in great springing leaps that carry him swiftly from sight.

“Shit.” I slide a knife from the cache hidden under my Academy uniform, cuffs dappled with hyena blood and rather the worse for wear, and swing my flashlight up the stairs.

“Run along, Lucius, and see if you can catch that Cajun. The fool’s running blind.

We need to rendezvous with Ronin and the others straightaway. ”

The wolf chuffs out a breath in agreement and trots up the stairs.

Left alone in the tunnel with my flashlight, I spare a moment to reach telepathically for Ronin, to search the twisty channels of my diabolical mind for the electric hum of our bond. My boyfriend’s psychic presence is wickedly strong. I can typically feel him coming a mile away.

Tonight, however, that special space our bond occupies— that Ronin-shaped niche in my head and my heart—stays dark and empty.

My chest plinks with a sharp ping of worry. The distant echo of a howling werewolf, almost too faint to discern even with my acute shifter senses, makes my scalp crinkle.

I swear, that howl sounds positivity deranged.

Surely, that ungodly sound isn’t rising from the catacombs behind me?

Truly.

Are we to be spared nothing? The mere thought of the slain werewolf king, zombified and raging in his sarcophagus, gives me the yuck.

Swiftly I cross the pitch-black tunnel to follow the two wolves up the stairs, guarding Lucius’ back, same as always—

“Vasya.”

The low murmur of a Russian voice, speaking my boyhood nickname, slithers from the dark stairwell.

I jolt to a halt.

A tall slim form slips into view, dressed to slay (literally) in the sleek black exfiltration gear of the professional spy and killer he is. His body armor is singed and corroded from Xhevith’s acid. Still, clearly, the gear saved his life.

So much for Zephyr’s claim of having killed him.

A claim I knew, in the depths of my twisted heart, was too good to be true. Even though, clearly, Zephyr believed it.

Every cell in my body hums and sparks with an electric charge of alarm. If I were Zara, I’d be hurling lightning.

I don’t need to see the pale face, framed in a sleek fringe of espresso-dark hair, emerging from the shadows to know him.

I don’t need to breathe in his scent, so painfully familiar to me from childhood, of expensive red cedar laced with the acrid perfume of Russian cigarettes.

Those cancer sticks are a cultural weakness—and the only personal vice he tolerates.

“Oh, it’s you .” I dial up my pissy gay boy attitude to ten and give my father a disappointed moue, merely to discomfit him. “I wondered when you’d turn up, like a bad kopeck .”

My father’s discerning eyes, chocolate flecked with gold, slide over my disheveled uniform and blood-splattered sleeves. “I could say the same of you.”

That look makes me feel diminished, like an erring schoolboy, same as always. But that was always my father’s default mode when it came to managing me.

To diminish me.

Too bad for him, I’ve outgrown that charming tactic. I’ve outgrown his ability to hurt me.

At least emotionally.

Too bad for me, he’s always had other ways to hurt me.

I keep a wary distance, because I know how brutally swift he is with a knife. (Who do you suppose taught me to use mine?) He’s Nikolai Romanov, head of the Arcane Investigative Bureau, and he clawed his way up that lethal ladder the deadly way. So I very carefully don’t eye the stairs behind him.

Still, he knows perfectly well where I’m going.

I deploy the Romanov eyebrow. “You can’t stop me, papochka, so you might as well save your breath.”

His own Romanov eyebrow lifts in response. “Oh, but I’m not trying to stop you.”

“Truly? Do tell.” Seeing my own familiar mannerism reflected in his face makes my chest ache. To hide it, I flash him the smug smirk he’s always hated. “You and your AIB hyenas. Your little kill squad may have given Lucius fleas, by the way. You’d best do a louse check on yourse—”

“ Vasya .” My father’s quiet voice hardens. Now he eyes me with grim resignation. “It may interest you to learn that, in response to certain… unforeseen developments, I’ve chosen to alter my strategy.”

Something twists in my tender heart that feels a bit too uncomfortably close to pain.

But it can’t be that.

Because I learned to stop loving him, stop longing for his love in return, so very long ago.

“I suppose now you intend to kill me.” Try though I might, I can’t quite leach the bitterness from my voice.

“It was always going to end this way, wasn’t it?

I’m the queer son. I’m defective . I’m the shameful secret you tried to hide away.

But as one of Zara’s kings, I’ve now become a public disgrace. ”

“ Malchik .” Now it’s his turn for emotion, his smooth tenor vibrates with it, and I blink in surprise.

Because one, he never allows himself to feel, and two, he hasn’t called me my boy in years.

“Whatever else you are—you’re my only son.

You’re the scion of the Scorpio clan. You were always meant to rule, that was my plan for you from the cradle. ”

His slender body shifts, brow pinching with a hint of discomfort.

If he were anyone else, he’d be wringing his hands and pacing.

“For a long while, during your rather unfortunate adolescence, I believed your… sexual eccentricities… rendered you unsuitable for the crown. Over time, I’ve come to realize, my perception was in error. ”

Belatedly I realize I’m gaping at him like a dead fish. I close my mouth with a snap. “What exactly are you saying to me? And if you do intend to kill me, you’d better make it snappy, do, because Zara needs me in the Vault.”

“ Bozhe moi . You are the most aggravating son any man could possibly have.” Under my taunting, the steely Nikolai Romanov finally gives way to a small sigh. “I’m not threatening to kill you. I’m proposing that I join you.”