Page 28 of Gemini Wicked

I don’t need saving.

The person that does the saving around here is me.

I make up my mind and will myself airborne. I’m still new at this flying shit and I don’t have Vasili’s style and panache in the air (at least in human form). But I’ve got enough basic levitation to propel myself over the debris-littered scrum of the swimming pool and the smoke-wreathed chaos of the main deck, swoop in to grab the diva’s abandoned mic from the fiery stage, and land (coughing) on the raised quarterdeck above the living quarters.

The air’s clearer up here. Plus there’s a bright red fire alarm console mounted on the wall right there. I swipe a hand across my stinging eyes to dry my smoky tears, then hit the switch to kill the sound.

With a last whoop, the alarm falls silent.

Thank fuck. My poor ears. They might never stop ringing.

“Listen up, people,” I announce into the mic, my amplified voice seeping thin and tinny through the shrill buzz of my battered eardrums. “There’s more lifeboats port and starboard, and those paparazzi speedboats are starting to queue up at the back. Everyone needs to form lines and start offloading.”

Terrified faces divide their attention between me, the steadily advancing flames, and Max’s lurky flight.

“That dragon’s mine,” I say firmly. Because he is. “As long as everyone behaves, he’s gonna hold his fire.”

That might be, like, aspirational thinking on my part. But I reinforce that shit though our mating bond and instruct my broody, threatening alpha dragon to play nice.

Max grumbles, but he does begrudgingly widen the circumference of his circle. That gives those rescue boats some space.

A few passengers, all sooty and disheveled and definitely the worse for wear, start shuffling into queues near the lifeboats or migrating aft for offloading.

“Good. That’s real good,” I encourage everyone. “We’re like two kilometers max from the island. That’s an easy paddle. We’ll all regroup there.”

You might be wondering who died and made me queen.

But the actual queen—that duplicitous bitch Messalina—is nowhere to be found.

Yeah, she’d better fucking hide if she knows what’s good for her. We’ll all be lucky if no one winds up dead due to this stunt she pulled tonight. For fuck’s sake, the four witching races are already practically extinct. We need every functioning dick and uterus we’ve got to sustain the population.

Maybe even… mine?

That furtive question sneaks through my brain, buried deep behind my barriers so I don’t set off my shifter guys, a couple of whom are rocking this major breeding kink. Suddenly, those BC shots I’ve been taking with evangelical fervor don’t feel as much like a no-brainer as they used to.

I mean, if I’m gonna be queen… maybe I’d better start queening it.

Like I’m trying to do right here.

I cough again to clear my throat and refocus on the crowd. Ronin’s directing traffic down there, looking surly and unsafe and therefore not much comfort to the terrorized passengers. But they need the direction. Those flames are spreading fast, the smoke’s making it hard to breathe.

Long story short? This whole boat’s teetering right on the edge of panic. Wouldn’t take much to nudge the whole shebang into hysteria.

A scuffling fistfight erupts in the milling crowd near the lifeboats, punctuated with a flurry of thrown punches and shoving.

“Whoa, easy there. No pushing,” I say into the mic. “There’s gonna be plenty of room for everyone on those lifeboats. We’ll make extra trips if we have to. People who can walk okay, you help the folks who need it.”

A tall slim streak of violet swoops up from the main cabin to alight at my side.

With a blend of relief and unease, I give the side-eye to my dominant alpha.

Somehow Vasili still looks like he’d be right at home walking a Fashion Week runway in Paris in that violet tux, even with his gilded shag of rock-star hair all windblown, a streak of soot striping his sharp features, and a dark spatter of blood (hopefully not his) staining his crisp cuffs and his narrow ringed hands.

He looks like an escapee from a Marilyn Manson MTV video. Honestly, he’s so flamboyant he steals my thunder without even trying.

But I’m so relieved to see him I totally don’t mind.

“Shit, Goblin King, where the hell have you been?” I grumble. “We have a situation here.”

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