Page 41 of Gemini Wicked

Now I wonder if perhaps, given these unseasonal heats she’s having, she might be due for a booster.

Presented with this discouraging prospect, my wolf whines with disappointment. In the witching world, pureblooded wolf shifters are all but extinct. My beast craves a litter of shifter pups. He craves them desperately.

I too am desperate.

I long to see Zara soft and ripe and swelling with my pups.

But this subject is so incendiary in our domus that I remind my wolf, once again, to be patient.

Swiftly I pad past the open door of the darkened bedroom Dez shares with Racetrack. Those two are still downstairs, brewing a fresh pot of coffee and murmuring over Dez’s deck of Tarot cards, ever since we bid farewell to our guests.

None of us under this roof have spoken our fears aloud. But since Racetrack isn’t allowed to sleep anyway (doctor’s orders), the two girls have taken up sentry duty.

Our queen is in danger.

As I home in on Zara’s bedroom, my steps quicken.

“I can perhaps explain the academic timing.” I slip into the firelit refuge where we all sleep—our queen and her harem—piled together like puppies in Zara’s big medieval bed. “As a matter of arcane custom, any witch or warlock is permitted to sit for final examinations to demonstrate their magical aptitude, whether or not they’ve attended classes at this Academy. Cleopatra Aquarius is likely hoping to demonstrate the potency of her magical bona fides, as it were, to rule the witching world.”

In the startled silence that ensues, I gently close our bedroom door and shoot the bolt, then murmur an incantation—just a scrap of common magic, but I’m quite apt at this sort of thing—to ward our den while we sleep.

“Oh, wow.” Looking rumpled and adorable in his Academy sweats, Neo sits up in bed. Clearly, he’s been poring over a textbook and determinedly cramming for finals (even at this hour).

“What’s that, then?” Ronin glances toward the bed from the window seat where he’s sitting cross-legged, barefoot and shirtless, hunched over the scrying mirror in his lap. “No offense, love, but that Honors Alchemy telephone book you’re poring over doesn’t look all that riveting.”

“Oh, Ronin. You know it’s my favorite subject. But that’s not what I’m talking about.” Our bookworm sighs, nudges his glasses up his studious nose, and looks endearingly earnest. “Cleo’s going for First Girl on the Dean’s List.”

From her antique vanity, Zara twists around and stares. She’s perched on her stool before the glittering threat of the witching world crown that rests before her, while Vasili coaxes a brush through the vivid mane of teal curls that tumbles to her waist.

Momentarily, I’m caught by a glimpse of Vasili’s reflection in the glass. As our mate hovers over her, his pretty, sharp, so often spiteful features are soft with a brooding tenderness.

That unguarded flash of love, which he typically hides and hoards and broods over like a dragon with his gold, makes my heart skip and my breath hitch.

Ah, these mates of mine.

They wring my heart like a dishcloth.

Then Zara’s turquoise eyes, wide and anxious as the American icon Betty Boop’s, lock with mine.

“First Girl,” she says flatly. “That’s Mallory’s spot. She’s had it since midterms.”

I swallow a sigh of my own and pinch out my candle, then pad across the room to join her.

“That place could be yours, my dear,” I say gently, “if only you’d apply yourself to your studies. The academic merit system is really quite straightforward. The highest scoring students in end-of-term examinations are awarded the honor of serving as First Boy and Girl—or whatever their gender may be, of course—for the coming term. The other high scorers comprise the Dean’s List.”

Our mating bond prickles with the spike of her irritable impatience. My suspicions about Zara’s erratic hormonal status are deepening.

Surely—most inconveniently—our queen’s next superheat is looming.

During the grueling and occasionally lethal ordeal of final examinations at this Academy, a superheat is one distraction Zara and our mates could stand to forego.

Predictably, Maxim springs to his mate’s defense.

“It is not Zara’s fault she was kidnapped by that Unseelie tyrant Zephyr. Or that she missed many classes while she was breaking the Avalon curse.” Maxim scowls. “Saving the witching world is more important to our sovereign than having her name blazoned on the Dean’s List.”

“Blazoned, hmm?” Vasili murmurs with a wicked smirk. “Someone in this harem’s been boning up on his English.”

Ronin snickers over his scrying mirror.

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