“It seems I too am suspended,” Lucius announces wryly, “for my unfortunate involvement in this morning’s incident. Without pay, I might add. So it appears I too am relieved of my academic duties, at least for the next two days.”
While I stare with my jaw gaping in indignation at every single aspect of this pronouncement (Lucius didn’t do a thing wrong!), our headmaster turns to Zeph with a slight smile. “Besides, I’ve been… quite curious… to visit the Avalon Academy.”
“Lucius Laszlo Aries, you would be most welcome,” my ex says formally, inclining his head in a kingly nod. “I shall arrange a guest lecture for you as a visiting professor in the student kiva.”
Great.
Crisis or no crisis, our headmaster looks pleased as fuck at that prospect.
Clearly Zeph knows the way to Lucius’ heart.
And our bookworm’s already on board. Just like Vasili’s been warning all along would happen if my poisonous ex ever turned back up.
That Unseelie bastard’s splitting our found family right down the center.
Feeling powerless to stop what’s clearly about to happen—which is Zara flying off to fairyland again with my deceitful, unreliable, untrustworthy ex-boyfriend—I look desperately to my current boyfriend for help.
“Aren’t you forgetting someone, little queen?” Vasili says rudely, rearing up between Zara and Zephyr like the adder he is. “Let me offer you a little hint. He’s big and black and breathes fire when he’s angry, and he has a forked dick—”
“Well, of course we gotta find Max first.” Nothing about any of this is remotely funny, but Zara looks at V like she’s fighting a smile. “What with him being in rut and my BC giving up the ghost, he’ll obviously wanna come with. Anyway, I’d want you all to have equal access to my uterus—I mean, uh, assuming you’d all want that.”
Now she’s leaning around V’s tall obstructive body to look at me, because I’m pretty much the only guy in our polycule who hasn’t been queuing to knock her up.
Of course Vasili claims he’s not. But he had his dick in her continuously all last night. Literally would not be dislodged. We all sort of fucked around him.
So I don’t trust him on this one.
“Ronin?” Zara prods gently. “We’re not doing this without you. Are you in?”
“Don’t look at me like that, love,” I mutter, sounding sullen even to my own ears. “If you fancy jaunting off to Avalon with this untrustworthy arse, you bloody well know I’m coming with you.”
Sure, I’m no shifter and I’m not in rut. Too young to be a dad, if you ask me. I’m just a blooming sophomore. I’m not desperate to make her preggo.
But I’ll not hold her back on my account.
And fuck if she’s leaving me behind.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zara
Very clearly, Ronin’s pissed as fuck that we’re here.
But he’s right about one thing.
Getting in and out of the parallel world of Avalon is, like, a major ordeal.
First there’s the magical portal over the Icarus Island standing stones that turns your guts inside out in that mindfuck transit between our two realms.
Then you gotta avoid those massive flights of feral dragons flying amuck all over Avalon Island. Those dragons are, one, carnivorous hunters that literally eat random Fae for breakfast and, two, maniacally drawn to my dragon when she’s in heat in a way we definitely don’t wanna encourage.
Having my own guys in rut is more than sufficient to knock me up. I mean, if we decide for sure we want that.
Finally, there’s apparently this whole Dark Fae insurrection bubbling under the political surface that Zephyr and Ash between them are barely keeping in check.
Long story short?
By the time my guys and I come winging into view over the goblin city (that’s what I call the Dark Fae capital, kinda an inside joke, because Labyrinth), we’ve been flying for hours.