Page 148 of Gemini Wicked

“Dreams,” Zara mumbles against my lips. She still tastes tart and sweet like moon wine, but her voice is fretful. “Dreams of… drowning. And, uh, fucking.”

I pull back to eye her slightly anxious face.

“Which one of us?” Vasili smirks behind his eye mask. “Or was it more than one?”

Her teal brows draw together. “Not one of you. That’s the thing.” She hesitates. “Think I was fucking the shit out of someone with, uh, tentacles.”

I’m still leaning over the bed, so I can feel the way Sparrow stiffens right up.

I ease back so he can sit up the way he wants. He adjusts his eyepatch with a pained grimace (he shouldn’t sleep wearing the thing, for real) and looks for his swords, still propped against the wall where he left his gear last night.

“Tentacles, huh?” I keep my tone easy, because there’s no reason to get anyone all worked up before we gotta. “Like an alien or something?”

“No, something more… aquatic.” Frowning, Zara bundles her hair in a messy twist. A few colorful curls spill around her troubled face. “Like a kraken?”

Yikes.

I sidle back so Sparrow can scramble outta the sack. I toss him his dragonscale armor, which he immediately starts wrestling his way into. “Easy, Sparrowhawk. All these shifters in rut and these Mogadon pheromones smelling up the joint? Could be just a sex dream.”

“You know ’tis not,” my guy says tightly, the way I knew he would. “Our return last night from the mortal realm was hardly subtle. All of Avalon knows I crown my queen tonight. And by now, he’s very likely aware that his brother is dead. It’s him.”

A frisson of tension ripples through the room. Romanov slips off his eye mask and sits up. Pendragon stops rummaging around for a clean shirt and looks dangerous.

Next door, the gravity shower shuts off. Simultaneously, Lucius Aries appears in the library doorway with an open book in hand.

“Him.” Zara’s head tilts to look up at us. “You wanna elaborate on that, Your Radiance?”

Zephyr drags his armor over his legs with an irritated hiss. “I mean Mordred, of course. Like any infernal being, the half-demon commands dreams. In his demonic form, he is kraken.”

I wait through a fraught silence while they all absorb this newsflash. Vasili’s pale eyes narrow, and Ronin tosses the guy some pants with a soft curse.

“A kraken,” Lucius murmurs. His face kindles with a scholar’s keen interest. “How remarkable. A mythical monster brought to the surface… as it were.”

Zara draws her knees to her chest and perches her cute chin on top. “Uh, well, the thing is, it wasn’t exactly a hostile dream. I mean, I don’t know if it was him, obviously. And it’s not like I have a tentacle fetish or anything, uh, normally.”

A revealing wash of color rises in her face. “But that dream guy was sexy as fuck.”

Uh oh.

“That’s him all right.” I heave a sigh and exchange a grim look with Sparrow, who’s still fighting furiously into his armor. “His Pops is an incubus. So Mordred is too. Him sexing you up in your sleep? That’s just his way of checking you out.”

Maxim Rasputin bursts out of the john, dripping wet and growling, with his dragon eyes flaming and a towel wrapped carelessly around his hips. “Who threatens my mate!”

“Oh, dear fuck.” Vasili rolls his eyes over the drama. He’s sliding his long legs into a pair of hot pink lace panties that I think belong to Zara. (Apparently those two swap lingerie, but I’m not gonna get distracted here.)

“Take it easy, big guy,” Zara says patiently to Max. “We’re just talking about the whole demon thing. Go dry off and get some clothes on, okay? We got some planning to do.”

Maxim gives Zephyr and me a suspicious look. I slouch down and try my damnedest to look harmless despite my size. The dragon grunts and ducks back into the head, followed by the vigorous sound of toweling.

“So he knows I’m here,” Zara announces to the room. “So he’s interested. We can use that.”

“My dear, how precisely do you mean?” Drawn to our girl like a magnet, looking cautious but intrigued and still clutching his book, Lucius comes in to loom over the bed.

“Indeed, darling.” Calmly Vasili buttons his sparkly jeans over the hot pink lace that sheathes his junk. “Do tell.”

“I mean,” Zara says in her steely queen voice, “we use his interest in me to lure him in. Then we trap him. Zephyr already said he knows how to banish him. That means we just need to catch him.”

“Hmmm.” That snake of hers looks thoughtful. He exchanges a silent glance with Pendragon, who just looks dangerous.

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