Page 27 of Gemini Wicked

For real.

But all that’s nothing compared to the tsunami of murderous rage that’s howling through every pore of my body from my third alpha. The one who just got here. The one who’s already circling for another lethal pass.

“Maxim!” I scream.

Barefoot, I scramble up on the bar and wave my arms madly for the dragon’s attention.

Who threatens my mate! His voice roars through our mating bond, echoed by a dragonish bellow that nearly ruptures my eardrums.

Ronin grimaces and claps his hands over his ears. He too is scrambling, mentally, to throw up some psychic armor against the broadside of Max’s fury.

“That’s a little loud, love,” Ronin groans through the bond we all share. “We’re literally right here.”

Gladly will I kill for my sovereign and for you! Maxim roars like blazes and rakes the sleek glassy prow of the megayacht with a curling firehose of flame.

My dragon shifter’s lining up so he can strafe the main deck with his flamethrower breath, while traumatized passengers flee screaming in all directions. Honestly, it’s like King’s Landing in the series finale of Game of Thrones down there.

“No killing, big guy!” Shifty senses are super acute. Still, I reinforce the shouted command with all the psychic voltage I’ve got. “I mean it. We got civvies down here. Ronin’s a little bloody, but we’re both basically okay. Lucius and V are, uh, MIA.”

Hearing my warning, Max swerves and veers away with a deafening roar of concern.

I know he admires Lucius, in this cute hero worship student-teacher kinda way. Those two aren’t together in our polycule (yet). But I’m starting to suspect Max is kinda crushing on Lucius, even though it’s taking him forever to act on it.

Anyway. Our dragon’s extra protective of Vasili these days. Like he’s trying to be V’s alpha too. Even though that’s an instinct that never fails to make my Goblin King vicious. When those two alphas of mine interact—the snake and the dragon—they’re like sparks to tinder.

Right now it’s an instinct that works for me, because right away, Max stops flaming the civvies on board. Instead, he redirects his torrent of angry fire to warn off a circling news chopper that’s ventured too close.

“Cheese on toast,” I yell. “I mean it. No sautéeing the civvies. You got that?”

If they threaten my mates, I will kill them all. He broods and wings over the spreading flames. But at least he lets the chopper clatter off unmolested.

Well, that’s lucky.

Just in case you haven’t figured this out by now, Max is kinda, like, a hothead.

Seriously.

He’s way worse than Ronin, who used to be the psycho in this harem.

As flames race across the deck, the whoop of the megayacht’s fire alarm adds its voice to the fray, followed by the hiss and sputter of the suppression system. Acrid smoke burns my lungs and makes me cough. I twist my blowing hair into a hasty knot on my head, duck to avoid a gust of flaming cinders, and try to strategize about how to get us all out of this shitshow.

Without, like, killing anyone.

Meanwhile, those hovering choppers and WNN speedboats are still recording the whole clusterfuck. Betcha this night’s gonna break the witching world ratings record.

Lucius is in the blooming drink, Ronin sends through our bond to Max. My Brit’s pacing the poop deck, bloody and disheveled, glaring balefully at the singed and savaged AIB guys as they scurry for the stairs and make for the lifeboats.

Have a lookabout for our wolf, Max, he urges. There’s a love.

I will find him and I will save him! Max bellows and swoops to circle the boat. He’s flying low above the water, all broody and ominous with intent, which wreaks all kinds of havoc with the speedboats that are trying to mount a rescue operation. His low pass overturns a lifeboat some panicky crew from this party boat are trying to winch over the water. That mishap plunges the anxious passengers, all crowding to scramble aboard, into screaming hysterics.

Sweet Jesus, this ambush is turning into an actual emergency.

The Aquarius Queen is definitely burning, with fingers of fire racing across the varnished and (apparently) highly flammable deck in multiple places. We might even be looking at a Titanic-type situation, like a sinking (minus Leo DiCaprio and the iceberg).

At least we’re close to shore, and the water’s not freezing. So there’s that.

But I’m no Kate Winslet.

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