Page 73 of Gemini Wicked

That one is dangerous.

So dangerous he makes my skin twitch and my nerves prickle.

I’ve known it since the night he killed my moon-cursed mother.

For that vast mercy, I owe him a debt.

For any Fae, a debt is no small thing. The obligation sits uneasily beside my wary respect for his powerful witchcraft and my bitter envy for his mating bonds with all of them—Zara, Ronin, even that timid Neo. All the hearts this one collects so casually.

Romanov is the one Zara calls her dominant alpha.

To me, he is a rival to be vanquished.

If not for the debt I owe him, I would have killed him already.

Neo Theodophilus Mercury presides capably over a sizzling skillet at the monstrous six-burner stove, where he has coaxed a pop of reluctant blue flame to sputter under the ancient-looking grate. He is frying up what appears to be an entire sow’s worth of bacon. A jaunty apron tied neatly over his schoolboy uniform proclaims Don’t kiss the cook. Bend me over.

From this one, I sense no danger.

Only sweetness.

Every time his bashful eyes meet mine, Zara’s innocent fated mate blushes to his hairline.

Well.

When the time comes, I know exactly what to do with all that shy submission.

Soon, I’ll have the lot of them safely installed with Zara in my royal bed.

I spare Neo a predatory grin and let my fangs peek out. He ducks his head, but his blush deepens.

And then there’s Ronin.

My Ronin.

Ronin stands at the counter whisking eggs with his back turned pointedly to me. His powerful shoulders and lean hips look unreasonably sexual, encased in those leather pants and another man’s button-down shirt, braced in a silent challenge I burn to master. His inky hair spills between his bunched shoulders in a sleek fall I long to wrap around my fist.

By the moon.

Ronin.

In the endless years we’ve spent apart, the graceful slimness of boyhood has vanished. That boy I loved to the point of hopeless despair—the boy I risked everything to win, the boy whose betrayal all but killed me—he has vanished.

Ronin Kilcannon Pendragon, scion of the powerful Leo clan, is a man now. A deadly one. One who harbors a lethal grudge.

Against me.

In the midst of this hostile crowd, I stand alone.

Same as always.

I stand sentinel in my armor behind the granite island that houses the deep kitchen sink, with an absurdly tiny cup of that vile mortal beverage called espresso cooling on the counter beside me.

I’d rather drink arsenic than this tar-like sludge.

But that is not the only reason I spurn it. When a Fae offers food and drink, it’s a form of entrapment.

“I beg your pardon, Maxim.” That old-fashioned courtesy belongs to the wolf, Lucius Aries, the headmaster of this residential college, who looms suddenly behind the dragon. The wolf places a hand at the dragon’s waist in a way that whispers of all the intimacy this harem shares.

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