Page 17 of Gemini Kings
And then, of course, I fall.
Chapter Four
Maxim
I am braced in the open door of Mick Gemini’s chopper above three hundred meters of gloriously empty air in a wind that is screaming my name when I see Zarina Gemini falling.
For a breath, I can scarcely believe my sovereign has actually jumped.
One moment, there she stands, all sleek strength and movie star curves, encased in that alluring catsuit with hair green as venom coiling like Medusa snakes around her shoulders. There she stands, summoning lightning like some flamboyant Avenger in a Hollywood film and knocking every one of Mick Gemini’sbratvaon their brainless behinds.
Christ, that girl has so much raw power coursing through her circuits, she has nearly crashed this chopper.
Now here she is hurtling through the air like the queen of the sky—which I swear to you she damned wellis—and she is validating every single shifter instinct that has dragged me here to this crass American city from the wretched depths of the Siberian tundra to witness for myself this miracle of the witching world’s awaited savior.
I am still transfixed by her desperate trajectory, limbs pistoning as she churns through the air, as though she will run for kilometers on nothing but empty sky and courage—every cell in my body tingling, my whole heart wedged in my throat—when my queen loses her forward momentum and plummets toward the ground.
I am out of this death trap in an eyeblink, evading the startled hands that clutch at me, ignoring the desperate voices that shout at me, plummeting after my sovereign through the dry desert night.
The wind slashes my skin and untwists my hair from the long braid I wear for combat to lash around my face.
The downdraft peels the leather jacket from my shoulders to flutter behind me in free fall.
Thirty meters below, my queen is tumbling and clawing through the air and fighting for purchase. But her edges are blurring. Around her, the air shimmers. The blaze of witchcraft builds to a flash of blinding light.
Her scream unravels through a shrill human cry to a deep brassy bellow.
When my vision clears, Zarina Gemini is transformed. From a flightless witch tumbling through the night, she has become…
Her dragon.
She is slim and sinuous, long and lean as the locomotive of a Red Star bullet train barreling through the Russian night, glittering with teal-and-diamond scales, tail lashing and legs scrambling and wings beating as she fights to master her shift.
But learning to fly is not done in a day.
I, of all creatures, should know.
Zarina Mikhailovna—daughter of Michael—as she will be known among my people when she takes her throne, might be the dragon shifter queen of the witching world.
But she is still falling.
Ours!My beast roars to life in my head to thunder his demands.Maxim, she is ours. Claim our mate!
In free fall myself, I fling back my head and trumpet to the heavens in triumph. The hot tingling rush of the shift sweeps through me, obliterating my mortal limits and scalding my skin.
My world goes white with glorious witchcraft.
I beat my wings in a powerful downdraft that arrests my descent. I angle my long neck to arrow through the wind after my mate. The breeze caresses my night-black scales and wraps around my mighty frame. Bones groaning, sinews straining, scales stretching, I settle into my shift.
A few mighty strokes of my massive wings funnel me through my mate’s slipstream.
The skeletal hill of the twin coaster looms below me, metal grinding as two trains packed with plump Las Vegas tourists chug up the big ascent. Barely ten meters shy of the track, I pluck my mate out of free fall with my forelegs and latch my teeth into the vulnerable crest of her neck. My vast wings beat hard to slow our plummet.
My mate’s coiled body writhes against me in shock and rage. This is the dragon’s savage fighting instinct, taking her over, even though I am trying to spare her life.
I lock my rear legs around her to subdue her and I twist in midair to avoid colliding with the climbing coasters.
Sparing all those miniscule mortal lives by less than a wingspan.
