Page 18 of Gemini Kings
Furious to be restrained, my mate opens her fanged jaws and bellows defiance. A fork of lightning jags from her mouth to slam into the casino’s gaudy neon sign. The contraption explodes in a shower of sparks and goes black.
Saints of the northern steppes, my mate is a lightning dragon. The first of her kind the witching world has seen in centuries.
I release my hold on the scruff of her neck to roar my satisfaction.
Mine is a triumph too powerful to be blunted, even when the double coaster clatters over the hill and the flash of myriad cell phone cameras lights the thing up. Tiny shouts of astonishment and shock flutter like confetti in the Vegas night.
A ticker tape vision of tomorrow’s tabloid headlines scrolls through my dragonish brain.Twin Dragons Sighted Over Downtown Las Vegas! Mythical Creatures Exist!
Christ.
God willing, Mick Gemini can claim it is a publicity stunt. Some sort of Hollywood special effect.
Because if he cannot manage to pull that off, if I have just destroyed the fragile shield of secrecy that barely protects the witching world from mortal discovery and mortal persecution, my Lady Mother will have my head.
It is bad enough that I am here at all.
For I came in direct defiance of her formidable command. For this defiance, when I return, she will make me suffer.
And for this debacle in the mortal skies, truly, she will flay me.
My mate twists her neck to eye me. Her golden orbs, divided by slitted pupils, glow with intellect and suspicion. Human speech is impossible in dragon form and, as a purebred shifter, I am surely no telepath.
I suppose the sight of my monstrous head, steam leaking between my toothy jaws and fiery eyes flaming with wrath, does not do much to reassure.
I rumble at her, long and low, to calm her until I can bear us off the Strip and safely to the ground.
Somewhere.
My sovereign’s eyes narrow as though she suspects I am seeking to play her. She snaps at my face in warning.
Clearly, she wants down now.
Then those brilliant eyes of hers telescope wide. She bugles in alarm.
I register the rapidthwapof chopper blades a heartbeat before gunfire spatters the air. Hot embers of pain pepper my outspread wings and ricochet from my scales.
Those unconscionable pricks in the chopper—they are, what is it, shooting at me?
No, it is worse than that. They are shooting ather.
My.
Fucking.
Mate.
A crimson rage erupts in my chest like a fiery volcano.
I curl my mighty frame around my sovereign to protect her—she is so slender, this royal mate of mine, she is barely more than a juvenile, while I have achieved my full growth, I am a mature dragon at the peak of my strength. I spiral in midair to confront this insectile machine that is mortally offending me by threatening my mate.
Deep in my belly, a scalding heat blooms and builds. I stoke it like a giant bellows.
This Gemini aircraft is no combat chopper. No, this assault is merely those stupid fucks with handguns hanging through the open doors and shooting like idiots, the way their posturing Irish Geminiotyets(the father) told them to do. Unfortunately for them, my beast and my mating instincts are fully in my command. We obey no one’sotyets.
And I am in no mood for mercy.
The drive to protect my mate and kill my enemies is paramount.
