Page 60 of Gemini Kings
To my eyes, her skin glows with heat. She may not wish it (because this much is becoming clear to me) but, all the same, her body is preparing her to breed. It is not even necessary to kill her mates (yet). My very presence—the presence of her dragon king—will be enough to trigger her superheat. Lightning crackles like static in her hair and her eyes swirl gold with dragonfire.
Truly,my dragon rumbles, his crafty hiss filling my head,she is very close to rising. When she takes wing in her mating flight, we will claim her.
Because she is so dangerously close to rising, my dragon is dangerously close to rut. He is vicious when we rut, even with those lesser wyverns that are the only females we have ever known—briefly and with so little satisfaction—until this queen of mine.
Already, our rut threatens to madden us. My cock swells and shoves against my zipper, my sensitive barb chafes against the fabric. My wings itch to burst forth from my back and spread. My breath turns rough and my chest feels tight.
Still, I will kill them all when I can, all these lesser mates who have had her, for daring to covet what is mine.
Except…
Briefly my gaze drifts past my angry queen to the one who looms behind her, the one with that silky hair spilling over his shoulders like ink poured from a pitcher and those eyes like Russian amber and that mouth that was surely crafted by the Devil for sin.
He is one of her mates, and one of Romanov’s, he was all over them both in that crass American city in the most scandalous way. But after all, she is entitled to claim lesser consorts—after I have bred her. Very secretly, in this houseful of telepaths, I allow myself to admit that I will not mind if this one shares our bed.
Perhaps, if our queen wishes it, solely for her pleasure and in secret, he and I might even…
To my alarm, those amber eyes kindle with sudden wrath.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, mate.A voice like bronze silk, edged with the crisp cadence of Britain, unspools through my very brain.In case you haven’t noticed, she really doesn’t fancy you. And for what you did to Vasili, I could bloody well gut you myself.
Sudden panic scrabbles through my brain. The panic I learned so well in childhood. The panic of knowing myself vulnerable, with no defense against my mother’s endless punishments except to endure them. No defense against my brothers’ hateful torments except my determination to survive them.
Now, again, I have no defense against this whisper in my head. No weapon against this intrusion into my guarded secrets.
Yeah, pretty much.That intimate voice licks through me.Best get used to it. I’m full Valyrian and the strongest telepath at Icarus. You’re shit at defense against a proper telepath.
“I will learn,” I mutter under my breath, because it is true, I do not have the ability to transmit my thoughts.
Afraid at the rate you’re going, you won’t be sticking round the place long enough to learn much of anything.No doubt I am imagining that his tone softens, because sympathy is a concept that is foreign to me, unless it is feigned.
“Enough,” the wolf growls.
This is the headmaster, the wolf who brought me to this house. His command cuts through Romanov’s venomous objections to my presence, which have persisted this entire time while I stand awkward and alone on their doorstep, making it clear (in case I harbor any doubt) how very much I am unwelcome.
Clearly Lucius Aries is the alpha beneath this roof, because they all turn toward him in the way of those who have formed the habit of obedience, from the fuming queen simmering over my presence to the boyish girl scowling on the settee.
Even Romanov recoils in vicious silence, like an adder poised to strike.
“Mr. Rasputin is now a student of this Academy and a member of this cohort. That decision is final and not subject to debate,” the wolf announces to the room at large, in a tone that leaves no room for argument. His whiskey eyes lock with mine and his pupils swell. “He has sworn to follow the rules of this Academy and obey all faculty instructions. So long as he honors that promise, he stays.”
My dragon snarls and paces under this alpha’s challenge, but I withstand the wolf’s menacing stare.
My queen voices a skeptical grunt.
“It is true,” I say to her gruffly, my beast lurking in my voice. “I have promised, on my honor as a dragon.”
That promise was the price of my admittance to this Academy. A dragon is careful with his words, and I promised nothing I cannot abide.
I would have promised far more for the honor to serve my sovereign.
In truth, I did not mind so much swearing my oath to this wolf. Authority figures are monsters in my experience, all of them, power is ruinous in a dragon. For that, my Lady Mother is the best possible example—and the worst. I pray she does not soon learn where I am now hidden. Inevitably, once she does, this entire Academy will suffer her fury. But this wolf… this wolf is… different. He actually took my side and argued my case with the Dean, who was more than reluctant to admit me after my dragon’s notorious appearance in that city of sin. The Arcane Investigative Bureau is still shutting down the video clips sprinkled across the mortals’ social media, and the Arcane Senate is still lying to cover it up.
After this wolf spoke to the Dean in my defense—an experience which happens to me so rarely it is nearly unheard of—I thought myself prepared to give Lucius Aries my obedience.
Of course, that was before I realized my new headmaster is also one of my queen’s mates, and therefore my sexual rival.
That revelation, gleaned while I lurked in the vestibule just now and spied on my new cohort, came as an unwelcome one.
