Page 65 of Gemini Kings
This is a reaction I do not expect.
I flush under an unsettling flood of heat. For the first time, I must fight to sustain my enemy’s stare. One gilded eyebrow arches above his hostile eye.
Suddenly I am beyond thankful he is no telepath.
“I suppose you’re going to claim she has to mate with a dragon?” he sniffs. “No other breed of shifter will do?”
My chest swells and my head lifts with pride. “What other creature could match her in the skies?”
And I am the last of my kind.
Vasili’s gaze shutters with malignant intent.
Zara huffs out a breath and drops her hand. My dragon keens in protest. The loss of her touch burns in my chest like acid.
Yearning to pursue her, I clench my fists at my sides.
“Let’s get a few things straight.” My queen plants her hands on her hips and tilts her chin back to challenge me. “Like Neo already told you, who I mate is my choice. I’m gonna control this thing. This effingsuperheat. It’s not gonna control me. I’m gonna control what happens to my own body. And if you wanna hang around me, big guy, you’re gonna help me with that. Since I guess you’re our big expert now on dragon shifters.”
I cannot understand at all why she wishes to resist her nature. Still, she is determined. Despite my confusion, a reluctant admiration for her resolve steals through me.
Well, after all, she is my sovereign. I suppose I can understand her desire for control.
Even though, in this case, that desire for control will be futile.
There is no force under heaven that can control a dragon queen’s heat.
I would say this to her, because I have already said I will not lie to her. But I am interrupted when Racetrack and Dez file past us into the hall, both carrying green bottles of Italian beer and steaming bowls of some spicy dish that smells deliciously of chicken and peanuts, with chopsticks thrust through the fragrant food.
I have not eaten since I arrived. But food has never been plentiful in my life. I learned long ago to ignore my hunger, even when it gnaws my gut.
Still, my interested stomach gives an audible rumble now that betrays me.
“I do believe that’s the dinner bell,” Lucius says lightly, turning toward the kitchen. “I dare say we’ll all feel more like ourselves with full bellies. And we haven’t dined together as a family since the three of you returned. We’ll get Mr. Rasputin settled in his room after dinner.”
My room should be Zara’s room, but I am wise enough not to fight that battle now, with all of them ranged against me.
And my interest is captured by what the wolf just said. That we will dine as a family. Is that what they are to each other—my queen, her teacher, her mates?
Are they… a family?
My chest burns with a new ache that is foreign. My own concept of family, honed and whittled by a lifetime of solitary hardship and sudden violence in my mother’s lair, has been rather… different.
Zara gives me a long searching look I cannot interpret. A furrow appears between her brows and her teeth sink into her lower lip.
“Okay, big guy,” she says softly at last. “Let’s get you fed. We can talk about the rest of this mess later.”
She does not wait for my assent before she leads a general exodus from the room. When no one objects audibly to my presence despite another venomous glare from Vasili, I follow along with the rest to the kitchen, careful not to stray too close.
But my sovereign’s bold declaration that she will resist me, that she will resist our mating and this powerful bond between us, hovers in the air between us like the sulfurous reek of dragonsmoke.
Chapter Fourteen
Neo
“Don’t they have food in Siberia? He ate that kung pao chicken like he was fucking starving.” My fated mate is pacing before our bedroom fire like a caged tiger.
She’s been doing that since we holed up here in our room after dinner, Ronin and Zara and me, while Lucius helps Maxim get settled and walks him through his orientation packet. Vasili’s off sulking somewhere, God knows where. He’s been a basket case (like, more so than usual) ever since that dragon showed up.
