Page 101 of Gemini Hunted
Just like me.
Yet somehow, their love for each other has stitched this crazy quilt of shifters and witches and Fae into the thing I’ve never had and always wanted.
A family.
All that love wraps around them like a blanket. They all belong here. They’ve all found their place. They’ve all created this safe space that lets them be who they are, without fear of ridicule or rejection.
Fuck me, I want that. I want that for myself. I want it so bad I can taste it.
The ache of longing for that shit—a sense of belonging, acceptance, a real family like the one they’ve stitched together—burns in my chest like heartbreak. I can taste my own yearning clogging the back of my throat like tears. All those tears I never let myself shed.
Instead, I learned to laugh.
When you laugh hard enough and you laugh long enough, people stop trying to make you cry.
Hells. At this point, imma cry like a baby.
Lucky for me, this is the exact moment Zara bumps up against Lucius’ back. I bump up against her, and Babydoll crowds into me from behind.
“What’s happening?” Neo demands as we all bunch together on the stairs. The gaping abyss in the middle has vanished behind a wall of rock. We’re all packed into a narrow stone chute, with a low ceiling and tons of solid rock above us.
“We’re at the bottom,” Mallory calls back, the pale beam of her flashlight swinging around. “There’s a really tight squeeze here. Everyone stop pushing, okay?”
“Chere, I go first for you,oui?” the werewolf growls. “And I don’t need a flashlight, me.”
“Hold up,” Draco calls from the back in a tone that does not invite argument. “No one goes anywhere without me.Fokk,Unseelie, move your skinny ass and yourfokkingswords so I can shimmy past—”
“Stop pushing me, brute,” Cousin Z says irritably. “There’s no place for me to go.”
Chaos ensues in the tight chute of the stairs. The guys in back are pushing, the ones up front trying to make room. Zara loses her footing on the steep stairs with a cry, but I catch her under the arms and hold her up. She feels hella good in my arms, depending on me, all warm softness and womanly curves, her silky ponytail brushing my face, the creamy citrus tang of her mating scent calling to my kraken like a fucking Siren—
“Oh, crap,” Neo yelps. “I’ve lost my glasses.”
The sharp crunch of breaking glass behind me—coupled with Cousin Z’s short curse—isn’t good.
But none of us have time to focus on that, for real.
That’s when we hear the werewolf howl. A long, mournful, soul-rending dirge of grief and pain.
Then all nine hells break loose.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zara
“I honestly think I’m going to hurl,” Neo mumbles, pretty much saying what we’re all thinking.
Standing with my arms wrapped tight around my fated mate who’s quivering with suppressed emotion, feeling the fear and horror in his brawny arms wrapped tight around me, I wanna say it’s gonna be okay. I really do.
Except I never wanna lie to him.
I’m afraid none of us will truly be okay ever again. Not after this.
After the shit we’re staring at? We’re all gonna need therapy.
Specifically: the unfamiliar werewolf, clearly very dead even if he hasn’t been for long, nailed to the ancient cross in this underground mausoleum.
Mallory’s own werewolf, Jae Labête, hasn’t stopped howling since he found the guy. Now, with Mal and Draco both wrapped tight around him, holding Jae together with the desperate strength of the love those three share, Jae sinks slowly to his knees before the cross, like his legs are giving out.
