Page 44 of Gemini Hunted
“Hey, Max,” he says softly. “Take a breath, okay?”
He is my Neo. He must never be made to worry.
For his sake, I breathe.
My mate’s reassuring scent of sage and lavender and hand-milled soap seeps through me. As always with him, the gentlest of all my mates, my raging dragon is soothed.
My beast greets Neo with an affectionate grumble.
I cannot resist running my hands over Neo’s solid and reassuring warmth to ensure he is well. Finding no injury on any part of him, I growl in relief. I rub my cheek against his, to scent him and claim him, especially before this intruder.
Knowing shifters as he does (for we are a tactile race), my mate kneads my tense shoulders with his steady hands and tolerates these possessive claimings with patience.
“That’s good, Max. You’re doing great. Just keep breathing, low in your belly, like when Zara does her yoga. I’m gonna go find Ash. Don’t kill anyone while I’m gone, okay?” Neo says earnestly. “You’ll really upset Zara if you do.”
Without waiting for me to agree, because I have not and will not—I must keep my mates safe!—Neo gives me a quick warm hug, then trots purposefully toward the door.
It is not so easy to remain angry after being hugged.
Still wrathful and damp with rain, my long hair dripping on Neo’s father’s carpet, I sneak my queen a concerned look. Truly, all this excitement cannot be good for her. Or Vasili.
Especially if (as I suspect) they are both pregnant.
Surely, at least one of them (or, in Vasili’s case, his dragon) is clutching. That is what you call a dragon who is carrying a clutch of dragonets.
A warm flood of tenderness for both of them—Zara and Vasili, both mine in every way, and for our coming offspring—swells my heart to overflowing. My love is chased by a surge of protective worry. We must manage this business of the Dean’sChallenge and kill the rival queen quickly, quickly. Only then can I rush my mates to my dragon lair, hidden deep in the Siberian tundra, and tend them and spoil them and cosset them, and protect them both while they are breeding—
A sudden exclamation of disgust from Vasili, who is now sneering at me in a horrible way, reminds me sharply to guard my thoughts.
Very quickly, I have learned to guard my thoughts on this entire matter from Vasili.
He does not yet know his own mind.
For once in his fiendishly clever life, he does not know what I know.
“Yeah, what Neo said.” Zara gives the belt of her robe a firm tug to knot it, then divides a warning look between me and Zephyr. “No killing. And you put pants on, Your Radiance.”
Ronin, who has no modesty and is indifferent to his own nudity (a condition which normally pleases all of us), grunts and tosses his own leather pants at Zephyr.
The garment falls unheeded to the floor at Zephyr’s feet.
Lucius exhales a sigh of disappointment. Our headmaster’s intelligent sherry-gold eyes plead with Zephyr for restraint.
Unmoved, the naked Unseelie grips the complicated harness that holds his crossed swords in both hands and glares furiously at the demon. Vasili says that Zephyr is our enemy. All the same, a naked Zephyr is a splendid sight, every muscle and sinew tight and quivering under olive skin, pubic hair a vivid lick of green between his thighs. His jade eye burns, incandescent with hatred.
“Fuck’s sake,” Ronin mutters. “Best hurry right back with Ash, will you, love?”
Neo gives us all a worried look, locks onto my scowling face and mouthsEasy,then ducks into the hallway and vanishes.
At least, that one of my mates is safe.
I give a satisfied snarl and resume my pacing. I am marking my territory. Establishing a clear perimeter between my precious mates and that demon.
If Mordred dares to cross it by a toenail, I will slay him without mercy.
Lucius, who is quickly buttoning himself into his linen pajamas, gives the entire scene (including my pacing, Vasili’s lurking, Zephyr’s silent fulminating, and Mordred’s lazy smirking) a keen look. Then Lucius murmurs in Ronin’s ear.
Still wearing nothing but his own golden skin and a lush mane of midnight hair that is tousled from the rough sex he has clearly been having, Ronin grunts and saunters across the bedroom to Zephyr under the demon’s interested eye.
