Page 8 of Gemini Hunted
“It’s not the storm.” I sigh. “The magical wards around Icarus Island extend for miles, and they mess with our electronics. Now that we’ve entered the contest, we can’t pass the wards without breaking the rules and failing our finals. So the only ways to connect with the outside world are the post… which takes weeks… and the landline.”
Ash is starting to reply when the salon door below flies open.
Zephyr bursts into view, wearing the sleek green dragonscale armor he dons when he means business, double swords crossed over his slim back. By now, it’s raining cats and dogs, so the rain just sheets over him and plasters his long hair to his head in seconds, until the tips of his pointy ears peek through. The green eyepatch he wears over his ruined socket and feral face is a dark slash against his olive skin.
Totally undaunted by the downpour, the guy sprints down the companionway toward the foredeck, light footed and fleet on the rain-slick planks.
Suddenly a wickedly tall figure, rocking his usual punked-out version of the Academy uniform and a frosted shag of punk-rock hair, appears in the doorway behind Zephyr. Pale eyes, rimmed in smoky liner, flash like warning lights in a cold face.
My gaze zooms right in on Vasili.
Not only because he’s one of my alphas and by far the most difficult to handle. But also because he’s the most dangerous warlock on this ship.
Not to mention the least stable.
As he stares intently after Zephyr, V’s pretty face is chiseled ice. At his side, his lethal casting hand twitches.
Beside me, Ash sucks in a sharp breath. His big shoulders bristle and spread in instinctive threat.
Before either V or Ash can act on their various threats, Lucius too appears in the doorway and slips an imploring armaround V’s waist. Our wolf shifter headmaster definitely looks the part tonight, rangy but restrained in the Old World elegance of his seersucker suit and ascot, with his scholarly features all somber under his goatee and his dark Renaissance curls tied back respectably at his nape.
Whatever Lucius murmurs in Vasili’s ear seems to do the trick. Or maybe it’s the way Lucius rubs his jaw affectionately against V’s cheek to scent him and nuzzles V’s diamond-pierced ear.
Either way, Vasili’s casting hand relaxes. His malignant stare shifts away. Without saying a word, he uncoils and slithers back into his den like the pit viper he is.
Leaving Zephyr ambulatory and breathing.
At least for tonight.
Frowning, Lucius glances up at the captain’s cabin. His worried eyes, glowing red with restrained violence like Gary Oldman’s inBram Stoker’s Dracula, pass over Ash and me in the window.
I raise my hand in a hopeful wave and mouthHi, Lucius!
Lucius’ jaw unclenches. His stern mouth softens in a tender smile that’s just for me.
Between one crisis and another, the two of us haven’t had much together time lately, and I really miss him. But I can see from the affectionate way he gazes at me that he still loves me. Even if he refuses to bite me and be one of my alphas. (Donotget me started, but I’m determined to get that bite.)
While I glow with wistful love for my headmaster, Lucius nods at Ash gravely, then dips back inside after V and gently closes the door.
A flicker of movement snaps my gaze to the prow. Zephyr bursts into view, scrambles down the bowsprit that juts over the churning sea at a dead run, then hurls himself from the bow in a lithe twisting leap.
I let out a yelp of alarm.
I mean, there’s a cyclone brewing. That sea is not swimmable right now, for real.
Especially for a guy wearing boots and dragonscale armor, with two swords strapped to his back, for cripes’ sake.
“Easy,” Ash murmurs. “He’s got this.”
“How?” I bleat. “Can he even swim?”
Before I can have an actual heart attack, a vast green shadow sweeps from the cliff and swoops under Zephyr’s falling form. Then Zephyr’s big green dragon Xhevith soars for the clouds, letting loose with a skull-splitting nails-on-chalkboardscreeeeech!and the Dark Fae King clinging nimbly to his fighting harness.
Phew.
I’ve been so worried I forgot, just for a sec, that he’s a dragonrider.
“Guess that’s one way to finish a fight, huh?” Ash mutters. Together we watch as Zephyr and his dragon climb swiftly to vanish in the threatening clouds.
