Page 43 of Gemini Hunted
Maxim
“No, I will not sit down,” I say fiercely to my mates, all of them, for at least the fifth time. “I will not stop pacing and I will not be calm. I will not welcome another male into our harem no matter who my reckless mate has now bitten!”
Barefoot and vengeful in the ripped jeans and tee shirt I have dragged over my body to cover the shame of my hideously scarred back from the alarming intruder in our bedroom, I keep one eye on the demon at all times.
But I underscore my promise with a ferocious glare at Vasili.
Wrapped tightly in his black silk kimono, tall and silent as a pillar of granite lurking near the window, Vasili gives my pacing and agitated body a cold blue stare. One perfectly groomed eyebrow lifts in disdain. This is the look Zara calls the Romanov eyebrow.
Tonight, I am in no mood for it.
I bare my teeth at him—always my most infuriating and difficult mate—in a snarl.
“For once,” Zephyr grates out, “that dragon and I are in perfect accord.”
If I am agitated, Zephyr is furious. While I lunged for a shirt to cover my scars, he reacted to the demon’s appearance—his mortal enemy, of whose nearness he was clearly ignorant—by lunging for his eyepatch to cover his own deformity. (For so he perceives it, his missing eye, the only flaw in his deadly Dark Fae beauty.)
Now he lunges for his swords.
“Don’t you dare draw a sword in this bedroom, Your Transcendence,” Zara says to him, for at least the third time. That is the name she gives him when she is irritated. “I mean it. No bloodshed. Talk first.”
“Talk.”Naked and quivering with barely contained rage, the Unseelie grips his crossed swords (which are still sheathed, but barely) and sneers at the enemy demon. His nostrils flare wide with scorn. “The only words I intend to speak are the banishing spell that will send this treacherous creature back to the hell that spawned him.”
The kraken—Mordred, he whose webbed feet and bronze skin and ink-blue hair exude the decadent scent of rum spice and molasses that perfumes the air in this bedroom like the reek of sex—shifts his thickly muscled frame. His clever purple eyes narrow at Zephyr.
The creature looks crafty. I do not trust him.
If that kraken moves against any of my mates—even Zephyr, who is (temporarily) Zara’s but not mine—I will destroy him!
A dragonish growl rumbles from my chest. The kraken’s gaze shifts to me. Casually, he reaches into the room behind him and produces a trident, taller than he is, capped with three wicked prongs capable of disemboweling a shark.
Or a dragon.
I drop into a defensive crouch and measure the weapon’s range with a wary eye. I wonder how far he can hurl it.
“Oh, dear.” Naked, Lucius leaps from the bed.
“Yeah, no. Let’s not be hasty. That goes for you too, Max.” Hastily, my queen scrambles to her feet, then pulls her Academy bathrobe around her lush and fertile nakedness. “Aquaman, you put that thing away. I mean, where did that trident even come from?”
“Happens I was holding it when my new master over there summoned me through the veil. That’s how a summoning spell works.” Mordred gives my Vasili (who is still inscrutable) a cheeky grin and a wink that infuriates me all over again.
How dare this kraken leer and grin at my mate with those dimples?
At least, in obedience to my queen’s command, the kraken leans that menacing trident casually against the wall. Still, I notice that he keeps it well within reach.
I resume my pacing, careful to keep my body solidly between my Zara and this strange sex demon lounging in our doorway.
Meanwhile, Zephyr has positioned himself near the wall so that none of us (including Vasili) lurk in his blind spot.
It is a telling choice.
Whatever tentative bonds of trust might have been woven between him and my mates in this bedroom before I arrived, those bonds did not survive being ambushed by his enemy. The very air we breathe is thick and the silence frayed with broken trust.
“Neo, baby,” Zara says with a sigh, “go find Ash for me, okay? We really need him.”
Already buttoned into his chinos, Neo nods and pulls a polo shirt over his broad shoulders.
Instead of leaving at once to do her bidding as I expect, he hurries to me. He interrupts my pacing by the simple act of planting his warm hands on my tense shoulders and gazing into my scowling face with his worried eyes.
