Page 4 of Gemini Christmas
But I haven’t seen Cleo or Xiao or even Messalina in months. Not since I won my throne back from Cleo.
So no one says that about me anymore.
I mean, that I’m mad.
Neo snuggles me happily into his arms, with my rounded tummy tucked between us. He bends his head, I rise on tiptoe, and the two of us share a sweet kiss that tastes like peppermint. His soft lips are sticky, like he’s been sucking on a candy cane.
“Did you finish shopping for your Secret Santa?” I ask with an indulgent smile.
Our whole Secret Santa thing was Neo’s idea. We’ve all drawn names from a hat and shopped, supposedly in secret. Until Christmas morning, no one’s supposed to know who drew who.
But Neo was so excited and happy to draw Ash’s name that he spilled the beans and told me right away.
“Wow.” That’s the wine-pour girl again, eyes round as dinner plates. “So you’re actually a …fivesome? What do you even call that?”
“That would be a pentad,” Neo supplies helpfully, because of course there’s no obscure factoid or vocab our bookworm doesn’t know. “But, uh…”
Poor Neo. He’s still trying to wrap his head around how to explain to our wholesome-looking new friend that there are actually more than five of us when the other three show up together.
Their sudden arrival definitely creates a sensation.
God knows, Zephyr alone would be enough to create one.
The King of the Dark Fae pointedly ignores Vasili (those two are feuding again, forreasons) and stalks straight to my side, all broody and intense, looking totally exotic with his long spill of mossy green hair and the eyepatch slashing over his feral face. Even with a black ski cap pulled down to hide his pointy ears and his dragonscale armor replaced by the slim-fit Olympic ski suit he’s zipped his lithe frame into like a second skin, he’s pretty sensational.
“I am returned to you, my bride.” Zephyr smolders down at me like the morally gray hero in a romantasy novel.
That’s an effect I always appreciate.
“Lucky me.” I loop an arm around his neck, breathe in a hit of his burnt amber and dragonhide aroma, and lean in for a fangy Dark Fae kiss that takes like cloves and nutmeg (very Christmasy). “We missed you, Your Radiance. For real.”
“Then I shall not part for you again this day,” he replies seriously. “Nor from you, sweet boy.”
As Zephyr wraps one territorial arm firmly around my waist and the other around Neo’s, the guy draws every eye on the street. Even though we’ve strategically left his green dragon Xhevith back on Avalon, curled protectively around our clutch of incubating dragon eggs. Those three luminescent eggs, each the size of a microwave oven by now, are the fruit of Max’s epic shifted mating flight with V’s genderqueer dragon.
Between V’s eggs and my second-trimester triplets, we’re all, like, co-parenting.
Including the actual dragon.
“Six, seven, eight,” the wine-pour girl whispers to the bashful ginger behind the counter. “Plus the guy who went for the car. There are nine of them!”
“Yeah, we’re a polycule,” I tell her, smiling into Zephyr’s burning jade-green stare. “All nine of us. That’s the word you’re looking for.”
“It’s really great. We’re all in love with each other.” Neo snuggles happily into Zephyr’s possessive embrace. “And legally married, you know, I mean it’s legal where we come from.”
The girl needs a tick to process that newsflash and work up the nerve to ask me directly. “So, like, are you all from Utah?”
“Well, the thing is—” The flicker of a predator’s slinking approach on our periphery captures my full attention. “Hold that thought for me, okay?”
My gaze veers straight to Lucius.
My wolf king looks exactly like an Oxford don on a rom-com holiday, chestnut hair swept into a proper tail at his nape, rangy frame buttoned neatly to the chin into a sober wool coat. Tidy shopping bags blazoned with the names of Wonderland’s gourmet grocer and chocolatier swing from his hands.
He’s stalking purposefully straight for me, his intent whiskey-colored eyes scanning my pregnant body for any sign of discomfort or distress. But Mordred intercepts him, deftly plucks the shopping bags from Lucius’ grip, and deposits the goods on the counter with the rest of our Christmas loot.
Then Mordred bends our wolf shifter headmaster back over his strong arm and dives in for a searing old-school Hollywood kiss.
Oh, hell to the yeah.
