Chapter 37
Zara
The Dark Fae King was right about one thing.
This Unseelie city we jointly rule does look extra witchy on our wedding night.
Especially by moonlight.
As we soar over my new realm on the wing, I’m still riding the tail end of that big quantum heat that just made half the witching world pregnant. So my shifted dragon queen body pulses and ripples with the warm ache of need.
Suffice it to say, the private consummation of today’s globally celebrated royal mating ritual—a consummation we’ll experience in Zephyr’s I’m twisted and kinky but royal as fuck so I get away with it bed for privacy’s sake, because no paparazzi can follow us through the Avalon portal without his consent?
That whole wedding night experience can’t come soon enough.
For any of us.
Ash soars in my periphery like an avenging angel, wings fully extended from his muscled bare shoulders. His spiky hair glows pewter like a halo—or a crown.
In our world, he’s the Seelie Prince and one of my Gemini Kings. But he’s only a royal consort in this one.
Have to say, he doesn’t seem to mind.
Either way, he’s regal as fuck.
I angle my wings under the floating sickle of the waning moon and glide alongside him. Over the crooked spires and pointy turrets of the Unseelie city, all shiny and silver with starlight, tall windows glow with blue witchfire.
We don’t have actual fire here in Avalon.
Which was a real problem before we shattered the curse that made it always winter here. Before we unraveled the witchcraft that rendered the Dark Fae chicks barren and the guys sterile.
But me and these eight warlocks I just mated, with a minister and a cake and a tossed bouquet and all the things?
We bring another kind of heat.
Not to mention the fertility all the arcane races need.
Oh hell to the yeah.
By fucking and mating and fucking again, we’re freaking saving the witching world.
Picking up the electric current of giddy elation I’m pumping through our mating bond—the potent psychic channel that connects our whole polycule now in different ways—Maxim stretches his long dragon neck and lets loose with a tyrannosaur bellow.
That deafening roar wrenches a startled exclamation outta Lucius, our wolf shifter headmaster, who’s strapped to Max’s back in the dragon harness.
Poor Lucius.
His wolf feels kinda airsick through our mating bond. (Even though Max is flying carefully, for that exact reason.)
Despite his rider’s queasy stomach, my alpha dragon shifter has every reason to be jubilant. Because at least one of the dragonets I’m incubating in my tummy, in both my shifted and human forms, is definitely Max’s.
The pinnacle of a lifelong ambition, Vasili murmurs through our bond. We’ve finally scratched his itch, darling. You’ve satisfied Max’s breeding kink—at least temporarily. Congrats.
We’re all secretly wondering if I’m the only one of us who merits congratulating.
If I’m really the only one Max managed to impregnate with that potent dragon dick.
But given the enigma of V’s complicated feelings about his own genderfluid dragon and their recently revealed genital slit—not to mention that extremely hypothetical dragon mpreg scenario?
The possibility of V’s dragon getting knocked up by Max’s (I mean, when they’re both shifted) is a Pandora’s box we’re all super careful not to open.
Lucky me, Goblin King, I croon through our bond . But I leave off any congrats for him.
At least for now.
Instead, I submerge my forbidden ruminations about V’s dragon and their fertility under a satisfied chirp for my own pregnancy sitch. Just one of the bird-sounds my dragon emits when she’s happy.
Hmmmm, yes, you are lucky. For once, Vasili sounds more amused than vicious . Actually, little queen, I too am lucky.
That’s because one of my dragonets is his.
My dominant alpha isn’t even bothering to hide anymore how pleased and proud he is that one of his swimmers did well enough in the Olympic race for my fertile uterus to bring home a gold medal.
Now Vasili eels through the night at my side like a torrent of milk poured from a pitcher. His shifted form is an Asian dragon, a flying serpent with pretty blue eyes, crowned with a silver mane.
Very male at present.
But that isn’t always the case.
V’s pale glittering body coils through the darkness like the deadly viper he is, voicing his satisfaction over slipping a bun in my oven with a sharp teakettle hiss.
Zephyr’s green dragon echoes V’s hiss and Max’s deep brassy bellow with a nails-on-chalkboard screeeeech !
Cheese. On. Toast.
That screech from Xhevith probably just made half the Dark Fae residents of Avalon’s capital city shoot from their beds with their ears bleeding.
Ronin is strapped into Xhev’s dragon saddle with Neo (who’s another timid flier, like Lucius) tucked between him and Zephyr for extra comfort. Now Ronin throws back his head and voices a jubilant whoop.
“Too bloody right!” Ronin yells into the night. Even though, as the strongest telepath in our polycule, he has zero need to yell in order to make his point. “Long live the Gemini Queen!”
Despite looking kinda pale, Neo cries gamely, “Long live the Gemini Queen!”
That shit sends shivers cascading down my spine, for real.
Not gonna lie.
I’m still not one hundred percent sure how me queening it with eight warlock kings is even gonna work. I mean, there’s a reason the media call me a rebel.
But we all just committed to give it the old college try.
Long live the Gemini Kings! I bugle through our bond. My trumpeting cry echoes through the summer night.
A cluster of silver spires rears like a massive pincushion dead ahead.
That’s the Dark Fae palace, green and teal banners streaming from every pinnacle to welcome us home.
The pale tower of the royal bedchamber soars over the dark cave of Xhevith’s dragonlair.
Xhev sweeps past me with a scream and plunges for the yawning black mouth of his lair, where his various riders will hop off.
Mordred’s waiting for us on the tower roof, brawny and shirtless in the balmy night, blue hair streaming in the ocean breeze, tattooed arm wrapped casually around his trident.
His shifted form is a kraken, so he doesn’t fly.
And Mordred’s made it pretty crystal; he won’t be strapping himself into anyone’s dragon saddle anytime soon.
Lucky for us, that sex demon we all just married can apparate.
Mordred’s upturned face falls into shadow as Xhevith sweeps over the roof. I half-expect my Dark Fae King to jump from dragonback in midair, and Ronin to follow with a whoop.
Because those two do that daredevil shit, like, all the time.
But that would leave Neo alone in the dragon saddle.
So they don’t.
They all stay safely in the saddle till Xhev alights on his cave ledge.
But Zephyr, who disdains the fighting straps that hold everyone else safely in place, leaps down lithely before Xhev even folds his wings. I trust him and Ronin to get our sweet Neo offloaded and steadied on his shaky legs with hugs and praise and kisses for his bravery in no time.
Me?
I’m missing Mordred.
It’s been, like, hours since we saw our sex demon. For real. So I bank into a spiral over the tower to bleed speed and descend for an immediate reunion with our polycule’s newest addition.
That’s when I realize Mordred’s standing next to a table that holds a bottle of what looks like enchanted moon wine and a tray full of goblets.
Oh, hell to the yeah, Aquaman. I trumpet my approval, just for the pleasure of seeing Mordred’s white teeth flash in his swarthy face and his dimples pop.
He sweeps me a lavish bow, etched in silhouette against the shining silver expanse of the Avalon Sea.
“Been missin’ you, baby queen!” he calls back to me, then shifts his gaze to the dragon winging in my wake. “You too, blondie.”
Mordred coulda said hi to me telepathically. Thanks to that mating bite I gave him, I’m one of his alphas, so we’re closely bonded.
But, clearly, he also wants Max to hear.
Those two aren’t bonded.
Yet.
But that sex demon’s got a whole campaign going.
Mordred’s determined to cross swords with all my warlocks—even the wary ones. Lately, he’s been flirting with Max, who’s definitely the most suspicious of all my guys.
Apparently even Max is softening toward the kraken, because that tyrannosaur roar Max lets rip sounds almost happy. (I mean, for a fire-breathing dragon.)
I tuck my wings and summon my shift before my feet hit the roof. I’m getting pretty good at the shifty stuff. So I manage to get my human legs under me and don’t even stumble when I land.
When the blinding light of my shift fades, I’m crouched on the flagstones, all naked and tingly from the flight.
Max shifts with another blinding pop! and lands beside me on his human feet (also nakey) with his harness falling away and his blond hair settling around his shoulders.
Mordred’s already there, steadying Lucius as he struggles free from the dragon harness.
“Thank you indeed, Mordred. I’m greatly obliged,” Lucius murmurs, tugging his professorial tweed coat briskly into order.
I hurry over to help, just for the joy of touching him—my wolf king, the sire of our future pups. Tenderly I brush a stray leaf from Lucius’ lapel and sleek my hands over his windblown chestnut curls to tidy him.
“Hiya, Teach,” I whisper. “Thanks for flying tonight. I know you don’t love it.”
“A willing sacrifice, my dear.” Lucius’ beautiful whiskey-colored eyes burn into mine, then slide slowly down the length of my naked body. He growls under his breath, then leans in to scent me, hot hands closing around my waist. Roughly, he rubs his jaw against my cheek and hair.
I swear, this guy makes my knees weak.
Lucius Aries is claiming me.
I bite my lower lip and gaze up at him. Still my headmaster, my protector, my teacher that I trust.
And now also my mate.
My highly susceptible heart turns all soft and melty.
“You seem to be naked, Ms. Gemini,” Lucius says, raspy with wolf. His fangs descend and the predator rises in his eyes.