Chapter Sixteen Maxim

I am late for class.

Again.

Because I am dragon, self-taught in the lair, I do not navigate the tedious schedules and rigid routines and repetitive rhythms of a traditional schoolroom very well. I am at the bottom of my class, always somehow running late, never quite where I am supposed to be, according to the wobbly dictates of the schedule I have copied carefully into my notebook in my awkward script.

As for my homework, it is a hopeless snarl of assignments I have overlooked and deadlines I have missed.

For all these reasons, my grades plunge Lucius into a quiet despair. For this, I am very sorry. My dragon and I both hate to disappoint him.

But today is different.

Today I am late for a different reason.

I am late because I have guarded my deliciously fertile and soon-to-be-breeding mate through her shower and her breakfast and her walk to school to ensure she is never alone and vulnerable to that rival male.

The Dark Fae King.

I can scarcely believe he is here.

Once I entrust my precious queen safely to Witching World History under Lucius' protective eye, I race back to the domus to wash and don my detested uniform, which strangles my neck and makes my dragon chafe.

Finally, I gallop breathlessly back to campus to ensure I am waiting for my mate when the church bell rings at the end of first period.

In fact, I make such good time that I arrive well before the bell .

It is too bad this timing is not so good for me.

I slip into the classroom while Lucius' back is turned and he is simultaneously lecturing and inscribing neat lines of text on the chalkboard. I tiptoe inside and creep toward the back row (where I can watch the door and Zara without any impedance) as though I am a mouse and not a dragon.

This is because Lucius does not tolerate lateness in his classroom.

The instant I breathe in a lungful of Zara's alluring scent, I am lost.

By all the saints, I swear she is ovulating.

Ours she is ours we will pump her full of our dragon seed—

I veer toward the empty desk directly behind her. There, I can drink her in and savor her rich creamy spice and dream of tonight when I will fill her womb with my clutch. Saint Sergius guard me, my cock is already swelling behind my zipper. My barbs shoot out hopefully, already questing for her cunt.

Unfortunately, before I can sneak into my seat, Lucius' wolf smells my arrival and pounces.

"If it isn't the delinquent Mr. Rasputin." My headmaster's clipped tones bring me up short, midway down the sun-splashed aisle of the old-fashioned schoolroom with its high ceilings and worn floorboards. "How very good of you to join us."

Ignoring the ugly snickers of the Villa Tiberius crowd (they are members of our rival residential college, the ones who threw stones at me and beat me when I first enrolled, they have always hated me), I drop into my seat behind Zara, order my mating barbs to retract until they are needed, and swing my scuffed backpack to the floor.

"I am sorry to be late," I say meekly, once again, to Lucius' stern face.

Zara glances back at me and rolls her turquoise eyes.

She did not want me to walk her to class like she is five (her exact words). But I would not be dislodged.

Now I have annoyed both Zara and Lucius.

"It's a pity you've missed most of our final review session." Lucius looks both exasperated and annoyed. "A review whose assistance you, in particular, sorely required."

His irate tone makes me hang my head.

As he resumes his place behind the podium where he keeps his inexhaustible pile of lecture notes, Lucius' lovely whiskey gaze finds me drooping in my seat. His expression shifts from wrathful to reproachful.

Still, he is unyielding. "You can begin to redeem yourself, Mr. Rasputin, by summarizing for the class the three major periods of interracial relations in Faerie history."

My already flagging spirits sink to my shoes.

Truly, he might as well ask me to summarize the alchemical composition of gold, which is so difficult to master it is notorious. That is one of the subjects in Neo's Honors Alchemy course (into which I will never be admitted).

Even on the best of days, I am a slow learner.

Today, with the delicious creamy spice of my queen's mating scent (growing richer and more seductive by the hour, because she is definitely preparing to ovulate) filling my head and seeping from her skin and drenching the air in nectar, I am hopelessly distracted.

"Um." Awkward, I clear the thickness from my throat and try to focus.

If we were alone, I would drop to my knees before Lucius—who is now my alpha, to my amazement and delight—and I would rub my face into his thighs and groin until he reeked of my scent and I reeked of his. Then I would unbutton his fly and take his thick-veined cock between my contrite lips and let him fuck my mouth until he forgave me.

Just the thought of this electrifying new state of affairs between myself and my headmaster, whom I have idolized from afar for so long, is a heady one.

Last night he let me suck him.

He let me suck him until he exploded in my mouth with a primal bellow that was raw with pleasure—

"No answer?" Lucius' disappointed face penetrates my fantasy (which is not what I want him to penetrate) and makes me long to crawl under my desk and hide in shame. "What a pity. Perhaps Ms. McSnicker can shed some light on the subject."

Before I can unknot my hunched shoulders and release my held breath, Lucius' wrathful tone lashes me like a whip. "I'd suggest you take copious notes, Mr. Rasputin. I expect to see a ten-page essay from you on this subject waiting on my desk by this time tomorrow. If you're a minute late, the length of that assignment doubles."

I barely manage to swallow a groan of dismay .

The only thing worse than being asked to recite long lists of historical facts I can never seem to master is being required to coax an encyclopedic essay from the ancient manual typewriter, with its stubborn carriage and sticking keys, in our domus library.

I especially cannot manage this task while I am simultaneously guarding my irresistible Zara and her fertile womb from that rival male Zephyr and his dragon.

I give Lucius a look of mute entreaty.

But it is no use. He has already turned the scalpel of his attention to Mallory McSnicker, who is sitting quietly next to Zara.

Mallory too gives me an apologetic look and a grimace of sympathy. She feels sorry for my discomfort.

She is a nice girl. She is a good friend to Zara.

But she is, in the classroom, the female equivalent of our bookworm Neo.

Deftly she tosses her copper braid over one skinny shoulder and recites, "The three periods of interracial relations between the Dark and the Light Fae are the Discord, the Sundering, and the Exile. Some scholars claim the Faerie races are starting a fourth period in their history, called the Renaissance. But this is controversial because there's so little scholarship on the lost Unseelie race—"

"Very thorough as always, Ms. McSnicker. Thank you." Lucius gives Zara and Ronin and me—the only members of our polycule who have him this period—an inscrutable look. "I'd advise all of you to take careful note. This year in particular, Faerie History will very likely play a prominent role in the Dean's examination."

Sitting on Zara's other side, Ronin props a foot against his desk, slaps a notebook against his thigh, and scribbles a careless bullet.

Ronin is also my mate, so we are closely attuned. This is why I notice that his powerful body moves with less than his usual grace. And it is not only because of the way he engulfed Lucius' formidable knot last night and rode that wolf's cock like a stripper on a pole.

It is obvious to me that Ronin is… distracted. He fiddles with his pencil and drums restless fingers against his desk.

I wonder if, with his powerful clairsentience, he can sense the nearness of that rival male and his worrisome dragon.

Zephyr .

The very thought of my rival—and that devil's bargain I made with Vasili weeks ago, a debt which is now coming due—makes my hackles rise. My dragon grumbles a warning. His heavy coils slither inside my skin.

An ominous growl rises from my chest.

This disturbance stirs a ripple of covert glances and sly whispers from my classmates.

"Now then," Lucius says briskly, choosing to ignore my latest disruption. He pads around his lectern and advances down the aisle with his silent tread. "Who can tell us about the Discord? Let's hear from you, Ms. Gemini."

He is fooling no one.

No one is deceived by his careful formality toward Zara.

The entire school knows they are fucking.

Just as the entire school knows that, despite our latest glaring breach of decorum and those shocking photos splashed across the pages of The Witching Inquisitor , the Dean has not fired him.

Perhaps this is because Lucius is so strict with Zara in the classroom.

Even now, when his wolf is in rut and he is looming over her desk as though he can barely refrain from bending her over and lifting her skirt and shredding her schoolgirl panties so he can knot her again—

"Um, okay, the Discord." Zara squirms in her seat under his heated gaze and sits up straighter. Because I have bitten her, I can sense the force of her concentration through our mating bond. She is determined to pass her exams.

In truth, I can sense everything she is feeling. Especially the warm ache of need that pulses and throbs in her divine pussy.

My sovereign's fertile body is preparing her to breed.

Ours she is ours we will fill her with our seed she will ripen with our clutch—

Through the restless rumble of my rutting dragon against my inner ear, Zara's lively voice floats through my inflamed senses.

"So, the Discord is the period when, you know, the Dark Fae and the Light Fae lived together with each other and all the races in the regular witching world and sang kumbaya ." Zara's dutiful tone turns wry. "Only that didn't go so great. That's because the Fae made war on the other arcane races—"

"In point of fact," a cool voice sneers from the doorway, "it was the other arcane races that made war on us . "

Suddenly our doorway is commanded by a slim green figure who is both familiar and strange. The intruder's olive slacks and blazer, buttoned over a tight waist and narrow hips, bracket a trendy shirt with oversized cuffs and a slender stripe of tie. This classic attire looks exotic and unsettling when it is coupled with a curtain of moss-green hair, a pair of pointed ears, an eyepatch, and a heartless expression.

Undeceived by his conventional clothing, I recognize at once the hated form of my rival.

I push back my chair with a noisy scrape and shoot to my feet with a snarl.

Lucius gives me a quelling look that commands me—very clearly—to remain where I am. While I hover reluctantly and quiver with tension, Lucius turns courteously toward the door.

"Excellent," my headmaster says to our staring class. "Here's our guest speaker now. Zephyr, King of the Dark Fae, Your Moon-Dazzled Radiance, you are welcome."

Lucius speaks with the deliberate heft of witchcraft being woven. As his words fade, the tingle of common magic ripples over my hide. This is the feel of the protective ward he has placed on this classroom to protect our precious queen.

Parting to allow my enemy inside.

"Oh, bloody hell," Ronin mutters in a tone of absolute disgust. He shoves his notebook aside and plants his feet on the floor with dangerous intent—a breath away from violence.

My dragon trembles with the need to explode from my skin.

That is an instinct that would demolish this classroom, injure my mates, and get me expelled.

Narrow and assessing, Zephyr's jade gaze slides over me—the most immediate threat. Then his eye skips over Ronin, as though he flinches from the heat of that blazing glare, and settles on Zara's riveted face.

With her usual candor, she says what we are all thinking.

"What the fuck?" No one lobs the F bomb like my Zara. "Lu—uh, Master Aries, why is that Fae suddenly standing in our history class?

Lucius is a stickler for old-fashioned courtesy, which is what happens when you are strictly raised in a gloomy old castle with a gruesome history by an aristocratic Hungarian grandsire.

Now my headmaster's brow furrows in a repressive frown. "I should think it quite obvious— "

"I was invited." The Unseelie's smooth voice ripples like water running over rock. "To deliver the capstone lecture for your Faerie history lesson. The Discord is where your history books begin. But our noble race is far older than that."

By now this creature has prowled right into our classroom like the predator he is. His otherworldly scent of burnt amber twines through the dusty classroom smells of chalk and parchment like a magical miasma.

If my enemy dares to come anywhere near my breeding queen, I swear I will lunge for his throat.

Instead he flows toward the blackboard with that uncanny liquid grace, feet soundless as mist on our creaking floorboards, hair spilling like ivy down his straight back.

Deftly Zephyr captures a stick of chalk and writes in a flowing hand that is like calligraphy.

Prejudice. Jealousy. Greed.

The entire class, even those bullies from Villa Tiberius, is riveted.

"This is where our tale rightly begins. With the whole world's hatred." Zephyr pivots smoothly on his heel, hair swirling around his shoulders. He spurns Lucius' podium and hops lightly to sit on Lucius' desk instead, legs folding over each other like a lotus, fingers tenting under his narrow jaw.

My classmates stare at him. Clearly, they are enraptured.

The fools.

Aware of Lucius' irate frown at my threatening stance, I subside warily back to my seat.

"We Fae were here first," Zephyr murmurs, so softly we all lean forward to hear, "dwelling in harmony with nature and the childlike mortals who worshipped us. The other arcane races… your honored ancestors of ever-so-sainted memory… they came later."

His tone turns cruel and his face turns mocking.

"Your ancestors despised and envied mine," he hisses. "They distrusted our differences and they feared our power. So they set out to slaughter us down to the last babe. They drove us into hiding and stole our ancestral homes and profaned our sacred spaces with their churches and the stink of incense. Just as upstart peoples have always slaughtered and stolen from those they deem to be lesser . The embattled Fae fought to protect their lives, their homes, their children. That is the truth of the Discord you will never read in your histories. "

As he settles into his story, he loosens his tie with an impatient tug. Truly, I cannot imagine where he has found that clothing. Or how he has even managed to arrange his tie, which is very unlike anything in his homeland, in that confident twist.

But I darkly suspect Neo (who is supposed to be in Honors Alchemy this period).

My Neo has always harbored a soft spot in his tender heart for this deceptive and terrible creature.

"As our sacred spaces diminished and our numbers dwindled," the creature says, "the Seelie and Unseelie cast blame upon each other. They began to squabble among themselves over the scraps. Those squabbles led to bloodshed and then—inevitably—to a bitter and brutal civil war. Fae against Fae. The Dark against the Light. In the end, my people—the Unseelie—withdrew from the mortal world entirely. They passed through the portal into Avalon where they would be safe."

His ruthless mouth twists in a mocking grin. "Or so they imagined."

Ronin utters a rude snort they can surely hear in the hallway. "Skipped over a bit there, haven't you, mate? You glossed over that ghastly bit where your Unseelie ancestors sacrificed a thousand of your Seelie kin to open the portal."

The class sucks in a collective breath of horror.

"A footnote to the text." The Fae's shoulder flexes in a shrug. "If you expect me to deny it, by the moon, I will not. Unlike the flotsam and scrum of your arcane races, the Fae alone cannot lie." His sleek ribbon of voice goes thin. "I never claimed we were nice, Ronin."

"Too right." Ronin pushes back in his chair and scowls.

"Let's return to the lesson, shall we?" Lucius is leaning against the podium, watching his guest lecture with a degree of fascination I find concerning. "What of the Light Fae who survived the, ah, incident? What became of them?"

"Well." Zephyr presses the tips of his tented fingers to his lips. "The Seelie survivors remained here, of course, while the Unseelie vanished into the depths of our secret world for our thousand-year Exile. Traumatized by their ordeal, the Seelie chose to conceal their origins. They wove a powerful glamor to disguise their most distinctive feature—their wings. The better to hide among the common folk, yes?"

His gaze drifts across the scatter of curious and (in my case) hostile faces. His stare pauses on Ronin, who is seething in a silent fury, then on Zara whose face I cannot see (but whose blend of annoyance and fascination pulses through our mating bond with an intensity that is very alarming). Then Zephyr pauses on Mallory, who is unremarkable in all ways except for her commendable loyalty to Zara.

At last, his glacial gaze finds my bristling frame and narrows.

My dragon senses this silent confrontation and roars his defiance. A spark of fire flares in Zephyr's commanding stare.

I am no telepath and neither is he. But, in that moment, that Dark Fae leans forward with a sudden fierce focus. A silent message hums between us like an electrical current.

This dragonrider king is… challenging me.

He is challenging my dragon.

My beast spreads his wings and all but splits my skin. If he rises now, this upstart will roast.

"Sucks to be Seelie, I guess, huh?" my Zara says. Her tone is casual, but she twists in her seat to give me a thoughtful look. Clearly she is sensing my turmoil through our mating bond.

Zephyr draws his slim knees to his chest and perches his chin. "'Tis worth stating that the ancient war between our Faerie races is over. That period is, as they say, history." A small secret smile curls his lips. "These days, we Unseelie quite like our Seelie kin."

Now, surprisingly, it is Mallory McSnicker who snorts. "Doesn't sound like the Seelie return the favor, mister. Maybe they're not that quick to forgive?"

"Oh, that depends on the Seelie." Zephyr looks like a cat licking cream from his whiskers. I know this is because Zephyr and Ash, the Seelie Prince he abducted, are lovers.

Mallory whispers something under her breath that even I, with my shifter senses, cannot catch. No doubt this is because I am distracted by another powerful whiff of Zara's delicious scent as my sovereign shifts in her seat.

She too is thinking about Ash and Zephyr.

And her thoughts, all too plainly, are arousing.

"The Exile was clearly an ordeal for both Faerie races," Lucius says in a guttural voice. He too is affected by our queen's arousal, but he is determined not to show it. "My question for you, Your Radiance, is a simple one. Now that the portal between your world and ours lies open once more, what comes next for the Dark Fae?"

Zephyr wraps his arms around his updrawn legs and pulls in a slow breath. Truly, he lectures like no other professor—visiting or otherwise—that I have ever seen.

"Some say this new era will herald our return. 'Tis why the scholars are calling this time, under my reign, our Renaissance." Zephyr's cold face turns toward Zara and darkens with a brooding intensity. "But that will depend on my queen."

As if on cue, the deep gong of the church bell resonates through the ancient walls.

All around me, chairs scrape and pages rustle as my classmates snatch their belongings and rush eagerly to their feet.

"Don't forget to stop by the student commons before next period." Lucius raises his voice to be heard above the clamor. "Final examination announcements from the Dean are now posted."

"Oh, fuck," Zara mutters, scooping up her backpack and shoving to her feet. "Guess that's where I'm headed."

Already Ronin looms at her side, with his back turned pointedly to Zephyr. My mate's tawny face is set in a thunderous scowl and his topaz eyes are murderous.

Needless to say, I plant myself to stand shoulder to shoulder beside him.

Still, I keep a wary eye trained on the Dark Fae, who is conversing with an intrigued-looking Lucius near the podium, but whose assessing gaze is narrowed on us .

Clearly, for the moment, my rival male must wait.

Now that Zara's own rival for the witching world throne has come to the Icarus Academy to challenge her, the student commons is where we will find Cleopatra Aquarius.