Chapter 18
Iave
Kalani was practically fuming by the time I made the climb to the top of the rock wall and hauled myself over the edge. I smiled as I lay down on the grass and shook out my arms, aching and burning from the climb. “You were magnificent!” I said.
She planted her feet next to my head, her hands on her hips as she glared down on my prone form.
Smoke and fire were still lighting up the entire pit behind her, allowing me to drink in every detail of her form.
From the way her eyes were narrowed in her glare, the rise and fall of her luscious breasts, and the way her narrow waist dipped and curved into her wide hips.
“And you were a fucking idiot! Why did you go into the tunnel? That whole pit is on fire, you could have died!” I smiled like a loon, she always made me so damn happy, and though I didn’t want to worry her, I liked how much she cared.
I shrugged a shoulder, “I promised no scratches, and look. I delivered,” I gestured my hand down my body and then coiled my tail to wag the tip in front of her face.
Sure, I’d managed to get a few scorched scales, but not a single scratch from the zombies.
“Just needed to make sure that the Queen was dead, and then I went in to set those eggs on fire before any more could hatch. I was careful.”
She kept frowning so I hooked my tail around her shoulders and yanked her down into my arms, where she belonged.
“It needed to be done, you know that.” She softened in my arms after a few tense seconds, just long enough for my heart to start pounding with the first hint of worry.
I liked sparring with her, but I didn’t like it when she was genuinely mad at me.
When she softened, my breath gushed out of me in relief.
“Fine, the eggs needed to go, and I guess you did warn me.” I had, I’d yelled up to her what my intentions were as soon as I realized the issue with our plan.
If I didn’t take care of the eggs now, those would hatch and just spawn a whole new generation of these mindless beasts.
What if that creature had spawned another Queen? Then this would never end.
“Come on, my Goddess. Let’s get back to the stream, I want to wash all this soot off.
” She was only too happy to agree to that, but we were sluggish and slow when we gathered what we wanted to take with us and left.
I made sure that all the tar had gone into the pit and that there was no risk that the rest of the forest lit on fire behind us.
But I already knew we were good on that front as heavy rains had passed through only a few days ago.
The forest was still waterlogged, a few sparks were not enough to ignite it. Not unless there was any tar.
We were tired after our day of hard work and the fight.
The adrenaline crashing now that everything was over.
It wasn’t like we’d had much sleep the night before either, so exhaustion was starting to weigh us both down.
With all the dangers cleared, we would be able to get a really good night of rest, and I was looking forward to curling around my mate in the furs.
Warning shivered over my scales when we neared the stream we’d camped at last night.
My tongue flicked out to catch any foreign scents.
All tiredness vanished in a heartbeat, “Bitter Storm warriors.” Kalani’s hands went for the strange tube she called a rifle, raising the weapon to her shoulder while she swiveled her head around to search for any foes.
“They passed through here, but I think they are gone again,” I whispered, my fingers clutching the handle of my ax; I was as ready for another fight as my mate was.
Why would any Bitter Storm warriors be out here?
That didn’t make sense, this was not their territory.
We’d exited those zombie-riddled ancestral caves inside Thunder Rock territory.
We were actually very close to the village itself, Bitter Storm had no business being here.
“How do you know?” my mate asked quietly. Her dark eyes never let up from scanning our surroundings, though I knew she would have trouble seeing now that we were away from the fire. Darkness was everywhere. There wasn’t even much moonlight to go by, as the night was cloudy.
“They smell like the mountain they live under,” I said, “But the scent is faded. A few hours old.” We neared our camp and that’s when my eyes picked out the signs of tail marks in the dirt. They’d used the same area to rest, refilling their waterskins at the stream. Why were they here?
Disquiet filled me, and I suddenly recalled words one of the sentinels in the mountain had said. Overheard words that hadn’t registered without any context. Their Warlord shouldn’t be focused on Naomi and her execution when he was so busy. There was only one thing a Warlord could be busy with; war.
“I think Bitter Storm might be planning an attack on my former Clan…” I said, the words tasting like ashes in my mouth.
Immediately, Kalani’s hand found the crook of my elbow and she gave my bicep a gentle squeeze.
An offer of quiet comfort, why did she think I needed that?
Thunder Rock had cast me out, I didn’t care about them now.
“Oh no, I’m sorry Iave. How far is it? Do you think we can still warn them?” Her words made something clench in my chest and then it unraveled. Fuck, she was right. I did want to warn them. But why?
Kalani’s hand tugged on my arm and I dipped my head to look at her. Her expression was soft and full of understanding as she put into words what I was grappling with. “You don’t want any youngling to be orphaned like we were.”
The words hit me like a lightning strike, she was right.
That was exactly it. The Queen and her court of females could choke for all I cared, but the young?
They shouldn’t be in danger, they shouldn’t lose their parents if I could stop it.
“Thank you,” I told my mate, and she offered me a gentle smile that eased more of the unease in my chest.
“We’ll have to race for the village, it’s still several hours away…
” I didn’t want to say it out loud, but it would be faster if I carried her.
Faster still if we abandoned almost all of our supplies, but that would mean roughing it without any furs until we could reach the Ancestral caves beyond Thunder Rock village.
“Okay, what should we take?” she said without hesitation. Already opening our sack of remaining supplies to toss what we didn’t need, even if I hadn’t said a thing about it. I hunkered down next to her to help her decide.
***
Kalani
I insisted on tying myself to Iave’s back for the trek, that way I could nap and rest while he had his hands free.
I figured we might stumble directly into battle if we were too late for a warning, so I wanted to rest up as much as possible.
I knew without a shred of doubt that if we encountered a fight at the end of this journey, Iave would want to join.
He was as much a protector as I was, and on top of that, I was pretty sure he just thought it was fun.
Couldn’t say I disagreed when I stood at the edge of a battle and picked off one target after another…
That was a high I couldn’t describe. That brush with life and death while you thought you were doing the right thing.
While you were fighting to do something good.
Trying to make a meaningful change. Of course, that all depended on whether you could trust what your commanding officer said.
Trust that the force you were part of was even doing good.
And I’d recently learned the hard way just how badly that trust could be broken.
It was different when I was following Iave into combat. I trusted him implicitly, even if he was rash and wild, and thought he was all-powerful sometimes. So I curled myself against his broad back and let the swaying motion of his rapid pace through the woods lull me to sleep.
When I woke, night had faded to make place for dawn and Iave’s pace had slowed.
I instantly recognized the sounds that had woken me as those of battle and my body soared with a burst of adrenaline.
“It already started,” I said quietly against his back.
Shifting so I could get better leverage to peer over his shoulder.
Iave’s jaw was clenched, his expression grim and angry.
Not a huge change from his default expression but I caught the deep, underlying tension beneath it.
“Remember how I said Bitter Storm numbers well in the thousand?” he said.
I nodded against his shoulder, already mentally inventorying how many arrows I had left and wondering how much charge the pilfered rifle had.
“Well, Thunder Rock isn’t nearly so numerous.
A few hundred, possibly only around two hundred capable of fighting…
” Severely outnumbered is what he was saying, and the two of us could hardly make a meaningful difference.
Could we? I stroked the barrel of my new weapon, inspecting the dials and buttons that I couldn’t understand.
Would I dare to meddle with those to see if I could give his former Clan an edge?
“Get me to a hill, Bitter Storm is superstitious, right? The shots from this weapon look like lightning… If you can point out the leaders. We will try to decapitate this snake.” He didn’t know what a snake was, but he got my point.
Skirting the edge of the battle, we moved around the invading wave of Bitter Storm Naga to get to higher ground.
I soon decided I’d have to climb a tree for the best vantage point but I was relieved to notice that the village wasn’t just a few huts thrown together.
There was a tall wooden palisade that surrounded it, spikes sticking out like hedgehog bristles around each point of entrance.
This was as much a siege as it was an all-out battle.
This meant that though outnumbered, Thunder Rock stood a better chance than I thought they did.
“That tree,” I urged, when I located a particularly tall specimen with a good amount of handholds for climbing.
I’d spotted something more worrisome just beyond it, a wooden war machine, the type that could catapult big stones to destroy walls.
They were only starting to set it up, wedging it in place with giant poles they hammered into the ground to keep the thing from rolling when they fired it.
Shrugging out of the straps tying me to Iave’s back, I looped those over my shoulder in case I needed to secure myself to the tree.
The recoil from this rifle wasn’t too bad, I hoped I wouldn’t need it, but you never knew.
“I will defend this base because your fire will draw attention,” Iave said.
Already he swung his ax from the loop on his belt and was quickly shrugging out of anything that could weigh him down.
I yanked his face down to kiss him. “Not a scratch, remember?” I warned him against his mouth. He laughed, and then he kissed me, his tongue sweeping inside to flood my senses with his warm, spicy taste. His hand clutched the back of my neck tightly, the grip was possessive and full of warning.
“No promises this time. When you run out of ammunition, we are out of here, no matter what. Got that?” I nodded, that was a good stipulation, there was only so much we could do once my weapon was empty. I wasn’t going to take on this horde of warriors with just a little knife or a laser scalpel.
“Promise, and Iave,” I said, he’d already lifted me by the waist and was rising high on his tail to boost me into the tree.
“I love you.” Then I spun around, my cheeks blazing with heat, and scurried into the branches as fast as I could.
I had never in my life said those words out loud to a man before, and I wasn’t even sure if Iave knew what the word meant.
When I settled myself into the tight V of two branches, putting my rifle to my shoulder, I dared to glance down.
Iave was still at the bottom of my tree, swinging his ax back and forth to limber himself up.
His eyes were cast far away but he sensed that I was looking and tilted his chin up.
There was this soft smile on his face, almost peaceful, which was very out of place when we were about to join a massive battle.
I felt an answering smile spread out over my own face.