Chapter 2
Cosima
Sitting at the edge of the fire I poked the ground in front of my feet with a stick, twirling it through the sand and making random shapes.
Around me, people were talking and laughing, but it wasn’t easy to be part of a conversation when you only understood half of it.
Min-Ji and Reid had been talking about getting their translators updated somehow so they could understand everyone, but so far, they hadn’t figured out how yet.
I dreaded the moment when they did and they’d ask me if I wanted a language update too.
What then? I reached up a hand to touch the crude scar just behind my ear shell, an identical mark marring me on the other side.
Yeah, what then? Unless I found myself a mate, and that thought made me want to throw up, I would never be able to understand the Naga.
Kalani sat on my left, half curled up against her huge brutish mate, Iave.
He’d slung a coil of his tail over her seat as a pillow, so she wasn’t touching the cold wood but his warm tail, such a sweet, romantic gesture.
She was talking animatedly with her hands, her eyes glowing, and laughing whenever he growled something at her.
So cozy and in love, just like I’d been once.
Then my eyes flicked up from my wayward melancholic thoughts and directly into a golden gaze.
Zsekhet. I’d caved yesterday and asked Min-Ji if she knew his name.
Then I’d tried to cover my interest in him by asking if she knew what the names of the other two new ‘Clan’ members were.
I’d already forgotten again, my brain struggling to hold on to such foreign sounds.
Zsekhet rose from where he sat across the fire, slithering around the circle of eating people to steadily approach my position.
Now what? I wanted to get up and leave but that would draw everyone’s attention to me.
I didn’t need people to figure out just how threatening and big I still found most of the Naga.
I was used to Corin the most, but the others, they still freaked me out a little.
Especially when they blinked with their weird second eyelids.
Frozen in place, I just watched as he got closer and closer.
Was he really coming toward me? Or was he just going to slither right on past?
I found that I was holding my breath as I waited to see what he’d do.
When he flung some of his coils over the log I was sitting on, I wanted to scoot away, I wanted to run.
But all he did was sit down next to me, his gaze dropping from mine to glance around the circle of talking and eating people.
I sighed, that wasn’t so bad. He was just sitting, he wasn’t touching.
He probably just wanted to get downwind of the smoke curling up from the fire.
Then I made the mistake of glancing at him through my lashes and I realized he was looking right at me.
As soon as I did, he lifted the tip of his tail and pointed it my way, kind of like he expected me to shake it.
A grin was curling the corner of his mouth up and exposed one sharp fang; heat shot through me that I quickly squashed.
Did he expect me to grab his tail? I glanced around the circle and even looked at Kalani but she was engrossed in regaling her mate with stories of her time as a marine.
Nobody paid any attention to me, or the way Zsekhet was daring me to touch his scales.
I knew what he was doing and it made me feel all cold and knotted up inside.
He was daring me to touch him and find out if I was his mate.
I rose, and of course, nobody noticed that.
I’d been worried for nothing. Only Zsekhet saw me as I scrambled over the log and ran into the caves with my stick still clutched between my fingers.
Cowardly Cosima, making another run for it, so normal by now that nobody even noticed.
I fought the tears that started to prick at my eyes, and I fought even more against the urge to remember my fiance.
My childhood sweetheart, Caleb with the soft brown eyes and the big bear hugs. I missed him so much.
When I threw myself through the door into my apartment, I tossed my stick across the room so hard that it shattered into pieces against the far wall. No. No more! I couldn’t go on like this. I had to make changes or I’d forever be stuck in this hole in my mind. Forever stuck in darkness.
I stalked from the door to my bedroom where I had various pieces of sewing projects laid out on a bench. Swiping them all onto the floor, I started pulling the seams I’d already done out of the long, shapeless dresses I’d been making.
He wanted to challenge me, did he? That stupid Zsekhet! He thought I was weak, he thought I wasn’t up for it? Well, I’d show him. I’d fucking show him!
***
Zsekhet
My female was on a warpath. A tiny, one-woman army of angry, pained defiance. I wasn’t sure if this change was good or bad, but it certainly meant she was now out of the caves and getting all that sunlight I was thinking she needed; and then some.
Previously, she’d worn these long leathers around her body that covered up most of her pale flesh and hid all her luscious curves.
After my first time prodding her at the fire last night, she’d stormed off and she’d done this.
Resewn her dresses into these slinky shapes, they hugged her slender waist, licked over her flaring hips, and the hemline…
Blasting suns, it ended above her knees, showing off those strange but appealing, graceful legs.
I was not the only one who had noticed how sexy she was and she was unattached, unmated.
All the aspirant males, and even Xorare and Aks who had no interest in females, were trailing her with their eyes.
Staring at her legs, at her abundant breasts, flicking out their tongues to catch her scent, her taste.
I wanted to cut off all those tongues, I wanted to bash a few too many heads, and I came far too close to poking out the eyes of a former Copper Tooth hunter when he lingered a little too long at staring at her sexy ass.
What the fuck was she up to? Was this punishment for daring her to find out if she was my mate?
I knew the answer. Did she? Why had it made her so mad that she was stalking around outside in those slinky clothes and glaring at everything and everyone?
Min-Ji and Charlie were chasing after her, demanding answers I was certain.
Then Vera blocked her path and their discussion got even more lively.
I narrowed my eyes at them. No, they weren’t scolding her or mad, they weren’t concerned.
If I wasn’t mistaken, they were excited.
Excited to see my flame-haired one out and about?
Then I saw Vera point at Cosima’s slinky garment and shimmy, laughter ringing out.
My scales rattled along my back, were they bullying her?
The beam I was holding up for the drying shed we were building slid along my shoulder and Zathar and Corin both shot me warnings as they worked to lash the beam in place.
My focus was still on the females, I’d finally figured it out.
They were complimenting her dress, they wanted their own.
Blasting suns, I’d caused total mayhem with just one casual tail offer.
Then my mouth spread in a smile, my eyes lingering again on her intriguing rear.
The other males should be thanking me for inspiring this fashion change and once the others were parading around in the same way, Cosima wouldn’t stand out.
I could deal with that. Besides, I loved a little mayhem and chaos, I loved it a lot.
“Stop ogling Cosima and get to work, Zsekhet. You’re slowing us all down, you horny bastard,” Corin jibed from my left.
I shot him a glare but that quickly morphed into another wide grin; I was a horny bastard.
Not in the least because I had more than just a horn on my chin like most Clans, I had a proud set of proud horns rising from my forehead too.
Then I flicked my eyes back at Cosima, I just couldn’t help myself, I was drawn to her and I had no intention of fighting that pull.
Across from me, Zathar was quickly working to tie the heavy beam in place so we could hammer in the wedges.
He eyed me from the corner of his eye, then flicked his head to the side to glance at the excited huddle of females not far away.
“Can’t complain about the results, Corin.
Cosima’s outside, she seems to be smiling.
I am glad to see that. We just need to keep a close eye on the aspirants, this is not a free-for-all to claim the last available females. ”
I was pleased to hear that Zathar had noticed Cosima’s apathy, her sadness, just like I had.
It was the mark of a good leader that he’d paid attention to the mood of even the smallest member of the Clan.
Discounting Kiwi, Cosima certainly was a tiny, pale little thing.
I just wanted to wrap her up in my coils and whisk her away, up on Ses into the air where nothing could hurt her.
Flicking out my tongue I tried to catch her scent; oh the things I wanted to do to her.
Resolutely, I shifted my focus away from Cosima and back to the work I was doing.
Zathar was right, the aspirant Naga were a danger to the females.
I understood the Prince’s desire to draw more males in to form a new Clan.
Outcast Haven as they’d decided to call this place, this group of people.
But some males were cast out not because they had no mate, sometimes there were good reasons to throw a male out.
The wooden wall that Krashe had designed had been completed weeks ago, but the former Bitter Storm Warlord was still making adjustments to the gate.
Beyond the wall lay the camp where the aspirants lived until they’d earned themselves a place at Outcast Haven.
I’d lived there with Ses until a week ago, I still remembered the crude talk around the evening campfires, the open desire to find a mate here.
We all knew how few of these ‘humans,’ sky-beings, there were. Which one of us was going to be chosen?
I knew in my heart that Cosima was meant to be mine, but until she was ready to touch my scales and accept a mate bond, none of those males would accept my claim.
“I will keep watch, make sure no male steps out of line,” I said darkly.
Frowning through the current version of the gate at the tent camp which was teeming with activity.
Corin barked out a laugh, and Zathar’s mouth curled into a smirk.
“Oh, I’m sure you will. I have no doubt you will do plenty of watching.
” The prince curled the tip of his azure tail through the air to jab me in the shoulder.
“And I will be watching you.” That was fine, he could watch as I courted my flame-haired one right out of her shell and into my coils.
There was just one problem. I came here to do a job, and I still didn’t know the answer.
I didn’t know what my report to my Queen should be.
I actually liked Zathar and his friends, I even liked the former Warlord despite his constant glare.
This was a good, nice place. But what they were doing here could definitely be a threat to our way of existing.
This collaboration, this banding together of outcasts…
If this happened in more places, who knew what would happen?
Would there be a repeat of history at Serqethos?
I felt conflicted, I should do my job, even with my mate here. I knew what my priority was, but that didn’t mean I could shirk my other responsibilities. Now that I had access to the home inside the mountain, I needed to discover all its secrets. It was time to do some sleuthing.