Chapter 3 #2
Before I could let fear cripple me, I ducked out the gate with a half-assed wave at Krashe, Naomi’s mate.
He was hammering away at some kind of double-barred system intended to work as a lock for this huge doorway.
As I took a deep breath and just kept walking, I felt the first hint of curiosity take hold of me.
When I came back this way I’d stop and have a look at what Krashe had designed, it looked complex and interesting.
The huge red male paused what he was doing to stare after me, his face doing that deep frowny thing that usually made others get out of his way.
When I looked back to where I was going, I realized he’d been glaring at several of the aspirant males still at work in their tent camp.
I paused to glance around, hands on my hips while I forced myself to stand still and just look.
The urge to turn around and run away was strong, but I had to do this, I had to convince myself that I was safe and didn’t need to distrust the Naga here.
Nope, I wasn’t having it. They still freaked me out, there were too many snake coils, too many eyes looking at me.
Then one flicked out his long, split tongue and others followed suit.
They were tasting my scent, oh yuck! I turned on my heel and started to briskly walk back the way I’d come.
Step one of desensitizing myself to their freakiness was not exactly a success, but as I started to approach the gate, I felt a hint of pride that I’d at least tried. Take that Zsekhet!
When a blue male suddenly threw himself in my path, my breath stalled in my lungs, and fear made my muscles seize up.
I’d discovered that since I’d gotten to Serant, fear just made me freeze.
I hated it, and I didn’t know how to fix it.
So instead of ducking around him and just high-tailing it to Krashe and safety, I stood there like an idiot and stared.
There were a handful of blue Naga that lived in the aspirant camp, and besides unmated Corin, only one blue one so far had been promoted to the cave apartments.
This male I didn’t recognize, but I had a feeling that he knew exactly who I was.
The unattached girl without a mate, the one that was still up for grabs.
He was going to touch me and hope that his mating sigils lit up.
The tip of his tail wound around my ankle and slid up my leg and I hated every second of those warm, dry, and slightly raspy scales touching my flesh.
He was talking to me but I couldn’t understand a word he said, which was actually a relief.
I didn’t want a mate, I had one, and he had been murdered.
The look on his face wasn’t indicating anything good for me though.
I recognized the flash of disappointed anger when his damn sigils didn’t start their light show.
Then I saw the shift in his expression as he decided that it was through no fault of his that he wasn’t getting what he wanted, it had to be me.
I felt coldness flash through me at the sight of that look, I knew it, I’d seen it a million times in my father’s eyes.
He hissed more words, gesturing with his arms as he did so and sliding his long body over the ground, ever closer.
That tail wound more tightly around my leg, sliding higher with each winding of his appendage along my skin.
I wanted to vomit, I wanted to rail and shout, but all I did was stand there and do absolutely nothing. Trapped in my head as well as his grip.
I realized he’d set off something in the aspirant camp.
Boldly touching me as he had, now the others all felt they should be getting a chance to do the same, to test if I was theirs.
I felt them crowd closer, saw tails or hands reach out to me.
None of the others were as bold and possessive as the one pinching my leg in his grip, but I hated every touch, every second.
My heart was racing and my breath was sawing in and out of my lungs like I’d just run a marathon.
Relief shuddering through me each time the sigils along their bodies remained unlit.
The first one didn’t like his competition, even if according to all the rules about their mating traditions, he’d already lost. He hissed and feinted left and right, making me stumble along in his grip.
He even dared to slash at the other males with his spear, his warning yells growing louder and fiercer.
That was good, I thought faintly, it would be over soon.
Someone would hear and come to rescue me and then more panic hit me hard, rescue? No, I couldn’t trust that.
It was what finally unlocked me from my frozen fear.
I didn’t have any weapon on me, so I just threw the pouch of berries I was still clutching.
They nailed the asshole holding me square in the face but he just snarled and batted my projectile aside.
I didn’t stop there, slamming my fists down on his coils and hitting him over and over as hard as I could.
“You are not my mate! Let me go, you bastard! Do not touch me! Fuck off!”
I didn’t know I could shout like that but it felt good, it felt like a release.
It was like these tight bands suddenly broke from around my chest and I could breathe again.
Inhaling deeply so I could shriek into his face, raking my nails across his scaly cheek.
It was his own mistake that he’d approached as much as he had, I was going to make him regret even trying.
I didn’t need rescue, rescue was just a lie.
Then his arms snapped out, grabbing mine and pinning them to my sides with force. My fair, freckled skin bruised easily and I could almost see them forming right before my eyes. Angry, purple-red splotches across my biceps.
And that’s when he arrived. He dropped from the sky and wind blasted me from the mighty wing beats of his dragon diving low above our heads.
Zsekhet threw himself at the male clutching me in his arms and tail, a whirlwind of flying, shimmering gold coils and black leather bands.
Punches and snarls, grappling together like they were about to kill one another, the two males rolled away from me.
Suddenly I was standing alone, swaying on my feet but without anyone touching me at last.
The other males that had dared to touch me were slinking away, fearful of the furious wrath of the golden male.
I was shocked by what I witnessed, even as I felt this hint of relief.
Zsekhet was the most easygoing male in this place, always smiling, always laughing and joking.
To see him fight was like seeing an entirely different man, a raging barbarian caught in the throes of blood lust.
See, you couldn’t trust rescue. Zsekhet would kill me if I got too close.
This wasn’t safety, this was just another kind of danger and I wasn’t going to stick around for it.
It wouldn’t come as a shock either when he’d turn around later and demand I pay him for that ‘rescue.’ Bitterness filled me as I turned away from the fighting mass and stalked back to the gate.
Why was it Zsekhet who interfered anyway?
Why hadn’t it been Krashe? He had been right there, able to see what was going on!
I had my answer as soon as I stepped through the large gap in the wooden wall and discovered that Krashe wasn’t there.
I spotted a flash of red to my left further along the wood wall, and could make out a pale arm slung around his neck but nothing else.
Of course, he was off canoodling with Naomi, that’s why.
Zathar and Corin, followed by the enormous Iave were racing down the lush purple slope toward me, spears drawn. With satisfaction I realized that the sight of them like that didn’t make me scared, I was just pissed that they were only showing up now. Too late.
The leader of our supposed little Clan paused at my side, hissing something at me with an intense look in his eyes.
“What happened?” or “Are you alright?” or something along those lines.
I shrugged, and from the pit in my stomach came this clenching, hard knot of emotions.
I shoved it away, no more crying. I’d cried for three fucking months and it wasn’t working, it wasn’t making me feel better.
It was still a fight to suppress that urge but I bit my lip hard and pretended I didn’t see the flash of impatience on his azure face.
I couldn’t understand a word he said, but since he was mated, he could understand me.
So I forced myself to explain what happened in short, succinct sentences.
“I went to take a walk but this one aspirant blocked me when I went back. He touched me to see if I was his mate and then wouldn’t let go when I wasn’t.
Zsekhet is fighting him now.” I pointed down the hill to the gate where the sound of combat, mostly snarls and growls, could loudly be heard.
Iave and Corin had continued on without Zathar and met up with Krashe at the gate, I could see them rush outside to break up the fight.
Then Zsekhet’s dragon circled back overhead and I saw the creature open its maw, I winced.
Was it about to breathe fire on the whole lot down there?
I wanted to pretend that I didn’t care if it did, but I couldn’t.
It was time to be completely honest here.
While the others had all experienced crash-landing on Serant as a second lease on life, to me it had been the actual death sentence.
I wasn’t convicted of a crime, I wasn’t executed.
I had been rescued. Arriving on Serant meant discovering that not only had I witnessed my fiance’s murder and been horribly tortured, but also that the people who rescued me had betrayed me.
They had silenced me for what I knew and had gone through.
I’d been grieving, I’d been traumatized, and then I’d had to deal with this betrayal and living with monsters on a barbaric planet.
I had been promised my home and my family, and I had woken up to this bizarre and terrifying place.
That was really, really shitty, and I deserved to feel sad about that, to be upset.
But Zathar and Vera, along with all the others, had been really good to me too. It could have been far worse.
The Naga, especially Zathar and his friends, were nothing like the rebel Scrakoids, even if they both had scales.
They didn’t deserve my mistrust, but I could still distrust the aspirants, especially that asshole.
And what about Zsekhet? A small voice in the back of my mind wanted to point out how dangerous he’d appeared when he fought my assailant. Could I trust him? The others did...
I didn’t know, but I was going to find out.
I would be damned if I ever let him ride to my rescue again, no way.
A plan formed in my head and with it, it felt like more weight slipped from my shoulders.
I was smiling, feeling lighter than I had in months when I resumed trekking uphill to the Outcast Haven caves.
I wasn’t ready yet to call that place home, but I was going to try my best to get there too.