Chapter 5
Khawla
The sound of raised voices shouting in a foreign language was what drew me back to the strange room with the metal boxes.
I’d already checked the place, and the red-and-black sky creature had doubled back on it twice as I followed him around the dark, frozen wreck.
I had a better sense of what he looked and acted like, and concluded that he was a creature of stealth in his own way: silent footsteps, intense gaze, and a single-minded focus, like that of a hunter on the prowl.
The other sky creatures were the ones my hunters had spoken of—the smelly ones who shot Vakarsa by the dozen, careless in the way they killed.
They had come to the room with the boxes and were confronting the red-and-black hunter.
It was not quite clear to me whether they were friend or foe, though they faced off as if they were foes.
I would have been more than happy to simply observe, draw my conclusions, and then leave.
After all, I could now answer the question of the red lightning haunting the woods around the skyship. Then I saw her.
A human female wrapped in silver and haloed by gold stood by one of the boxes, having been pushed into it by the red-and-black one.
Everything about the situation screamed danger to her.
She was their prisoner, their captive, and from the looks of it, this was why the two sky-creatures were at odds.
I had no doubt that the smelly ones, from their greedy, evil looks, wanted something from that female she was not going to be willing to give.
This was not my mission. I should not interfere, and if the Queen heard that I had interceded on behalf of a human, banishment would be swift and merciless.
The smartest thing to do would be to back away and leave, to consider this mission over.
It was over, but I could not make my coils move back, even though the hidden exit was close by.
Forward was much easier, and once I’d made that choice, I became all instinct, all hunter.
A force had a hold of me now—one I had never felt before.
Instincts more powerful than those of the hunt—or maybe the same, just a different facet.
Charging into a room full of hostiles was stupid; it was the kind of impulsive act I would endlessly berate a young hunter for.
This time, I had done it before I could even blink twice.
I was lucky my appearance caused complete and utter chaos, and I gladly took advantage of that, dodging fists and crude spears wielded with little precision but a lot of force.
My only goal was to get to the human, then get her out of there.
There was no plan beyond that, but, as it turned out, I didn’t need much planning.
After I’d dealt with the first few opponents in a swift and just manner, she was thrown right into my arms by the red-and-black hunter.
I had my suspicions about that, but no time to think it through.
What happened then was so unexpected that I briefly froze.
I just stood there, holding the small female while I stared, grappling with what my eye was telling me—with what I had thought could never be true.
It was just not in the stars for a male like me.
Except, now, my sight was telling me that it was.
It was the shouted words of the red-and-black hunter that jarred me from my dangerous moment of inaction.
“Go! Get out of here!” The words were clear in my mind, as if spoken in my own tongue—though they couldn’t have been.
I responded to that command by hauling the female more tightly into my arms, where she was safe.
Then I put on a burst of speed and bowled over several sky creatures on my way out of the hold.
They gave chase, but in the dark, and aided by the odd quirk of my scales, they could not see me well enough to aim their spears.
Some clattered nearby, but most went wide by far.
Then I hurled myself into the small room with the hatch in the floor, my tail adept at yanking open the wheel and gears that controlled it.
Dropping down through the hole with my precious burden in my arms, I knew I had another advantage.
Below the belly of the ship, I could move fast, but those clumsy two-legs had to crawl awkwardly; they would never catch up to us.
I raced away, body hunched low to the ground, tail moving fast to propel me forward. Us. The female was quiet, her hands digging into my fur tunic, her face pressed against my throat. Her odd silver robes flapped and fluttered around her, tangling with her strange, thin legs and impractical feet.
At the edge of the ship, I halted once to carefully check that no danger awaited us beyond.
Then I retraced the way I’d come, following the footsteps the red-and-black hunter had made in the snow.
I made no effort yet to obscure my tracks, keeping low to the snow to provide a much harder target should they get a chance to fire arrows or more spears at us.
Those never came. In fact, I saw no sign of pursuit at all when I glanced over my shoulder.
At the edge of the woods, I swung my body behind a tree, pressed my back to it, and let my scales do the rest. My female was trembling in my arms, and her odd coverings had gotten layered with snow, clinging to them in a fine powder.
She tilted back her head, gazing at me with eyes a bright shade of blue—so very right for a Thunder Rock female.
Except she wasn’t. She wasn’t Thunder Rock; she wasn’t even Naga.
My eye dropped from her gaze, gliding along the curve of her cheek, the spotted bridge of her nose, and her soft-looking mouth.
Her lips were dark purple, like she might be from Copper Tooth.
It stirred something inside me. She was that same blend of purple and blue that shouldn’t be, yet was… She was just like me.
Then my gaze lowered even further, to the edge of my tunic where light spilled out of the fur.
It was a bright, golden hue, and even in the snow-blinding brightness of full day, it shone brightly—too brightly, far brighter than any sigils I’d ever seen.
They glowed like the Serant sun, only gold, not purple.
Yet another color my cursed body was doing wrong.
“No,” I snapped at her. “You are not my mate. My mate is dead…” But she wasn’t.
Kusha was gone, but Kusha had never truly been mine, had she?
And this female—human as she was—made sigils on my body glow that I hadn’t even known I had.
My words were a lie, and I’d always worked hard to be truthful, no matter what.
Truthful in everything but my mating, because that was such a tremendous lie I didn’t know how else to live with it.
A human mate was the biggest complication—the very last thing I could use right now.
She would never be welcome at Thunder Rock; the Queen would see her dead in a heartbeat.
My younglings might be fascinated by humans, but I doubted they wanted one as their new mother, either.
More importantly, taking a human mate would mean they had to leave the only home they’d ever known.
I could not do that to them, not after all the upheaval their short lives had already seen.
She might have been intended to be my mate, but she never would be. I couldn’t let my own selfish desire influence the future, and what was right for my young. And it was very right for them to grow up at home, with their peers. I had to do everything for them; they came first.
Then her eyes grew wide, her lips trembling, and something shot through me that was wild and irresponsible.
For one blinding moment, I forgot all about my young and the future, about doing the right thing.
I very much wanted to do the wrong thing instead.
My mouth was on hers before I could stop myself, claiming her lips the way I’d seen my outcast brethren do to their human mates.
Hunters had speculated about that late at night as the campfires died, but nothing they’d theorized compared to what it was like to taste your female that way.
She gasped, and I slipped my tongue into the wet cavern of her mouth.
It curled there, around hers, flooding my senses with her sweetness, her innocence.
She was so soft, so small, and so very weak compared to me.
This was not something any Naga female would ever allow.
It was too close, too intimate, too much like a claim.
A Naga female would never let her male have all the power, and this was definitely power. I controlled her, and yet…
Then my human shocked me by reeling back, her hand coming up to slap me across the face.
It was only a soft sting, barely felt, but I blinked in confusion at her furious, mutinous expression.
She reminded me of Nisha when she wasn’t getting her way, but though small, there was nothing childish about this woman.
Blue eyes sparkled with icy reprimand; her mouth was a thin line, but, oddly enough, no longer purple.
Her breathing matched mine, too fast, racing like she had been deprived.
I winced. Had I done that? Did I do the mouth-mating wrong and take her air? Was that why she was mad?
“I will try again,” I told her recklessly, already dipping my head to hers, though the rational parts of my brain shouted at me not to.
This was a mistake, but she was simply irresistible.
Those eyes, her taste, they made me forget all about the responsible, rule-abiding male I was.
I didn’t even care, and that was dangerous.
***
Jolene