Chapter 8
Mox
With Charlie in my arms and my back laden down with supplies, I was still making good time heading into the mountains.
After I’d seeded her, she’d fallen back asleep, and she’d protested in the cutest fashion when I’d brought her to the bathing pool for a quick wash.
She was asleep again now, her head pressed trustingly into the crook of my neck, my mating sigils finally calm now that our bond had been confirmed.
Leaving the safety of the ancient tunnels that my Clan used as a hunter hideout, there had been a brief moment where I feared for our lives.
I had wanted to stay there until first light before heading for the Shaman, but after Raxon’s visit, I didn’t trust the hideout to be safe for long.
I’d been right, I’d spotted several of my clansmen in the distance, approaching from the direction of the Clan village.
Not a hundred percent certain, but certain enough, I thought that the queen herself had been among them.
Raxon had told them that I’d found my beautiful but strange mate and the queen didn’t like it.
Naga females didn’t tolerate competition well, they barely managed to live in a single village peacefully most days.
I’d turned my back on my kin with no regrets, Charlie was more important than they could ever be.
I was worried that she was sleeping so much, I shouldn’t have given in to her desire to mate when she wasn’t well.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was more badly hurt than she let on, and the Shaman was still hours away.
My mind flashed back to the pleasure I’d found when joining my body with hers.
It had been incredible, her reactions beyond my wildest dreams. The taste of her skin was divine.
I regretted not having tasted her between her legs yet, at the source, but her scent on my tongue had driven me crazy with need.
It was a good thing I’d bathed her or we wouldn’t be making any time at all to the Shaman, I’d have stopped already to possess her body all over again if I had continued to scent my seed and her desire.
That would have been horribly selfish, she needed medical care, and I shouldn’t let my body’s desire take precedence over that.
With renewed purpose, I hastened my pace, leaving the wetlands behind to start climbing the forested slopes of the mountains.
I couldn’t afford to be distracted, if I strayed too far from the safe path negotiated with the Bitter Storm Clan, they wouldn’t hesitate to put a spear in my back.
I knew from experience just how deeply their obsidian blades could cut.
I shuddered thinking of a blade like that marring Charlie’s fragile skin.
The path to the Shaman was under a treaty, any of the Clans in the vicinity had a safe path to his den.
He was our true healer, our medicine man, and the interpreter of the ancient technologies from our ancestors.
Without him, and others like him, we wouldn’t know how to use the strange machines we found.
Bitter Storm eschewed all technology, but they still used the Shaman to heal, the hypocrites that they were.
It was why he was safe living on the edge of their territory, at the crossroads between Copper Tooth Clan grounds, Bitter Storm, and even bordering on a section of the Thunder Rock Clan.
I hoped we ran into neither, though the blue-scaled Thunder Rock was on friendly terms with Copper Tooth.
I couldn’t be sure how any of them would respond to the sight of my fragile human mate.
At least I knew the Shaman would simply be curious.
Dawn was starting to streak across the sky, tinting the purple heavens with pinks and light blues by the time I saw the Shaman’s den in the distance.
His cave was nestled in the flank of a mountain, a glass dome blocking the entrance.
In it grew many plants year-round and the temperature inside the ‘greenhouse’ as the Shaman called it, was always warm and humid.
It was the only way into the Shaman’s home, and it kept his cave warm and protected.
Charlie roused when I shouldered my way through the doors and into the plant-filled space.
She blinked her eyes at me sleepily and it worried me how unfocused her look was.
She’d gotten worse. I should have gotten her here sooner, I shouldn’t have exerted her as I had.
Cold fear clenched at my heart, I couldn’t lose my mate so soon after I’d finally found her.
“Where are we?” she asked, her eyes brightening as she searched the verdant space.
There were two red spots riding high on her cheeks but the rest of her round face was pale, much paler than before.
It relieved me to see alertness return to her the longer she was awake, maybe it just took her a while to rouse.
“This is the home of the Shaman, Artek will make your head better,” I assured her while I shrugged my heavy backpack from my shoulder just inside the door to his caves.
It was warm inside these tunnels and rooms too, though not as humid as the greenhouse.
This first bit of tunnel was dark, with racks upon racks of drying herbs lining the walls on either side.
Their sharp spicy scents filled the air, clinging to my tongue in a cloying fashion that was extremely unpleasant.
My mate didn’t respond, her eyes dark and huge in her face as she took in the tunnel.
I traveled through it quickly, our path lit up by the glowing crystals placed at intervals in the ceiling.
These were all a soft yellow light, turning some of the tunnels splitting off from this one as bright as daylight, while others were still gloomy.
I wasn’t sure how the Shaman controlled the crystals, but I was sure they were different each time I visited this place.
To my left we passed tunnels that I had never entered, while to my right I passed one that I knew led to a strange indoor garden, then the one with the Shaman’s living quarters.
I paused there, but I didn’t sense his presence inside so I hurried on, intent on reaching the tunnel that lead to his healing rooms.
“Artek! Where are you? I need your help,” I called out as soon as I entered the first chamber.
This place held several seating places and some kind of counter behind which stood many vials and jars with colorful contents, lined up protectively behind doors you could see through.
I knew it wasn’t glass because Copper Tooth had a craftsman that could make that, we traded his wares with other clans.
The sound of scales sliding across the floor could be heard before Artek stuck his head out of the room beyond.
Unlike my own purple scales, Artek was pale, his scales a shimmering white that held an opalescence only visible in the daylight.
Long white hair draped around his shoulders and gold glinted on his throat and around his fingers.
While I wore nothing but the harness to hold my weapons, Artek had a colorful sash tied around his hips, hiding the spot where his cock could extrude.
I knew he thought it was more civilized to be dressed, but it was hardly practical when hunting in the wetlands.
Just look at my poor mate and her coverings, they had been soaked and muddied in moments, while my oiled scales stayed clean.
“What is it? Mox? What’s wrong?” Artek asked, his arms filled with a stack of tomes.
He dropped them on the counter the moment he spotted Charlie in my arms. His golden eyes grew huge, the slitted pupils contracting as he focused on her face and the so minor-looking cut on her temple.
“Oh…” he sighed out, his tongue flicking at the air, tasting her scent, her blood.
“Mox?” my female murmured, her body growing tense against mine, a clawless hand digging at the scales on my chest before clutching the strap from my spear so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
I dipped my head to nuzzle the side of her face, assuring her.
Artek would not harm her, his curiosity would win out, it already had won by the avid look on his face.
“She has a concussion,” I said to the Shaman.
He gave his long pale body a shake, scales rattling along his tail, then he gave me a sharp nod.
Gesturing with one hand at the doorway he’d come out of, which had colorful fabrics hanging from it as a type of closure, I followed him into the healing room.
I hated being in this place, it was always brightly lit and the walls were lined with round nests and strange foreign machines.
Artek knew how to use all of them, but to me, it was magic that I couldn’t understand.
All I knew, was that putting my female down on one of these nests made her look tiny, but it was the fastest way to get her better.
She clutched at my arms, shaking her head, “No, don’t let go! ”
“It’s alright, this will make you better, it’s only for a moment.
” It tore at me to see her scared, she hadn’t been that frightened of Raxon, but I could understand this, it was foreign and mythical.
She subsided against the softly padded nest, which was far too large for her tiny body, large enough to allow a fully grown hunter to curl up inside it.
She watched with distrustful eyes when Artek moved to the nearby control panel and started tapping away at it.
I couldn’t read the symbols on it, they flashed and moved, diagrams appearing, one vaguely shaped like my female.
Strangely enough, Charlie seemed comforted by what Artek was doing, settling into the nest, crossing her arms over her belly while she watched his hands move.
The arm that curled out of the wall, all shiny metal parts and flashing lights, startled me, but she didn’t seem surprised.
Lying placidly when it started moving over her head, stitching up the cut on her temple with white light, then zooming around her skull with a buzzing noise.
Her eyes started to drift closed and I felt another spike of worry that I quickly squashed, Artek knew what he was doing, he wasn’t harming her.
It felt like it took forever, though in reality it wasn’t that long, but when the arm withdrew into the wall, my body was shaking with tension.
Charlie was peacefully sleeping inside the nest, her expression serene.
Artek was watching me with an inquisitive expression on his face, his posture open and relaxed.
Gesturing a hand at him was all it took to get the Shaman to release a torrent of questions.
Ranging from if I knew what she was to where I’d found her.
He knew, the way he always seemed to know far too much, that she was my mate, and that we’d formed our spirit connection.
Yet he had endless questions about where she came from, if I knew what kind of ship she’d arrived in.
Mostly, I had no answers, so I shrugged and continued to watch my mate.