Chapter 11 #2
The other was still holding Zathar down but he’d frozen in place as well, his eyes on the passed out form of the female Naga.
Reaching the nearest part of a tail that was definitely not Zathar, I slammed my branch down on it as hard as I could.
It cracked and broke, the blow reverberating up my arm painfully.
The male staring at me hissed, so it had to be him I hit, but he didn’t move to attack which was a pleasant surprise. I was pretty scared of facing another Naga, and we couldn’t be sure that any of the downed ones would stay down either.
Zathar shrugged himself out of their grip with a quick motion, and they let him go, I was sure of it.
The one still avidly staring at me, the one I hit, was even holding up his palms in surrender.
Was this it? Was it over? I darted a glance over my shoulder at the downed female and wondered if they lost the will to fight now that she wasn’t watching.
I stepped over the nearest coil to his side, relieved when he pulled me into his chest and held me tight. His chest was moving rapidly with his elevated breathing, but he sounded calm when he spoke. “Are you letting us go, Assoz, Reshar?”
The one who’d fixated on me finally lifted his eyes away from my body to meet Zathar’s fierce glare.
“She’s really your mate, isn’t she? I thought you had the worst of luck, brother.
But…” His voice tapered off when he glanced at the broken branch I’d, probably unsuccessfully, tried to wield against him. “Yeah, we’ll let you go. Right Assoz?”
The other Naga jerked his head up at the sound of his name, his tail whipping against the floor in frustration but he nodded.
“He is more powerful, did you feel that?” he said, not to Zathar, but his buddy.
Already dismissed from his mind, he turned away to bend down next to his conscious but injured friend a little ways over.
“You were, must be the mating bond. I can’t believe the rumors are true.
I didn’t think they were,” Reshar said thoughtfully, staring at me again.
His eyes dipped down to linger on my chest and Zathar hissed, his arm curling over me, shielding me from the male’s eyes.
He laughed, held up his hands, and backed away, “Good luck brother, you’ll need it as an Outcast. Serant is a dangerous place. ”
They picked up their fallen, waking one of them, though not the female, and disappeared into the woods without another word.
Zathar stared after them, holding me close to his body the entire time, slowly letting his breathing ease to a more normal rate.
I could feel his heart pound beneath his scales, but his heart rate lowered as well when his former Clan members disappeared from sight.
As silence descended again on the woods around us, the sounds of night critters resuming, his tense shoulders finally lowered.
“You crazy, reckless female! You could have gotten hurt, damn it! I told you to go with Corin to safety! You weren’t supposed to stay!
A human is no match for a Naga! They could have killed you. ”
The angry rant ripped from him like he’d been bottling it up for some time.
A smile started to crease my face that I just couldn’t seem to stop.
It was a silly, inappropriate moment to be smiling.
He was so serious and so upset that I’d risked myself, and all I was feeling was elation and happiness.
Zathar was so freaking worried about me and while I didn’t want him to worry, it was making me so damn happy that he was.
“Vera! Stop that, I mean it. You shouldn’t have stayed, Astrexa would have killed you if she got her claws on you!
You made Msera chase you! Don’t you know how dangerous that is?
” He said, hauling me up in his arms so that my face was almost in line with his.
Yes, good, now I could lean in and kiss him.
“I owed you, Zathar. You gave up everything for me, nobody has ever done something so selfless for me before… So I owed it to you to try and help.” I couldn’t recall a single instance back on Earth where anyone, least of all my family, had ever set aside their own needs to help me.
Especially not when it involved giving up status like Zathar had.
It was starting to sink in that this mating urge he felt for me was more than just biological, it was driving a kind of loyalty toward me that I couldn’t have imagined actually existed outside of stories.
He made a huffing noise, his breath ghosting over my face, warm in the balmy early morning temperatures. “You are my mate, that’s what mates do. So you better get used to it. I would give up my life at Thunder Rock a thousand times over to make you happy.”
“Exactly,” I smirked at him. My chest felt tight and was filled with warmth from what he’d said. Zathar was a good guy, I was unbelievably lucky that the UAR had shipped me off and then crashed me on his planet.
He laughed at my response, shaking his head a little, “Fine, I concede the point. Soft one. Next time though, you’ll need a better weapon, or I might expire from worry.
” Pleased, I did what I’d imagined a moment ago.
I leaned in to press my mouth to his firm one, moaning when he immediately flicked out his split tongue.
Zathar’s skills were definitely improving.
When I opened up for him, his tongue made love to my mouth with gentle flicks, and my body was instantly on fire for him.
Proving that he remembered what had made me writhe last time, he curled the agile appendage around my tongue and gave a gentle tug. This time, we had no audience and I allowed the pleasure-filled noises to escape me without hesitation.
“Mate,” Zathar panted, “We have no time for this.” To lend power to his words, the sound of an angry screech split the night air from some distance away. The female Naga, she’d woken up, and she wasn’t happy. It doused my pleasurable haze enough for me to come to my senses and pull away.
“You’re right, later. We need to get out of here first,” I agreed with him. The heated glint in his eyes was a promise, later wasn’t going to be long from now. We both needed this.