Chapter 7 #2
“Did you just hush me?” Kalani hissed, still pitching her voice low.
Even without her sight in this deep darkness, her aim was good when she tapped her fist against my shoulder.
“No way. We must have fallen at least a couple hundred feet, they can’t hear us.
Do you know where we are? Or are we now officially screwed? ”
Her last statement was a little strange to me, but I got her meaning just fine. There was no shushing my Goddess, and she knew our odds of finding our way in these tunnels had just diminished as well as I did. So I didn’t try to ease her into it. “We are screwed.”
She chuckled, shifting her head as if she was trying to look around despite the total darkness that blinded her.
The laughing noise tapered off abruptly into a choked sob and she hurriedly lifted a hand to press her fist to her mouth to muffle the sound.
“Did you hear what they said? Do you think it’s true? Is she dead?”
My heart clenched in my chest when I realized what she was talking about.
Our failure to retrieve Naomi, the news of her death; hit my Goddess hard.
She was probably blaming herself for it.
I knew I would. If only I’d held on more tightly, if only I’d managed to dodge that spear.
If I’d thrown Naomi through the crevice after Zathar, would she have lived?
We would never know, and there was no point in thinking of what-ifs, it only served to hurt us.
“Yes, they had no reason to lie. She was killed. I’m sorry Kalani, I know you wanted to save her, the female deserved better.
” The words tasted like ashes in my mouth but I refused to get her hopes up when we’d just heard a firsthand account of her death.
There was no point in prolonging a dangerous mission when we already knew the outcome, horrible as it was.
“What now?” she asked quietly, “Can we climb back up? Or do we go down? Can you see the bottom?” There was only the barest hint of a wobble to her voice and when she tilted her head to look at me, I could just make out the firm jut of her clenched jaw.
She was pushing her feelings aside for later, and I needed to follow her lead.
This position was untenable even if my coils had us properly wedged right now; preventing any kind of slipping.
I peered down her back, my gaze brushing over the soft curve of her behind and my belly tightened with arousal.
So exotic, so different from a Naga female, and yet so very enticing.
The feelings were extremely out of place given the situation but she stirred them in me anyway.
I needed to focus and figure out how to get Kalani to safety now that our mission was over.
Beyond her and my coils that kept us pinned in place inside the steeply angled rock shaft, I saw nothing but darkness.
My sight only able to pick out details on the nearest things, such as my mate and the texture of the nearby rock.
The rock here had no quartz embedded, especially none of the stuff that lined the tunnels we’d just left, giving me no ambient light to work with.
“We must go down,” I said to her, “The climb is too steep in here. The first part of the shaft was extremely smooth. I only stopped our descent because the rock layer here is much rougher.” And it was pinching my scales, we had to start moving down in a more controlled fashion and hope there was a way out from there.
If this was just a long shaft down, we’d have to attempt a climb and those sentinels would be waiting for us at the top.
“Okay, how?” she said dubiously and I showed her, holding her tight around her slender middle just to be sure.
Rippling my coils I allowed us to slide down just a little before pressing them out again to stop our slide.
If I wanted to see where we were going though, I needed more light, and having Kalani on the lookout would be an added bonus.
With my free hand, I located a side pocket on the backpack Artek had supplied, yanking free the little light source he’d tucked in there for us.
I flicked it on with my thumb and aimed the beam of light down the angled shaft to get a look.
“Woah, you have a flashlight now?” Kalani exclaimed, her eyes wide.
If that was her word for lantern then yes.
The light sources were a common piece of still working technology to find on Serant.
Every home had several back in Thunder Rock, so it wasn’t surprising that Artek had been willing to part with one.
I shrugged in answer, my gaze on the turn I spotted below us in the shaft.
We rounded that with some careful sliding, working with my tail to keep us from falling down even when the shaft started to get a little wider.
I had a glimpse of what appeared to be a square hole around the bend as the shaft angled back to go down vertically.
Kalani gasped as she saw it too, and then my coils lost their grip on the walls when the rock suddenly became slick again.
We plummeted and this time I knew I wouldn’t be able to slow our fall so I did the only thing I could.
I coiled my mate up in my tail, protecting every part of her that I could reach.
My hands pinned her head to my chest, which muffled her scream.
Then I landed, back first, the air rushing out of me and my vision spinning.
“Iave!” Kalani called out but it sounded from far away, like she was talking to me through a fog.
I shook my head, trying to clear it and my eyes lingered on the worried, almost frantic look in her dark brown eyes.
“Let go, damn it!” she demanded and I realized I was still holding her tightly in my coiled tail and pinning her to my chest with my arms.
“You’re not hurt, are you?” I huffed at her as I forced my aching body to let her go.
The backpack with furs and supplies had broken some of my fall, crushed beneath my back, but a good portion of my tail was going to be one giant bruise for the next few hours.
All minor, I was lucky the drop hadn’t been more than fifty feet.
What mattered now, was whether my mate had gotten through that unscathed.
She sat up on my hips as soon as I freed her but she didn’t move away and despite my aches and pains, my body instantly heated.
That was a highly sexual position we were in, if she slid down just a little, her pelvis would align with mine.
My cock was already aching in my pouch, flushing with blood and pressing against my slit to extrude.
All it had taken was a single look at my mate sitting astride my body.
Her eyes were roving over my chest, lingering on my head and shoulders.
I let her look her fill as I did the same.
She was still wearing the same tight fabric over her chest, with a looser jacket that covered her arms. I couldn’t see tears or scratches and when I flicked out my tongue to scent the air, I tasted only a hint of my own blood from where my more vulnerable shoulder had picked up a scrape.
Assured that she was alright, I took a moment to drink in the sight of her.
Of her luscious dark brown skin bathed by the soft light of the light source still clutched in my left hand.
The tight, springy curls on top of her head and the pretty geometric patterns shaved along the sides.
I loved how her cheeks had this soft, luscious curve, and her jaw this stubborn angle.
Then my gaze dropped from her face to her teats, heavy and round as though she was ready to feed a young.
A big physical difference between humans and Naga, and I loved it.
They looked so soft and inviting that I ached to touch them.
I hadn’t seized the chance hours ago in Artek’s healing room and now I deeply regretted that.
“Yo, my eyes are up here, buddy!” Kalani said, but I heard the hint of laughter in her voice so I knew she wasn’t actually upset with me. I made sure to keep my eyes on her shapely breasts just a little longer before I lifted them back to her eyes.
“I know this,” I said, I liked looking at her eyes very much as well, after all.
She laughed again but crossed her arms over her chest to hide her breasts.
Expression turning serious, she turned her head left and right as she took in our surroundings.
While I was in no hurry to dislodge her seat upon my hips, I followed her lead.
“Is it me, or does this tunnel look man-made?” Kalani asked after a moment.
Above us the precise, square hole gaped; the winding shaft we’d slid down, curving away into the dark.
The walls of the tunnel we’d landed in were mirror-smooth and straight as an arrow.
They glimmered obsidian black, as did the floor I was sprawled on.
We hadn’t landed in a chamber or a dead end, the tunnel spread out in two directions and I could only wholeheartedly agree with my mate.
This was not a natural tunnel, this was a tunnel carved into the rock by my ancestors long ago.
We’d somehow fallen through an air shaft of some kind and straight into this untouched piece of history.
I knew it was untouched with certainty because if the Bitter Storm Clan knew this was located inside their mountain they would have done whatever they could to destroy it.
“Yes,” I agreed, slowly rising to a sitting position and grabbing my mate’s hips as I did so to make sure she didn’t decide to climb out of my lap.
My fingers curved around her hip bones and partially over her curved rear and I enjoyed the soft give of her flesh beneath my claws.
“An ancestral cave, hidden beneath Bitter Storm’s very nose. ”
The hallway looked identical to me in either direction, going on long enough that the lantern light faded and my dark vision ran out.
I could not tell where they were headed or whether they even curved or went up or down.
“Let’s go that way,” I said, picking one direction at random.
I had a good sense of direction, even underground, but the fall had disoriented me.
I had no clue where either of these tunnels could possibly lead us.
My Goddess looked left, then right in the direction I’d pointed, and promptly turned up her cute little nose. “Hell no, we should go that way.”