Chapter 1 #2
“Good, that’s good,” she murmured, and she sounded so much closer, right at my side.
With a Herculean effort, my eyes opened, and I locked my gaze on the purest of blue.
Eyes like sapphires, a narrow pupil, and the softest, gentlest smile.
She was mesmerizing in her beauty; she was exactly what I expected my angel to look like.
She took my breath away. “Hello, are you awake, male?” she said, her mouth tilting deeper into that welcoming smile until dimples popped in her cheeks.
Yeah, I was, but answering the call of that siren was beyond me. Exhaustion claimed me after that battle of wills, all simply to open my eyes and gaze upon her. I slipped away again, cursing furiously in my mind as I went.
***
Sazzie
Sitting next to the medical nest, I rested my hands in my lap, but it was hard not to fidget as I waited.
Erish thought he might wake at any moment now, and I wanted to be there when he opened his eyes.
I couldn’t explain it, but meeting this human male was different; it was pulling on parts inside of me I had buried long ago.
It brought me back to a fight I’d lost, fights I’d won, and scars I’d earned.
My hand fluttered to my face, my finger running over the line that bisected my left eye and dug cruelly into my cheekbone.
That one was courtesy of Astrexa, like many of the scars I wore.
She had always remained my rival and, for a long time, was favored by my mother—until Zathar’s brave mate had put her in her place.
I grinned, my finger stroking the scar as I recalled the tiny human female digging her blunt teeth into Astrexa’s scales.
Oh, that had been so glorious, and it had finally put an end to the endless fights between her and me.
I shivered, more of my scars tingling along my flesh.
Most of those scars covered my front, as Naga females only fought openly, face-to-face.
I thought of my rival females as backstabbers—conniving and manipulative—but there was no literal backstabbing.
No, that was very frowned upon. We fought to prove our strength and declare our status in the Clan, not to end each other, though that was sometimes the result.
After what had happened with the Queen and Corin last week…
I had vowed never to go back to that kind of life—Astrexa and any of the other contenders for the throne be damned.
They could fight it out among themselves, but I was done.
Shaman Elder Chen had granted me permission to live in the Sacred Shaman Training Grounds for as long as I wanted to remain.
I hoped that was enough to deter any of Thunder Rock’s females from coming after me and declaring their challenges.
The Training Grounds were hidden, and they were sacred.
My eyes shifted from my lap to the male stretched out inside the Naga medical nest. The bed wasn’t sized right for him, as it was made for a being with a long tail and coils to curl up in the round bowl.
This male had legs, two of them, and large feet with five toes on each foot.
They were so foreign, so weird and alien, yet I couldn’t keep myself from staring.
He was fascinating in his differences, beautiful even.
Reid. That’s what Corin and his small human mate had called this male—Reid.
The name was as foreign as the black sigils on his skin.
Sigils that were always visible and formed images rather than savage, violent slashes and lines.
His left arm was covered in the snarling faces of beasts I did not know, though I recognized them as predators instinctively: the fangs inside a beastly mouth, the shape of something akin to a Rakworm curled around a thick wrist, and the wild mane and sharp eyes artfully drawn in black, belonging to a very regal-looking beast.
His chest was bare, and little circles had been stuck to it by Elder Erish—relics from Serant’s past that could monitor all kinds of things about his life: the steady thud of his heart, the rhythm of his breathing as his chest rose and fell.
On a viewscreen, lines and images I barely understood indicated the progress of the battle waging inside his magnificent body.
He looked peaceful, but war raged within him.
I did not understand any of that either; just that two foreign entities fought to control him, and only one could be the victor. I had never heard of such a thing, but Elder Erish was very sure of his diagnosis, so he had to be right. Reid seemed to be improving day by day; that alone was proof.
The deep brown of his eyes was engraved on my heart, so warm, so…
I had no words for that kind of color or the look I’d seen in his eyes.
I knew nobody had ever looked at me the way he had in that one moment, four days ago, when he’d nearly died.
I craved seeing it again, certain I’d imagined it.
That alone was the reason I was sitting here, vigilantly keeping watch, when I could be doing so many other things.
I had made a promise to Corin, one of my brother’s closest friends, but even without that promise, I’d be here.
No male had ever caught my attention, nor had any male made me crave to be close or to gaze into his eyes.
In that, I had been just like my sister Naga: as cold and indifferent to the males who wooed us.
Not even a desire for offspring had influenced my choices, as it had with so many others.
But this Reid—this human—made me want to talk to him.
He made me curious about the things that had drawn my brother and his friends to the human mates they’d found.
I knew I was different, and Avrish, the lone female Shaman at the camp, had tried to approach me several times to speak. I couldn’t bear to face it—not yet. But I could face this: Reid. More than anything, I wanted to know if the pull I felt between us was real or imagined. Did he feel it too?
When he started to stir, it was slowly at first, but my attention was so tuned to his large, muscled body that I noticed it right away—the change in his breathing, the slight movements of his head, and the way his fists clenched against the furs.
His brown eyes flicked open quickly, leaping from sleep to full awareness.
Everything about his gaze was sharp, alert, and it locked onto mine with unerring accuracy.
The desire to reach out and touch him was overwhelming.
I tried to curb the impulse, but I never stood a chance.
The tip of my tail curled over the edge of the nest and settled against his leg—a tiny brush of scales against warm, heated flesh.
So innocent, so tiny a touch that he might not even have noticed.
“Hello, angel,” he drawled, his voice low, husky, and carrying a vulnerable rawness.
“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” I could understand what he said word for word.
His tone held nothing but admiration, despite my visage resembling nothing of the pretty, scarless girl I’d used to be, let alone the smooth perfection of the human females I’d seen.
Heat flashed through my chest, curled in my belly, and settled like a blanket around my shoulders.
“Ah, I forget,” he murmured, his husky, damaged voice creaking as he lowered his tone. “You can’t understand me. You don’t have a translator, do you?” But I could. I understood him perfectly, and there was only one reason for that—an impossible reason.