Chapter 7
Reid
Sazzie was still asleep by the time I woke early the next morning.
She lay curled against my chest, her head tucked beneath my chin, and her fist clung tightly to my dogtags.
I wasn’t sure why I was still wearing them—habit maybe, a way to remember my past. My angel seemed fascinated with them; that was a good enough reason to keep wearing them.
Erish wasn’t in this morning, though he usually was by now, which could only mean that he was giving us privacy.
I appreciated that. It was very tempting to wake my angel with a kiss and seduce her into some more steamy kisses and heavy petting.
She had responded so beautifully to me last night, and I could not wrap my head around it.
Sazzie was perfect—beautiful, kind, with far too many soft edges she left unshielded.
How could she exist in a world like this?
She appealed to every single part of me, and I hoped that my rough sides matched her softness somehow.
I wanted that very much. I had earned a little slice of heaven by now, hadn’t I?
The Naga believed in mate bonds, in true mates.
I’d seen it in action at Haven several times over, and it was easy to believe it was true after that kind of evidence.
Zathar and Vera had fallen first, heavily, but by now, all my fellow humans had paired up and found marital, mating bliss.
Was that what I was feeling for Sazzie? Could humans sense it too?
It looked that way to me, and I was more than willing to go there.
Sazzie needed me, and, frankly, I needed her.
She stirred slowly, her eyes blinking open as if she were fighting hard not to rise.
My angel appeared not to be a morning person; she squinted at the light crystals with a frown, her mouth turning down in a sultry pout.
Then, she realized where she was, and that pout transformed into a startled "O," her pretty sapphire eyes growing wide. “I… uh… I should go,” she whispered, her tongue slipping out to lick nervously at her soft bottom lip. After how she’d let me touch her last night, she had no reason to be this nervous, and I thought it was cute.
Nobody seemed to see it but me, but my angel was so shy.
“No, you do not,” I told her, but I loosened my grip around her waist so she wouldn’t feel trapped.
That, I didn’t want. “You want to stay right here, with me.” If possible, her eyes grew even larger in her face, and a dark flush colored her azure scales in streaks along her cheekbones.
Interesting. I’d seen that on some of the males back at Haven, mostly when they were feeling a battle high.
I didn’t realize it functioned much like a blush, too.
Reaching up with a thumb, I brushed the divot beneath her left eye, the one made by a claw in the past. “Tell me who did this to you,” I demanded, my body thrumming with energy as I contemplated how I’d make them pay.
I could feel an itch along the markings on my chest and shoulders—not my tattoos, but the ones I’d woken up with since my nanobot clash.
There was itching along my belly as well, but it all morphed into heat that warmed my muscles.
I was starting to get the hang of this. It felt like controlling the nanobots myself was almost within my grasp.
If I just focused a little more, I could do it.
“This?” she murmured, a soft smile starting to curl around her mouth.
“Don’t worry about it, Reid. It’s in the past, all of it.
” I didn’t think she meant to draw my attention to the other scars that marred her body, but she did.
They were numerous, mostly on the fronts of her arms, shoulders, and belly.
Her chest had been spared, as had the rest of her, and I surmised it was because Naga females only fought in face-to-face combat, duels.
She had not been wounded on hunts, where anything could happen.
From what I’d seen yesterday, Naga females wore a lot of metal jewelry around their necks.
If Sazzie had done the same, it would have protected her chest. Which begged the question: where was her jewelry now?
I stroked my thumb down her cheek, along the curve of her jaw, and the delicate point of her dainty chin horn.
When I touched her throat, she shivered, and I could hear how it made the scales along her spine whisper as they brushed together.
I grinned as I traced her collarbone. “Fine. Now, tell me why they were challenging you. Tell me everything, Sazzie.”
Her eyes narrowed on my face, her fist tightened around my dogtags before she released them, and I could see how her pulse picked up in her neck.
“I don’t want to tell you,” she said after a long silence.
I quirked an eyebrow at her, inviting her to keep talking, and that worked.
She was smiling, but it was a soft, tremulous thing—nervous.
“I’m afraid you won’t look at me the same afterward… ”
“Impossible,” I burst out, and that made the smile grow wider, startled, but also hopeful.
“I see you, Sazzie. The real you, the one you don’t dare to show to anyone else.
I see you, and you don’t have to be afraid.
I’ll keep you safe. Don’t you know that?
” If I was feeling a mate bond, then so was she, I was certain.
Even if I wasn’t sure of that, I was sure of her need for a protector, her need to feel safe.
“I was made to be a warrior, a shield,” I told her.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do: keep people safe, protect.
” I raised my arm and flexed my fist, the ink that marked my skin growing tight.
“Let me be your shield, Sazzie. I need to be yours.” Her shield, hers in every way.
I had often been called impulsive; I was not a patient man, going with my gut rather than my mind most days.
If my fellow humans had trusted their Naga counterparts to take the plunge so wholeheartedly, then how could I not put the same trust in my angel?
She raised herself on her elbow, daintily leaning on my chest. It brought our faces closer together, and I was tempted to kiss her again.
“We both nearly died yesterday. How can I ask you to put yourself in harm’s way for me?
” She shook her head, her expression turning grim as she recalled yesterday’s events.
I felt anger roll over me as I recalled them too, the way that one female had struck her in the back, clawed her pretty blue scales.
That cowardly bitch… I did not finish that thought, wresting control of the rising need for violence that coiled through my body.
The nanobots inside me responded to that call to action.
I could feel them shifting beneath my flesh, as if they wanted to bubble to the surface and coat my skin like armor.
Once, I had worn silver nano-armor in my duties as a Shadow Unit soldier—armor that self-repaired, could morph at will, and withstand any heat or cold.
But the nanobots inside me had never been designed to do the same; they were there to repair damage and enhance my strength and senses, not to protect.
Shrugging off the strange sensations of my weirdly evolved nanobots, I focus on my woman.
“You’re not asking; I’m offering,” I said, and then I shook my head.
“No, I’m demanding. It’s my choice, angel.
I’ll protect you whether you say yes or no.
” Somehow, those words made her laugh rather than ruffle her feathers.
She sounded relieved by my persistence, and when she sobered, I could tell she wasn’t quite so worried about sharing what was going on.
“When your friends brought you here,” she said, “I was visiting the Shaman camp with my mother.” A mother, huh.
I had not gotten the impression that there was much love lost between Naga females and their offspring.
Zathar had certainly described his mother as a cold-hearted bitch.
Zathar… It clicked in my brain, very belatedly.
I was certain, it had practically been spelled out to me yesterday.
Zathar was Sazzie’s brother. That’s why the blue of her eyes was so familiar to me.
Oh, fuck. Did that mean the Thunder Rock Queen was here?
Haven had an uneasy truce with her, but that meant nothing if it didn’t suit that woman.
“Corin and the Queen, they have history, and…” she faltered mid-sentence, swallowing roughly.
Her eyes flicked nervously from my face to the med bay’s exit, as if she expected someone to be listening in and judge her for what she was about to say next.
“My mother did not want Corin to be happy. She tried to kill his mate, so I…” Another rough swallow as she hesitated, and I found myself reaching up with a hand to pet her along her spine.
Sazzie wore very little, and cold did not seem to bother her the way it would a human.
It was very tempting, being able to curve my palm along so much of her bare body.
“I killed her,” she admitted at last. “I killed the Queen. I killed my mother.” Her eyes locked onto mine, and whatever it was she was looking for, I knew she wouldn’t find it.
She was a little calmer when she continued talking, but her hand flicked through the air between us for emphasis.
She talked about how they decided who got to be the next Thunder Queen, that it was her by default unless she was defeated, because she was the crown princess.
The heir apparent. So that’s what all that shit in the woods yesterday had been about. Now it made sense.