Chapter 2
Jasmine
“Damn it! Work, would you?” I snarled in frustration at the pair of twigs I was holding.
Getting separated from the rest of the rescue party had not been part of the plan.
Finding myself stuck in a gully ripped into the land by a recent earthquake was definitely not the plan either.
I’d been trying to work my way out of the narrow rip in the earth for the past couple of hours.
Separated from my bow and any supplies, I had to rely on anything I could find.
Eyeing the violet sky above me, what little I could see of it, I worried about the approaching night and the sting of winter it would bring.
I worried even more about a potential aftershock.
If the earth was rocked with another tremble, even one caused by damage from the first, this gully could collapse right on top of me.
I had to get out, but with darkness rapidly approaching, I needed light too.
I was extremely lucky I hadn’t gotten more seriously injured during the quake.
Black and blue, yes. Stiff as hell, also yes.
Nothing was broken or bleeding, and that was a massive win I counted in my favor.
I hoped the others at the crashed ship had been as lucky, but I feared the worst. Joxra had stood right next to me when the quake started, and the ground had opened up beneath my feet.
I knew he’d thrown himself on top of me to protect me, and then we’d been ripped apart in the chaos.
When I woke a few hours ago, there’d been no sign of him anywhere.
I’d looked as long as I could, and shouted for help, hoping those who’d been safe atop the dragon could hear or see me.
Nothing, though, no response, not so much as a sound beyond the earth settling around me and the rush of muddy water at my feet.
I knew I was incredibly lucky to be alive and not buried under all that dirt rising on either side of me.
I had also deduced that an underground well must have created some kind of muddy rush of water that had swept me through this newly opened gully.
With no hint of the crashed ship visible in the sliver of sky I could see, I had to assume I’d been swept along quite some distance. No wonder they couldn’t find me.
Going back was not an option either; the water was still coming, and it was ice cold.
I’d die of exposure, or get swept along by the current when it got stronger.
The water also meant the gully walls would become less stable.
No, the safest way out of this was to find a good spot to climb out, or to follow it—traveling away from the crashed ship—and hope it rose back to the plains at some point.
The sticks were too wet to make a fire with.
I had to conclude that all too soon, which left me no choice but to keep going, for now.
Slowly, then, because I sure as hell could not risk twisting my ankle.
Moving would also keep my blood pumping and hasten the drying of my soggy, mud-covered clothes.
The sticks were a commodity, though—even soggy—so I tucked them carefully into my belt as I walked, my eyes on the ground, scanning for anything else I could use and carefully watching the treacherous terrain.
“I need fire, shelter, then drinking water,” I muttered to myself.
I listed all the things I knew about surviving outdoors with very little, and that was a long list. None of it was quite suited for an alien world like Serant, and none of it had prepared me for surviving an earthquake.
I would, though, because I never took anything lying down.
“A weapon would be good too,” I said to myself.
That was one of the first things I’d done when I’d woken in the hold of the crashed ship.
I’d been surrounded by men and women condemned by the UAR for various reasons.
I knew better than anyone how swiftly and harshly the United Alliance of Races judged people.
No crime, big or small, escaped the only punishment they had: execution.
I’d always believed it was a way for the UAR to control the population; now I knew better.
They needed bodies to sell into slavery in other galaxies, like this one.
Except this ship had crashed on Serant, which was not uncommon, I’d heard.
Ships crashed here all the time. There were never any survivors, though, until lately.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered under my breath.
Of all the shitty planets to crash on, I’d ended up on this one.
At least I was alive, and I’d done my part, too.
I’d helped Jolene gather as many of the vulnerable as possible and taught them how to protect themselves and each other.
I’d never expected to see such a prime example of strength in numbers, but giving a dozen girls slings and rocks was enough to create a rain of stones that had scared off even the most hardened criminals.
Living in a world controlled by the UAR, every day had felt like survival, and I’d done so many things I wasn’t proud of just to make it through.
Day by day, sometimes at the cost of others.
Competition had been shockingly fierce in my field, and as a girl in a male-dominated world, I’d sometimes been forced to resort to very unsavory tactics, for me, to keep my job.
That’s perhaps why I’d wanted so badly to come back to the crashed ship and help more of the humans there. If I could just do another good deed, help another person or naga, prove that I was a valuable asset even though I had boobs, perhaps I’d never have to do that kind of thing again.
Darkness was falling rapidly now, and even though I was keeping in constant motion to stay warm, I began shivering.
It wasn’t fully dark, though, which allowed me to keep up the pace as much as I could.
A strange light pierced the sky on one side of the gully, something I’d never seen before.
I wondered what it was, but only briefly.
I had more pressing issues: the cold was beginning to set in, and I still hadn’t found a way out, or a way to make a fire so I could get warm.
As I walked, I’d gathered as many sticks and pieces of wood as I could find, but they were damp and had washed through this crevice the same way I had.
They weren’t going to be any good for starting a fire, not without better supplies.
Even my teeth were beginning to clack together now.
I had to risk it, had to brave the darkness and pick up the pace for warmth.
So far, the gully walls had been wet, slippery, and very unstable.
I was pretty sure I had much farther to go before a suitable climbing spot came up.
I really didn’t want to die of exposure the first time I was out of sight of the naga hunters.
That would suck, and it would just prove their point.
No, I was going to come out on top, show I didn’t need anyone to survive out here, least of all a mate.
Teeth chattering, I thought of the one topic that got me fired up right now: that whole mating situation.
I knew Zathar had all these rules in place to protect the unmated women from unwanted attention, but still…
The expectations were there. Every single hunter was trying to convince the women to touch them to see if they were meant to be, every day.
With more males showing up from time to time, especially now that more humans had been found.
It had not escaped my notice, either, that all the women from that first group who arrived here had been paired off.
How could I trust that the whole glowing sigil thing was actually random chance, not something the guys controlled if they saw what they liked?
How free to choose had any of those women been?
Thinking about it was getting my blood pumping, but then I thought of the happy faces.
I had to admit, even to myself, that they certainly looked in love, cared for.
Heck, those mated guys doted on their mates even more than the unmated guys did on the single ladies.
“Still don’t want one,” I said out loud.
The water at the bottom of the gully had trickled down to a tiny little stream, and I had to cross it when the bank on the other side seemed easier to walk.
When was this crack going to end? I’d been walking for at least two hours now.
Had this crack shot off toward the wet, soggy plains where the crashed ship had ended up, or up to higher ground?
The hills, the mountains, and the forest?
That had been the place the naga from Haven had used as their staging ground to rescue me and the others before.
It was the kind of terrain I was certain would offer me the best chance at survival.
Knowing my luck of late, though, that wasn’t happening.
“Female, do you need help?” a voice called out in the darkness.
I stiffened, my head jerking up to pinpoint the source of whoever had spoken.
Naga, I knew that right away, though I could understand him thanks to the update my translator implants had received.
A male voice, deep and growly, but that was pretty much how all of them sounded.
There, high above me at the edge of the gully, safely on high ground, I saw his eyes glow green in the dark like a cat’s, but nothing else.
Green… I racked my brain to try and remember what that meant.
Wasn’t that Water Weaver? Those guys were all green, weren’t they?
There weren’t many of those at Haven. One, in fact—Zeidon—but he was mated to Farah.
That meant this guy was a complete stranger, a stranger who might not know what a human was, or feel the same drive to protect me the others all felt.