Chapter 5
Ekkire
She was angry. I was beginning to recognize that emotion on her smudged face.
She wore it often. Angry to get clean? Angry about being warm?
This female made absolutely no sense at all; it was extremely frustrating.
For the first time, I wondered if I shouldn’t have gotten those strange devices that allowed a male to understand humans when unmated.
It had seemed pointless, and the supply was limited.
There were other males more eager for the chance.
Why did she not want to get clean? Surely she understood that getting into the warm furs I offered was her best chance to get through the cold night?
I’d begun to remember how fragile humans were, and they were definitely not as capable of resisting the cold as a naga was.
I’d actually shed my tunic since the thaw had set in, because I was too warm otherwise.
A night without furs was not an issue either; I wasn’t planning to sleep.
She, however, looked like she needed every bit of rest and heat she could get.
There was so much fury in her movements, her glare, when she began taking her strange foot coverings off.
I actually withdrew, trying to give her space.
Then I considered that her clothing needed to be cleaned urgently.
My tunic, the one I didn’t need, she could wear that for now.
I pulled it out of my backpack and set it atop the furs so she could easily grab it.
Then I looked up, and that was a mistake.
A huge mistake. She was nearly bare, her lower coverings almost all gone, as well as the large upper furs she’d worn that had concealed much of her shape.
By the sacred streams and all else that a Water Weaver male held dear…
she was beautiful. It was my first time seeing a human bare, but not my first time being able to fully appreciate their form.
I’d come to Haven last year, before the winter, and seen many of the humans dressed in formfitting tunics and leg coverings.
Their shapes obvious, varied, and all enticing in their own way.
None of them compared to what this female looked like without her coverings. None.
I jerked back, nearly crushing the sleara with a carelessly placed coil of my tail.
I hadn’t meant to look and intrude on her privacy, either; it was an accident, an instinctive sort of glance when I knew better.
Damn it, I’d decided there was no mate for me at all, human or naga.
I did not need to have this temptation engraved on my brain, there to stay forever.
Her skin was soft and pale, but in many places sported shocking splotches of color.
Dark blue, purple, red, I’d never seen a human look that varied.
Her hips were small but curvy, her legs sleek lines, and her feet shockingly tiny for appendages that were supposed to keep her upright when walking.
Look away, damn it, look away! This was wrong, and I was beginning to understand her fury, yet my eyes were glued to her shape.
The jacket was gone, revealing a trim belly outlined by the wet fabric of her shirt.
White, see-through, it outlined the sweet curve of her breasts.
I was despicable for staring, and with a horrified, furious snarl, I spun away and retreated.
Something was happening inside of me that had never happened before: my cock stirred in its pouch.
It grew painfully hard and pressed against my slit, eager to extrude.
This was a response I was familiar with, but never this fierce, and never in response to a female.
Aching, I raced blindly into the tumbled forest, throwing my body over fallen trees and around listing trunks without care for my safety.
I raced through the forest as if chased by beasts, but it was only the wildly churning thoughts in my own mind that urged me to put distance between her and me.
What I’d done was wrong, and this all-powerful attraction had to end.
I had decided I could not take a mate; she, or the offspring that followed such a liaison, would forever alter my life—pin me down. I wanted it anyway.
At the edge of the gully from which I’d pulled her, I came to a stop, nearly sliding over the slick edge into the darkness below.
My chest heaved like bellows, cold air burning into my lungs, and hot air expelling in great clouds of steam in front of my face.
I had not raced so heedlessly through a forest since I was a youngling, driving my father mad with my passion to explore.
Then, it had been excitement, the thrill of a hunt, or a new discovery waiting around the river bend.
Tonight, I had rushed away with such speed, driven by fear and shame and powerful desire.
I did not even know her name. I could have asked for it, since she would have understood the question.
She could have told me, and I could have told her mine, but I didn’t.
I thought keeping her nameless would make it easier to keep seeing her as a task—a burden, a delay—until I could race headlong into the mountains to save any potential Sun Fang injured at the outpost.
The gully had begun churning with more water, and it chilled me when I saw it.
Cooling my passion, I considered what might have happened had I not found her earlier.
The rising water would have swept her away, and she would never have made it up any of the gully walls without assistance.
She had been quick with the rope, clever in the way she’d used her feet and hands to climb.
She would not have been fast enough had she remained down there to get out of the path of this rushing floodwater.
I lifted my head, then turned my gaze toward the unnatural light to the north.
Below that, deep in the darkness on the grassy plains, the sky wreck and the Haven naga remained.
With the dragon there, I knew they would be capable of holding back any force from Thunder Rock or Sun Fang.
That was where my human would be safe once she’d recovered enough to make the trek back. Now though…
My mind flashed with images of her pale, in places strangely mottled, skin.
So soft, so cold, so vulnerable. She was alone by that fire; the sleara hardly counted as protection.
Though a Slithrazer on its own was unlikely to approach, the quake had changed the landscape. I could not be certain she was safe.
My body had already decided for me, moving before I’d come to the only conclusion I could make: I had to go back.
As despicable as my reaction to her vulnerable, bare state had been, she was safer in my presence.
It was my duty to see to her safety until she could be returned to Haven’s hunters.
Once back, I needed to have a word with them anyway.
Whoever had thought to bring her to such a dangerous place deserved to have some sense knocked into their thick skulls.
Was it Zsekhet? Joxra? I doubted it was Zathar; he was a good, wise leader.
The forest was beginning to grow darker, though it did not seem like the light in the north was dimming.
A cloud layer had covered the stars and the distant moon.
There was still plenty of light to see by, to retrace the tracks I’d made in my earlier haste.
I erased them as I went with careful yet furious precision.
My mind conjured up all the reasons this camp should remain obscure.
The firelight was a beacon that would be visible even from afar, especially with so many trees uprooted.
There were so many threats for a human: slithrazer, Sun Fang, Thunder Rock, even the smaller predators might try to take a bite out of her in these circumstances.
My heart was pounding, not from exertion, but from eagerness to see her again.
I was thinking of all the things I should say upon my return, but I’d never been good with words.
You didn’t have to be when most of your life was spent alone.
I halted at the edge of the fire’s light, all words dying on my tongue. She was asleep.
After washing, I discovered she’d undergone a transformation.
Her hair was not brown but black as night, with one long lock a bright, luminous pink.
Her face was smooth and round, chin and nose delicate and soft.
No scales hardened her features, and her expression was almost…
sweet in repose. Long black lashes fanned against the upper slopes of her cheeks in black crescents.
Her mouth was pink, and also temptingly soft.
Only a mark on her temple interrupted the smooth line of flesh: a scrape of dried blood. A cut through fragile skin.
So close had she come to death that morning, but she’d survived.
Safe and sound, so she could return to Joxra and the others.
Now I wondered once again: was Joxra her mate?
Had I missed that information in my rush to leave Haven?
It would explain why he was so anxious, so careless of his terrible wounds, to go find her.
It was what I would do if she were mine.
The twisting, strange feeling in my gut was something I couldn’t explain.
It swept through me, catching me by surprise in the same way my shocking lust for her earlier had.
If she was Joxra’s, I had to stay away, and I could never let desire sweep through me again as it had earlier.
It was better if I looked away, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking.
She was curled up tightly in the furs I’d laid out for her.
Her body was small atop only the tiniest of nests she’d created with fresh branches and leaves, as well as many handfuls of grass.
The little sleara had curled up against her chest, a tiny white snout peeking out at the top of the furs.
My gaze snagged on the shoulder that was visible at the edge, clad in the far too large tunic I’d worn when the winter cold had gotten too much for me.
A primal sense of satisfaction rose inside me that I could not ignore, no matter how hard I tried.
She was wearing my clothes, lying in my furs, and she was under my watch right now.
I felt so conflicted I almost left again, but I couldn’t do that; it would leave her unprotected.
Settling onto my coils, I prepared for a long watch instead.
I’d make sure she was safe, ready to make the trek back to the sky wreck in the morning.
While I waited, I’d check my supplies and eat the second bird I’d caught earlier.
By the time morning came and she began to stir, I’d firmly decided on my next course of action: see her off, leave for the Sun Fang outpost, and never think of her again.
To make sure I could see her off guilt-free, I’d washed her clothing and made sure it had dried by the fire I’d kept well-fed all night.
I’d also crafted her a pouch and filled it with my spare waterskin and all the rations I could spare.
My most arduous task that night had been crafting a bow she could use.
I’d discovered a quiver with arrows among her discarded clothing, but not the bow.
It was very hard to correctly craft a weapon when I did not know her strength, but I thought I’d done all right.
Her eyes were still that improbably velvet brown when she opened them; the sight took my breath away.
She blinked sleepily, then stretched with a groan.
The sleara was dislodged from her chest and chirped indignantly with a very distinct, “Chirp kee kee!” Its narrow head sniffed and pale whiskers wiggled while its softer, round ears twitched back and to the side.
Its eyes swirled silver, then softened as the chirp turned excited.
I realized that, like me, the sleara had recognized Jasmine’s face and was happy to see it.
“Oh,” she groaned again, her hand coming up to rub at her eyes, her pink hair tangling with her fingers.
“Fuck, Ihurt.” I did not know what that meant either, but she rose to a sitting position and shifted to cradle the small animal against her bosom.
“Damn, baby, youresoftasapeach. Ithoughtyouwereadragon! Youreallfuzzy. WhatshouldIcallyou? Peach? Moon?”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, finally acknowledging my presence.
When she spoke again, it felt like she was talking directly to me.
“Oh, Iknow…” Her head lowered, lashes shuttering her extraordinary eyes, and her cheeks began to grow a soft pink.
“WhatdoyouthinkofDove? Youreprettylikeadove!” Her eyes flicked to the pile of sticks next to the furs, “andyouliketobuildanesttoo.”
I’d never wanted to understand a human as badly as I did then. She crooned at the sleara, and the little creature drank up those words with purrs and chirps, draping her small body in the female’s hands and shamelessly begging for a petting. A petting she received. “Youlikethat? Okay, Dove, itis.”
My chest ached, and my tail tingled from the base of my spine all the way down to the tip.
It ached, I realized, to reach out and touch her.
To answer the question burning in my mind: was she mine?
No, she was Joxra’s, I firmly told myself, shifting away slowly.
She was taken, and I needed to get her back to her injured mate, her badly injured mate.