Page 13 of The Naga Princess's Soldier Mate

I had never lost track of where my angel was and had to fight hard against my instincts not to break my bonds when I realized someone was going to carry her. A male had his filthy paws allover my girl, I hated it. I vowed to myself that I was going to make sure that male knew Sazzie was all mine before this was over. His orange-flecked chest was unforgettable; I’d remember him.

As quickly as the fight had escalated, and as quickly as it had ended when Bitter Storm’s reinforcements had shown up, our departure was even faster. Astrexa and Sazzie were hauled over shoulders after their wrists were tied behind their backs. Khawla was rolled in a net and hoisted on poles so he could be carried safely. And me? They made me march with them, a hand around each arm to keep me in line. I was last in the line, with a view of the entire snaking party as it wound beneath the trees back in the direction of Bitter Storm’s large mountain range.

I recalled Chen’s careful instructions for getting back to Haven, the map he’d shown to me on one of the med ship’s view screens. To reach the Thunder Rock Territories, and Haven beyond that, Sazzie and I would have had to travel around that very mountain. It would involve a large stretch of swamp and forest, travel through Copper Tooth Territory, before we’d reach the safety of our own lands. The journey would have taken us at least two weeks on foot. I wondered what it would do to our travel time to crossthroughthat mountain, rather than go around it.

For hours we marched—or rather, I marched, and they slithered. Khawla had woken up by late afternoon, but he did not move from where he was trapped inside the net. Our eyes met, but his were listless, despondent. I knew why: he’d just lost his mate. They had left her body behind where they had ambushed us. Would I be able to count on his help to get out of here when the time came? Or had he lost all will to survive by losing his lady?

Sazzie was the hardest one for me to lay eyes on. They had her at the front of the line, and I was certain Aser was talking to her as we traveled. It was her they had been after, but why? What did they want with my angel? She had to be scared out of her mind, but she’d been so brave during the battle, fighting even though she hated it so much. Did she have any injuries? She’d been awake by the time we’d started moving, but I was certain I’d seen the male who carried her knock her out.

By the time the violet Serant sun had started to dip below the horizon, every muscle in my body ached and trembled with fatigue. I was very close to collapsing; if I did not eat something soon, I feared I might slip into a sleep and not wake. My nanobots had healed every bruise and cut on my flesh, and I could feel how the largest concentrations had settled beneath my skin on my chest, shoulders, and belly. They felt like an itch I could not scratch, warning me with their presence that I was running out of time.

Gritting my teeth, I kept walking—one foot, then another. What more could I do? Surely these warriors would make camp soon and feed us? Someone had picked up our bags of supplies and taken them with him; if I could get my hands on the capsules Erish had crafted for me…

When they did make camp, full darkness had fallen, but that did not bother the warriors. Naga had good eyesight in the dark, and these Bitter Storm males lived in caves and tunnels beneath their mountain. They were used to darkness. I could have used my nanobots to enhance my own vision to aid me, but I did not dare risk it. Besides, it annoyed my escort each time I tripped and stumbled. “Why are we even bothering with thisabomination?” the one on my left said with a fierce scowl I could not see but could hear anyway.

The other one tightened his grip around my arm and hauled me higher, forcing me to keep walking when my legs wanted to give out. “King’s orders. He knows things; he always does.” I had a feeling he was warning the other guy not to speak out of turn, like he had earlier—that it wasn’t safe for them to say disloyal things about this Aser. If I remembered correctly, the scrawny Aser had once been assigned as an aide to the one Bitter Storm male I would trust my life to: Krashe. The former Warlord had brought Naomi, his human mate, back home at the cost of abandoning his Clan and causing a civil war. Aser had come out on top, killing the Queen and becoming the first-ever male to rule a Clan.

From the sounds of it, there was plenty of discontent now, and he was no longer as in control of the remaining Bitter Storm forces as he wanted to be. Was that why he was after Sazzie? Did he think that adding fresh blood, a mating to a crown princess, would make him more respected in the eyes of his subjects? Well, he wasn’t getting my princess; she was taken.

The two warriors escorted me to a tree and started to tie me up against it in a sitting position. It gave me a chance to rest my legs, but I was not able to move much, let alone eat. Khawla’s net was hoisted into the tree I was tied to, and he gently swayed and spun from a branch above me. In the dark, I could not make out any part of him; his dark, sheenless scales made him a shadow. I only saw the glow of his amethyst eyes when he spun around to face me.

“Never, you filthy bastard! Get your paws off me, right now!” Sazzie’s voice rose above the murmur of voices and the sounds of males gathering wood and setting up camp. My abdomen grew tight with worry, and it was very tempting to urge my nanobots to my arms to give me the strength to rip the ropes that bound them. In this state, it would kill me, but could I drive enough force to my limbs to free her before I succumbed?

What I did give into was the desire to see, urging my nanobots to enhance my vision. The darkness resolved itself into clearer shapes almost instantly, and now I could see enough to count the number of warriors that still remained. I could also see where they had tied up Astrexa, who sat in a similar position to mine against a tree across from the small but neat camp. She was awake and wearing an angry but also fearful expression.

Sazzie was where the warrior who had carried her was building a campfire, and the smallest male out of the lot was at her side. Aser, had to be. He had black hair slicked back from his face with some kind of oil or grease; it was neatly tied in a long braid over one shoulder. He wore brown robes that looked like they had seen better days, the robes of a beggar. It made him look anything but kingly, and yet a male bowed deeply and with great respect when he brought his King a small, wrapped package.

I recognized the package for what it was, and though I had not enhanced my sense of smell, I imagined I could smell what was in those folded leaves anyway: food, the type of dense, fat- and meat-heavy rations that Naga hunters liked to prepare. If I couldn’t get to the capsules Erish had made for me, that would be the second-best thing, I imagined. My stomach rumbled painfully at the sight of the wrapped food, and it took precedence over any other feelings as Sazzie seemed unharmed. She was noteven tied up right now and had her arms crossed over her chest while she glared at the Bitter Storm King.

Sazzie glanced from Aser to the package of food he was now holding, then tilted her head and locked eyes with me across the camp with uncanny accuracy. With my enhanced vision, I saw that she knew it was exactly what I needed. The determined tilt to the angle of her chin told me that she was going to get it for me. My heart clenched in my chest—a reflection of my exhaustion and my fear for her. We were in bad shape right now. If I could recoup my strength, maybe we’d make it…

My energy waned quickly, and darkness crept back in from the edges—slowly at first, then rolling at me in a wave. It was the nanobots that had run out of power to safely enhance my vision, and now my muscles weren’t just trembling from fatigue; they were eating themselves up to sustain me. I closed my eyes—rest for a moment, sleep. Aser wanted Sazzie alive. I had to trust that she’d be okay.

***

Sazzie

If I were to believe in such a thing as bad luck, I had to be cursed. Running into Astrexa was awful, but these Bitter Storm warriors? I couldn’t get the sight out of my head of Reid’s beautiful body as he flowed at uncanny speeds through that skirmish, until that spear blow to his side. After that… I hissed with frustration at the bindings around my wrists, which their cowardly King had put back on me after I’d refused to share a meal with him.

I knew what he’d wanted when he made that offer: for me to sit down and eat the food from his fingers. To show his warriors that I was allowing his advances, that I was letting him court me. Never. I could not even play at that because it felt wrong to betray Reid that way. Not that he and I had spoken of the mate bond or commitments, but I felt like we both knew. I had agreed to come live at Haven with him, hadn’t I? Now I wasn’t just frustrated; I was worried that Reid wasn’t going to make it, and that if he did, I had misunderstood him. Relationships were not covered in a Naga upbringing, the mating marks said it all.

“This doesn’t have to be difficult, Sazzie,” Aser said from where he sat on the ground next to a barely burning little fire. It was there more to give a hint of light than to warm a person. The night was balmy, and though cool, not cold yet this close to the marshy lands that belonged to Copper Tooth. Higher up in the mountains, it would already be cool enough to hint at the rapidly approaching fall.

I was resting on my tail beside him, but I kept a careful distance because I refused to give anyone ideas. Astrexa was watching us from where they had tied her up, and I didn’t need to wonder what she was thinking. Her jealousy was plain to see on her face;shedefinitely would have welcomed the advances of a male wielding as much power as Aser did, even if he was the most unappealing Naga I had ever laid eyes on.

It was the missing front teeth that made him off-putting, if I were honest. It looked unhealthy, like he had not taken care of himself. And his scrawny body and bony shoulders reflected that same sentiment. It was like he purposely ate very little so as to reassure his Clan he would never take too much from them. He had not eaten a bite from the wrapped ration bars he held inhis hands, and, though he had offered to feed me, my refusal seemed to mean I was not getting any food at all.

I flicked my eyes from Astrexa to my host and captor, fighting hard to curb the instinct to check on Reid. He had collapsed in his bindings, I had seen that, and fear for him coated the back of my tongue with a bitter taste. If I looked at him again, I would give away to this cunning, evil King that he meant something to me. I was certain that couldn’t end well, but how could I get that nutritious food he was holding from his hands into Reid’s mouth?

My nemesis was the one who came to my aid, though I was certain Astrexa did not intend it that way. She might have been the only captive who was getting food without any strings attached, and she chose to throw it in the face of the male who brought it to her. He had been foolish enough to untie her hands so she could eat, and she took the moment to throw herself at him and claw his eyes. Once they had managed to restrain her—which took an impressive three males—Aser left me by the fire to address her.

As he slithered away, he paused to glance over his shoulder at me, his red eyes glowing like embers in his face. “Are you going to do the same if I hand you this? Or are you going to be more sensible? I always did think you were a more sensible female than most.” The patronizing tone and his choice of words all made anger rise, hot and fiery, inside my chest, but unlike my sisters, it didn’t rule me.

Rolling a shoulder casually, I offered him a half-smile that I hoped was mysterious rather than flirtatious. “Oh, yeah? Is that so? Only one way to find out, is there, Aser.” I purposely calledhim by name rather than by the title he’d claimed with the force of his loyal males. I knew it would irk him—and it did; his mouth twitched. It also goaded him, and he held out the package of ration bars.

My heart rate shot through the roof with my excitement, but I made certain he saw none of that on my face. Holding an expression of bored indifference was very hard, but I managed it as I took the package from his fingers. I did it by forcefully brushing my fingers against his scales, letting him know that I was not afraid of that touch. I wanted him aware that he was not my mate, and that we both knew it.

It was he who hissed as he turned away to deal with a still-raving, angry Astrexa. She was bucking and coiling beneath the males who pinned her, a snarl on her pretty face, but she knew real power when she saw it. Aser looked like nothing, but he was the male who controlled it all at this camp. I did not continue watching them as Aser bent his head close to hers, and the two started whispering in low voices. It gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach to see those two together, but I had the precious food now; there was no time to waste.

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