Page 15 of The Naga Princess's Soldier Mate

Two dozen males I would have risked with extra fuel and an ally, but this sounded like at least that number yet again. I couldn’t do that. Those were overwhelming forces. I would not be able to free Sazzie before they got to her, and I did not fool myself into thinking that Aser wouldn’t sacrifice her if it meant saving his own skin. Frustrated that this chance had slipped through my grasp, I made myself tuck the pouch away into a pants pocket, out of sight. Battle readiness surged through my body like ants crawling beneath my skin, but I forced myself to wait. I had to have faith that there would be other opportunities.

As we rounded the rock outcropping, I saw what I had already smelled: the opening of a cave leading into the ground and, no doubt, into the mountain—Bitter Storm’s stomping grounds. Once in there, it would become so much harder to escape. But Sazzie was already at the opening, surrounded by so many red-scaled bodies… I did not like those odds. I did not like them at all.

***

Sazzie

The darkness of the tunnel opening made my skin crawl. It was damp and musty in there, with a hint of rot. The tunnel was wide at first, but no one bothered to light a torch, relying on their ability to see in the dark. But even Naga eyes needed a hint of light to see, and soon, it felt like I was half-blind and surrounded by nothing but hostile warriors. When I flicked out my tongue to draw scents deep into my lungs, I could smell Aser’s musky scales beside me and the lighter notes of Astrexa. There was leather and stone, many different male scents, and only faintly could I locate the unique notes that made up Reid. It felt like an impossible distance separated us, though in reality, it was no more than thirty feet.

I wanted his arms around me, his warmth at my side. I wanted him to hold me so I could feel safe, but every foot traveled deeper into the mountain brought us closer to Bitter Storm’s hordes, to danger. Haven was starting to sound like its name—a haven of safety. Now I wasn’t just picturing Reid’s arms to protect me, but Zathar and his best friends. What I wouldn’t give to see my brother’s kind eyes, the gruff but hulking form of Iave, or Corin with his cleverness and penchant for exploding things.

It kept me sane as we traveled through the dark to concoct stories in my mind about how the three of them—and Reid—would take care of this bunch and rescue me. If there was one thing I’d learned in life, it was that you couldn’t count on anyoneto come to your aid. They were nice fantasies to have, but if I wanted to get Reid and myself out of here alive, I had to do something about it myself.

At some point, I realized that something did emit a light in the tunnel—gentle veins of an unidentified substance shimmered with the barest hint of luminescence. Like a web of pinkish vines, or maybe it was ore inside the rock—I didn’t know. It was just enough to see by, and the farther we traveled, the brighter their glow seemed to become. Now I was thinking about rock and wondered faintly how heavy a mountain was. What if it collapsed on top of us?

The voices of Aser and Astrexa, as they conversed, seemed to bounce off the stone too, jumbling their words together so that I struggled to hear what they said. When I did catch snatches of their conversation, it made my stomach turn. They were becoming fast friends, united in their desire for power. It was a friendship that was bound to fail someday, but it boded nothing but bad things right now. If I wasn’t mistaken, Astrexa was trying to convince Aser not to pursue me, but to allow her to defeat me in front of his warriors. Thenshewould be the undisputed Queen of Thunder Rock, and they could join forces as he wanted. I could not hear what Aser replied to that proposal, but I was certain it was exactly what he wanted, so why wouldn’t he agree?

The sounds that came from ahead of me in the tunnel made me think we were almost at our destination. It felt like everyone picked up the pace, eager to get home, while I wanted to drag this out as long as possible. I smelled their Hearth Cave long before we reached it—a particular kind of stench that was hard to describe. Latrines, campfires, and bodies packed together,their scents combined with the various trades. The leather workers, in particular, fouled up the air. I had never considered what all those scents inside a cave would combine into—it wasn’t good.

There was light, though, when we left our tunnel and entered a huge, massive cavern. The roof soared high above my head, and hundreds of wooden huts covered the area. Naga moved everywhere—hundreds of them—and many were younglings or warriors. With a shocked breath, I realized that if I ever did see a female, she was always accompanied by a spear-wielding warrior. And there were shockingly few of them. Too few.

“This is your stop,” Astrexa drawled when our party halted just inside the massive cavern. I glanced around, surprised and uncertain about what she meant. We were on the edge of the sprawling, packed-together, and very crowded village inside a mountain. No building stood out in particular, and all of them looked old and ramshackle, as if they had been there for a very long time without any improvements. When you did not need to worry about rain and wind, I supposed your building standards might slip a little.

When my orange-speckled guard grabbed my upper arm in a tight squeeze, I knew Astrexa and Aser had come to an agreement. He grinned malevolently as he squeezed my biceps, forcing me to turn to the left. I saw it then: a wooden door set into a stone wall. Another Bitter Storm male swung it open, exposing the dark interior with a hard dirt-and-stone floor. “In you go, Princess,”Aser told me, grinning so his upper gums were exposed. He straightened his already very straight, dull-brown robes as if he were wearing royal vestments, pleased as can be.

My guard forced me inside, swinging me through the doorway with some momentum so that I tumbled forward. Flinging myself angrily back upright with a hiss, I was just in time to see that they were tossing Reid in after me. I had my claws outstretched, intending to scratch my spotted captor, but managed to sheath them just in time to avoid injuring him. He caught me around my waist, and the two of us twirled sideways, almost like we were dancing.

The door was swinging shut behind us, leaving me with a last look at how they carried the net-tangled Khawla deeper into the Hearth Cave. Then, we were alone, trapped in the dark, with nothing but dirt and rock to accompany us.

Chapter 11

Sazzie

I had what I had been craving at last: Reid’s strong arms around me. It was odd because nothing in our situation had changed, but now I wasn’t alone, and I felt safe once again. He was warm and solid, his heart thudding steadily beneath my ear. My human male was anything but weak; I sensed his power in every part of his body where we pressed together. Most of all, he was okay; the food had helped, which meantIhad helped.

“Now what?” I whispered against his chest, where I could feel the press of his odd necklace beneath the fabric of his shirt. Reid hummed softly in the back of his throat, his arms tightening around my middle as he lifted me up. I helped by pressing with my tail, and then I was meeting his mouth with mine in one of his human customs. This kiss was all fire and passion, coiling its claws through my flesh as desire soared. Always, this male managed to make me forget myself or where I was.

“Now, I check every inch of you for injuries, angel,” he growled huskily. I loved the timbre of his voice: low, with a rough edge no matter what he did or how he talked. It always made me feel like he was a little on the wild side, a little uncivilized. Having been spoken to with nothing but deference by most males all my life, the way Reid talked to me was refreshing; it felt honest, real. “We’ll have to wait till nightfall anyway, so we should find a way to distract each other, don’t you think?”

There were more of those trails of bio-luminescence in the walls here, but they were very faint. Barely enough for me to see by,yet the hot glint in his warm brown eyes was unmistakable. How did he do that? Switch to something so warm and lighthearted when we were in dire straits? He claimed my mouth again; his teeth nibbling on my bottom lip made me gasp, and then his tongue swept inside. Oh, yes, that felt so good. Like that, I could forget everything around us and become a being of sensation and touch, a being all his.

It was not supposed to be like that; my passions should never rule me. Reid made me forget about the lessons I had learned of nestplay and male advances. He made me simply want to be his, and he made me want to pleasure him as much as he evoked pleasure in me. “They have left a single guard,” he tsked as he trailed kisses from the corner of my mouth to the edge of my jaw. “The idiots have no clue what they are dealing with. Once night falls, I will take him out, and we will escape.”

I wanted to warn him not to speak of his plan so boldly and loudly, but then I realized that nobody would understand him anyway. No Bitter Storm male would ever allow a relic for translations to be implanted in their head, and they had not realized that Reid and I could talk. If they had, would they have separated us? My handsome male paused long enough for my thoughts to surface and spin, but just as I started to worry about Khawla, he latched onto the side of my neck and sucked. The sensation made me yelp, and then that startled shock turned into hot pleasure—as if his mouth were drawing a line from my neck straight to my slit. All of me felt hot, forgetting about cold, damp caves and the endless piles of stone above us.

“Reid,” I whispered, afraid the guard would hear me. “Reid, what are you doing to me?” I felt out of control—hot and achy, like something was missing. He was holding me tightlyagainst his body, and I could feel his cock pressing like a brand against my belly. If we continued down this path, we would find ourselves mating in the heart of the enemy’s territory. That was outrageous—or was it? As soon as my doubts surfaced, another part of me said, “But why not?” If tomorrow might never come, why would I deny myself this?

“Ah, angel, I don’t deserve you,” Reid muttered against my skin. He had carried me forward, and now I felt the cool press of stone against my back. “You taste so good, Sazzie. So sweet. I want to fuck you, claim you, mate you! Tell me that’s what this is—you feel it, don’t you? You are my mate!” He didn’t even manage to make that last sentence sound like a question, and a thrill shot through me. Yes, his mate. Claim me. I wanted that so badly, and I was done feeling ashamed for needing my male that way. It was right. It was good. I was his angel, and I wanted to be sweet to him—so very sweet.

“Yes,” I hissed. “Yes, Reid.” Then I realized that he might not understand the significance of my ability to comprehend every word he said. “I haven’t got a relic in my head—don’t you know that?” He jerked back from where he’d been nuzzling my cheek, his eyes growing huge, his mouth dropping open. I had never seen him look surprised, but I had caught him off guard this time. I liked it—he looked cute as he tried to wrap his head around what I had told him.

“Ah, you knew all along, didn’t you? You minx,” he chuckled, as if he enjoyed knowing that, but his expression sobered almost immediately. “I knew I was your man—your male—the moment I heard your voice. I’m glad you knew it, too. There’s no getting out of this, Sazzie. And I’m not waiting. Life’s too short to wait for anything. You’ve got to reach out and claim it, so I’mclaiming you. Forever.” I wanted to say something, respond to that, but he was kissing me again, and all thoughts fled. He drew a moan from me, and it was loud. I did not even care if the guard could hear.

His hands roamed my body, cupping my breasts, then sliding lower to my front to touch my slit. He yanked my belt from my hip, discarding anything that got between his hand and my body. I wanted to do the same to him—he was wearing far more than I was. A shirt, and those foot and leg coverings. I wanted to rid him of all of it. When I pulled on his shirt, he obliged, shrugging it over his head in a practiced move and exposing all of his beautiful markings. “What are these?” I whispered, sliding my fingers over his biceps and tracing the sharp, exotic eye of a predator.

“Tattoos,” Reid responded. “Ink just beneath my skin,” he added almost immediately, as if he already knew that the first word was meaningless to me. Naga did not have skin; our scales were tough everywhere, though more translucent in our faces—softer to allow for mobility in our expressions. Ink beneath our scales would be invisible, but with him, these beautiful patterns and images emerged, living art. “And these?” I asked when I touched a triangle at his throat. It was like his skin was slightly raised, and it felt as tough as a Naga scale.

“Nanobots joined together to form some kind of plate while they were inactive—I think, at least.” Then he laughed. “Enough talking, sweet angel. I want to taste you now. Taste, then fuck. Got it? So no more distractions.” I felt chastised and turned on at the same time. When he got so firm, it did things inside of me that I knew I shouldn’t like but loved all the same.

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