Page 17 of The Naga Princess's Soldier Mate

Ducking down, I rummaged through the few supplies he carried with him. I took his knife, a pouch containing some of the dried, dense ration bars the Naga liked to make, and a waterskin. “Into the tunnels,” I said to Sazzie. “How good is your sense of direction underground?” I was fairly certain which way we needed to go to reach Haven—my survival skills were well-developed and extensively trained—but it couldn’t hurt to have a second opinion, especially in the dark.

I grabbed our downed guard by his arms and dragged him into what had previously been our prison. With the door propped into the opening, it might pass a first inspection. Then I picked up his spear, and, with Sazzie’s hand in mine, the two of us set off into the tunnel we’d arrived through.

As soon as the dark of that hole swallowed us, Sazzie jerked to a stop. Her blue eyes gleamed brightly in the dark, glowing like a pair of cat eyes. “Khawla, we can’t leave him! Do you know where they took him?” I should have known she’d remember the male, and since he’d helped me with the capsules, I did owe him. And yet…

“We can’t reach him,” I said firmly. That was the truth; we’d have to face the entire cavern of Bitter Storm Naga to get tohim. Those odds were impossible, and Sazzie’s safety was more important. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry before they discover we escaped.” I did not think we’d get a second chance as easily as this one if they managed to capture us a second time. Aser did not seem like the type that easily forgave. From the stories Krashe and Naomi told me of their dealings with him, he held a grudge.

She protested a second time, but when I pulled on her hand, she came with me. I sensed her discontent, but there was nothing I could do about it. She was my only priority. We hurried through the tunnels until we reached an intersection. At least five tunnels split off in various directions, and I was pretty sure I did not recall this place from before. Somehow, we had already gotten into another tunnel, and I had not noticed. It drove home how badly we could get lost down here if we were not careful.

Hesitating over which of the five options to take made me antsy, but I could not do this lightly. One tunnel sloped down, one definitely went up quite steeply, but the other three were all level and pretty much the same. When I sharpened my vision in the dark, I could tell two of those twisted and got narrow in the distance, while the third remained a squarish shape, straight as an arrow. It was such a neat tunnel that, here too, I suspected hands had smoothed the way. It was that tunnel I guided Sazzie into, and soon, I was certain I’d made the right choice.

“Wow, I smell the woods,” my angel whispered. “How did you know?” I smelled them too, but it was only a faint trace. The woods smelled like they did on Serant, not back home on Earth. This wood smell had all the same notes of leaves and dirt; that was the same. But the trees here weren’t the evergreens or pines I was used to. They smelled more like lavender or somethingsimilar, and I still could not get used to that. Woods were supposed to smell musty, fresh, and manly—not this delicate, froufrou scent.

I opened my mouth but snapped it shut again, tilting my head to listen more closely. The risk of using a tunnel so defined and straight was that we were clearly visible from far away. A sound had drawn my attention, but, when I tried to focus on it, I did not hear it again. I didn’t trust it, though, and that was probably the only thing that saved me. The arrow that whizzed through the air made an odd sound as it traveled down the tunnel. I ducked, throwing myself on top of Sazzie, and felt it brush against my shirt before it clattered against the tunnel wall behind us.

“Ah, fuck, this is gonna get ugly,” I muttered as I raised my head and caught sight of the Naga slithering out of the darkness ahead of us. I heard them behind us too; that party emerged from the intersection, led by a Naga with red and black edging his scales and a strand of white at his temple. He stood out to me because he was an older male with a particularly vicious expression on his face.

“Stay small, Sazzie. I’ll protect you,” I told my angel, and I pressed her shoulders against the cave wall. Then I rose, swished my pilfered spear through the air, and offered the nearest Naga a battle-ready grin. Bring it—a dozen? In small quarters? They didn’t stand a chance. Not when I had my Sazzie to protect. Nobody touched my princess.

Chapter 13

Sazzie

I caught whatever Reid had noticed a fraction of a second after he did. By then, it would have been too late—I was certain of it. If he hadn’t acted as fast as he had, one of us would have been pierced by that arrow. Now, all I had was a bruised rear and a few scratches along my scales where the obsidian shards of the shattered arrow tip had scraped me.

My heart was pounding in my throat when Reid pressed me more tightly against the wall before rising to a defensive position in front of me. Like him, I had looked down the tunnel in both directions and seen what we were up against. I had counted the number of Bitter Storm warriors approaching, and I did not like those odds. Six were coming from what I assumed was the outside, where the tunnel brightened at the end. Another such party was coming from behind, from the direction of Bitter Storm’s Hearth Cave.

That party was led by a more senior male; I could tell from the sash of red tied around his biceps and the dangling obsidian shards around his neck. A Senior Sentinel, tasked with guarding Bitter Storm’s tunnels and mountain. Out of all the males there, that one was the most dangerous. Then he grinned, showing off blackened teeth, and my stomach turned. That was a new trend I had heard about but not seen, and it seemed the rumors were true. He was not the only male to display blackened teeth when they started advancing.

“Tell that abomination to stand down if he wants to live, Princess Sazzie,” the sentinel demanded. He had halted a safe distance away and lowered his spear to aim it at Reid, a disgusted glare twisting his features. “You are outnumbered.” I could see that, but I also knew they would kill Reid regardless. I had a use; it was a miracle they hadn’t killed my brave human yet, but they had to be out of patience with him now.

Sliding with my back along the wall, I rose, but I made sure never to leave the safety of the rock. “I can’t do that, Sentinel,” I said. “He does not obey me; he’s my male. What would you do if it were your mate in danger? You wouldn’t stand down.” I had not outright called him my mate, but it came dangerously close. The Sentinel narrowed his eyes at me as he processed what I’d said, but some of the others behind him and on our other side made the connection as he did. They murmured; one elbowed another and hissed furiously, and a third made a gagging noise as if the idea of a mating between human and Naga was so disgusting it upset his stomach. I curled my lip at that one and mouthed “Weakling” at him, though I did not say it out loud.

The Sentinel seemed to conclude that a fight was his only option, but he appeared not to relish that idea as much as I thought he would. “It’s Sentinel Sra to you, Princess. Surrender yourself peacefully, and I will speak in your favor to our King.” I laughed, the mirthless sound startling me by how loud it was. Surrender? To Aser and his fanaticism? To him and his alliance with Astrexa? He might as well kill me himself; the result would be the same.

“Enough of this,” Reid said, though nobody but me would be able to understand what he said. It was the first time he had spoken since we’d mated while we weren’t touching, but I wasnot surprised that his words were crystal clear to me. That’s how it worked: once fully mated, I no longer needed to touch him to understand him. “The princess does not want to go, and the princess gets what she wants. It’s as simple as that.”

Sra and his two patrols had started to move toward us, no doubt planning to subdue, or even kill, Reid. When my mate moved, it caught them by surprise. I had been watching Sra’s face when my male leaped into action, so I could see his shock as Reid became a blur of speed and power. There was nothing on Serant that moved as quickly as that, except perhaps the Revenants beyond Bitter Storm’s territory. They did not expect it, and two fell before any of the warriors had even raised their spears.

Reid had gone for Sra’s party first, but while they were gaping at their fallen brethren, he turned and hurled his pilfered spear over my head at the second party. It landed in the chest of one of those warriors with such force that it pinned him to the tunnel wall. Everyone stared, and then they all roared and charged at him. I was completely forgotten and ignored in the ensuing battle rage. The violence made my chest ache; it made me want to squeeze my eyes shut and curl into a tight ball. I couldn’t do that—I needed to help Reid where I could.

The truth was, I hated fighting with my sisters, but fighting these Bitter Storm warriors was ten times scarier. They were so much bigger than me and stronger—shockingly strong. When a spear clattered to the ground next to my huddle, I forced myself to grab it. The next opening I saw, I took, hitting one of those huge males in the back of the head with the blunt end. He did not go down, howling in rage as he spun on me, and Reid was justthere. The male fell without blinking his eyes, and my matewas gone again, spinning around the next opponent and trading blows with another.

Impossibly, it seemed to me like Reid had only gotten faster and stronger since the last time he’d fought. Maybe that was because he’d taken one of those capsules from Erish, or maybe it was a matter of getting used to this. Whatever it was, it was in our favor—not many warriors were left standing. Only three remained upright; many lay dead or dying, while others were moaning or passed out. In the distance, I could see one crawling away as fast as he could, his tail limp as if he were unable to move it.

“Give up,” Reid shouted as he struck Sentinel Sra in the side of the head with his fist. “Sazzie is mine, and your boss cannot have her.” His brown eyes seemed to glow with an inner light in the dark tunnel, and silver glittered on his skin through the tears in his shirt. I didn’t know what that was, but he seemed stronger than any of the others because of it. I wondered if it was a sign of his ‘nanobots,’ the ones he and Erish talked so much about.

We were winning—or rather, Reid was. A dozen against one, and he had decimated their numbers like it was nothing. Hope soared in my chest as I realized that this battle was almost over, and it wasmymale who stood victorious over them all. In that moment, I knew that fate had matched me with the perfect mate—one who would always help me feel safe. One so strong that I knew when we left this mountain, I would never have another worry or another fight again. I did not think I deserved all that, not yet anyway, but I was going to make sure my male knew how much I appreciated him.

The feeling that swelled in my chest was hard to describe, hard to put a name to. It was not really something I’d ever felt before—not this strongly. I thought that maybe a very gentle version of it had existed between my father and me before he died, and perhaps even between Zathar and me. It was a pale shadow compared to how I felt for Reid. This emotion choked me up, caught in my throat, and came awfully close to fear—but it was not fear. I could lose him, and I’d never be the same again. But I wouldn’t, because my Reid was the strongest male there was. He’d protect me, even from this strange new feeling in my chest.

Sentinel Sra had traded a quick flurry of blows with my male while I’d been caught up in my feelings. He was the only Naga left standing, and he was desperate—his grimace so rigid, his fangs were digging into his lower lip. A final blow to his chest sent the male stumbling back, and Reid waited, offering him a chance to retreat. “It’s almost over, Sazzie,” he said to me in a low murmur. “This one is smart enough to know when to back down. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

I hoped he was right. The tunnel was growing quiet, and the body-strewn floor was a macabre sight. It did not seem to me like Reid had gone for killing blows, but some males definitely would never get up again. Mostly, though, they lay passed out, unconscious from their injuries, or playing dead so they would not have to go a second round. Twisting to look over my shoulder, I searched the darkness in the direction of the Hearth Cave. I recalled that a warrior had crawled that way—had he made it far enough to sound the alarm?

Squinting, I flicked out my tongue to draw scents more sharply into my nose and mouth, filtering through the ones I already knew in search of any sign that more warriors could beapproaching. I did not hear anything, nor did I smell anything—just the sound of Sra as he hit the ground behind me. The fight was over. I needed to hurry to Reid’s side so we could get out of here. My hands were already flying to the pouch of capsules secured on my belt; he’d need those too.

“Let’s go,” Reid said, just as I started to move toward him. Something drew my attention—something faint, just beyond full awareness. A sound or a smell, whatever it was, made me turn one last time to look toward the Hearth Cave, and what I saw made my belly turn as cold as ice: the glint of obsidian, the gleam of a pair of red eyes in the dark. Then, all I heard was a loud ‘twang,’ followed by a whoosh that instinctively made me duck.

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