Page 7 of Flower of Seshana (Tales from the Darvel Exploratory Systems #1)

Chapter

Seven

Q uillen shifted forward with interest to peer down from the ledge where he rested at the small female wandering below him under his brother’s keen eye. Kethan was busily pointing out various plants and spoke of them in a low voice that Quillen didn’t even bother straining to hear. If it was about the local plants, it was nothing that he had not heard many times from their mother who served as healer for their nara. Besides, he was far more interested in watching the way her bottom upended as she bent down to study the plants up close. It reminded him of how sweet she felt nestled within his coils throughout the night.

Despite his admiration for her strange form, he could not deny that she was a clever little thing. Her mind was sharp and hungry for knowledge about the plants that grew on the Zir and deep within the desert caves. The latter most Vahel had little knowledge of, but he suspected that there were many common plants between those that grew within the caverns and the deep crevices and forests of the Zir and those that grew in the massive desert cave systems that led down to the shinaras, each changed in small ways by the necessity for adaptation.

The tip of his tail curled lazily, his gaze following them as they strayed toward the edge of the nara’s clearing. Quillen was not concerned. They would not go far. Kethan would not dare. Life was typically peaceful in their nara, but word had spread quickly that he had returned with an outsider and now all of the nara was in an uproar. Everywhere Quillen looked, Vahel craned their heads and fanned their wings excitedly as they tried to get a peek at Alexandra around the protective barrier of Kethan’s splayed wings as they waited for Therxian’s arrival.

The head of the hunters could be a problem. The male was naturally suspicious by nature and his opinion held considerable weight within the nara, not only among its people but with the council. If he refused Alexandra?—

A shift in the crowd tore his attention from his brother and the delectable female beside him as Vahel slid out of the way for Therxian’s large frame. Although all Vahel males were considered large compared to those of the shinara, Therxian had an extra quality to him beyond his size that made him stand out. There was confidence and arrogance in his bearing, and an implacable expression often carved into his stony face. Although the male had arrived among the Vahel many revolutions ago, only just barely out of his juvenile stage, Quillen could not recall a single instance when the male cracked a smile.

Therxian glided forward in that moment, his piercing red gaze briefly falling upon the Vahel who hurried out of his way, his large, dark blue wings flexing in a subtle stretch. Quillen stilled and found himself barely daring to breathe as the male’s gaze raked the crowd impatiently before finally falling on Kethan.

“Where is it?” the male hissed, making Kethan’s wings tense and curve protectively inward around Alexandra as he glanced back over the top of them at the lead hunter.

Kethan’s gavo snapped up, and even Quillen could feel his own rising slowly in reaction to the male’s open aggression. He understood the reasoning—an unknown could be a potential danger to the nara—but that did nothing to quiet his own response.

“ Her name would be Alexandra,” Quillen called down before his brother could do something that would get him killed.

Both Kethan’s and Therxian’s eyes turned immediately in his direction, and Quillen had to admit he enjoyed the look of surprise in his brother’s eyes. Why was he so shocked?

“I was not speaking to you, Quillen,” Therxian rumbled. “Unless you are eager to share in your brother’s punishment?”

“Impossible,” Quillen scoffed, but he narrowed his eyes humorously down at the intimidating male. “But I have to speak for Alexandra regardless. And there is no reason to behave as if she is a zaron making a nest within our territory.”

“Is she not?” Therxian challenged with a superior smile sketched faintly upon his tightened lips. “We know nothing about the newcomers invading the deserts except to know that it is for our own safety to keep them far from the Zir. She may very well have latched onto you for exactly that purpose.”

“It is not like that,” Kethan protested, and his jaw hardened with his growing anger as his gavo first flattened and then slowly extended in hostility. “ I am the one who fell on her when I dove into the cavern to escape the sandstorm. I am the one who invited her to return with me. She did not even know of our kind.”

“So she said—and you believed her,” the other male scoffed. “She could have arranged everything with her strange alien ways. We do not know what the offworlders are capable of other than violating Seshana. You likely fell into a well-orchestrated trap!”

Alexandra gaped at the accusation, and she furiously pushed forward to confront Therxian. Quillen’s gavo snapped up in alarm, and Kethan tried to grab her wrist in an attempt to stop her but she was quicker than expected. She slipped around him to glower up at the lead hunter despite the fact that she was trembling visibly in front of the big male.

“I did no such thing.”

“Why should I believe you?” Therxian countered, his gaze slitting with deadly intensity upon her. “You are an outsider and cannot be trusted!”

“So were you,” Quillen shot back as he rose from the ledge.

Surprise registered on many faces among the Vahel but the murmur of agreement was unmistakable. He knew Therxian heard it too, because the male’s gavo flattened unhappily and moved in snapped and trembled as he glanced around those gathered.

“Quillen is right,” another interrupted, and Quillen turned his head as Gamay, Kethan’s mother and his own foster mother, pushed through the crowd, a vision of elegance as she emerged from among them on her fog gray coils. She peered around her, meeting the gaze of the Vahel gathered there before turning on Therxian with disapproval. “You were not only an outsider, but a male bred and reared in the shinara,” she ruthlessly continued. “A male bred of royal stock no less. There were many who wished to drive you from the Zir for the same reasons that you have presented. And yet we took pity on you and welcomed you among us and cared for you as if you were one of our own sons. Why do you believe that you deserved more than you are willing to give a female less than half your size?”

His mouth worked silently as his gavo flicked uncertainly as he glanced around the Vahel in search of support. A few lone males from among his hunters came forward to his aid but most withdrew from him with looks of misgivings cast in his direction.

“Time will tell as to her true intent. I only hope that it will not be too late,” he hissed before winding back on his tail, then abruptly springing up into the sky with a snap of his wings.

Gamay smiled kindly and undulated away as she made her way toward Alexandra. To the alien’s credit, she did not flee or meet the female’s presence with terror. Quillen knew his foster mother well enough to know that alone would raise Gamay’s opinion of her. Indeed, the elderly Vahel smiled and dipped her head in welcome as her arms and wings stretched wide. Alexandra looked at them uncertainly and his heart melted just a little. Such a shy little female. He found it an odd characteristic to see in an adult, but for some reason he found that small difference quite endearing. He dipped his head in encouragement as Kethan leaned forward to whisper something in her ear.

Good. Kethan possessed a gentler, if not highly inquisitive, nature. If anyone could assist her in adapting comfortably into life among the Vahel, it was him. Quillen would help, naturally, but he tended to be brasher and did not enjoy the easy interactions within the nara that his brother experienced—mostly thanks to his own mother’s infamy. She had not only deserted her son to fly headlong into the nighttime fog in a state of frenzy, but had been found days later, half-eaten and hanging in a tree where a zaron had left her. Even worse was that Quillen had been the one to find her while playing with Kethan and several other nestlings as they practiced flying high within the trees. The image was burned into his mind—the condition of her torn body and the way her one remaining eye stared sightlessly into the abyss. It had been such a brutal, horrifying sight that afterward he spent many nights shuddering with nightmares within Gamay’s coils

The memory still haunted him.

It would be best for Alexandra to get settled quickly and comfortably among the Vahel because one thing was certain: he would never allow her into the fog of the Zir… but nor would he surrender her to her glass nara. No place on Seshana was safe from the hungry predators that hunted it, and he was determined that if nothing else, this tiny female would survive it. He would wrap her in his coils every night and sleep deeply knowing that she was safe there between him and Kethan.

And that had been a revelation. He had found comfort resting there with them throughout the night without even a hint of the fierce jealousy he had expected. It felt right. He only hoped that Kethan and Alexandra would come to discover the same.