Page 16 of The Naga Princess’s Soldier Mate (Serpents of Serant #7)
Sazzie
The guard, who held me by my upper arm, was squeezing too tightly, but I didn’t complain—not when I had a front-row seat to what had been going on for hours now inside this fighting pit. Horror had my breathing stuck in my chest, lodging something hard and painful in my throat.
Khawla had never been a male I knew well; he was older by at least a dozen years, older than my brother Zathar, so they hadn’t been friends. The male was also a loner, always out in the woods. However, since he’d been named the Master Scout, he was also a leader—leader of the hunt, leader of the scouts. I knew Kusha was his mate and that she was barely involved in the raising of their two children.
When Khawla left, it was his brother or his friends who watched the two younglings. I did not even recall their names, as they were quiet and withdrawn, like their father. All things considered, he was a fair male—a rule follower and a good contributor to the Thunder Rock Clan. What was happening here was a fate worse than death, and he did not deserve it.
“I think this female is broken,” the male holding me said as he laughed and pointed at my face. A tear had slipped out and was rolling down my cheek; another dangled from my lashes and would soon follow the first one. Broken. I wanted to laugh at that statement. A week ago, I would have agreed with it. But then I’d spent time with the Shamans, and after that, I’d met a human male who looked at me like I was perfect.
No, I wasn’t broken. I was exactly what I was meant to be—what a Naga female was once supposed to be. As I considered this nasty fight pit, the jeering crowd, and the pleased Astrexa and Aser presiding over it all, I was struck by a chilling thought: once, our ancestors had built great cities. Once, they had built skyships and healing machines. Two thousand years had passed since that great era, and yet, here we were, still scrambling in the dirt, killing each other. Was it because the females had become so deadly and aggressive that we had been unable to reclaim our past?
I winced when the large warrior Khawla was fighting struck a particularly vicious blow across my Clanmale’s face. He crumpled to the dirt, braced on his hands, and struggled to rise while blood gushed from his right eye. My free hand shot up to touch the scar that bisected my left eye from an injury similar to the one Khawla’s opponent had just inflicted. My sympathy went out to him, but there was nothing I could do. Spears surrounded me, and I had four huge guards at my side. I was here as the next round of entertainment, waiting for my turn.
The male he was fighting was one in a long line of fighters; I did not know how many he’d already gone through. Khawla was proving to be a powerful opponent, and it seemed Bitter Storm enjoyed seeing their own blood spilled as much as his opponent’s. When the brawny, red-scaled male approached Khawla’s prone form, I thought it was over. This had to be his final fight, and a good male would die—for nothing—for the sport of a sick, power-hungry individual and a tainted Clan.
The warrior raised his spear above his head, then slammed it toward Khawla’s exposed back with a roar. At the last moment, the Thunder Rock male rolled out of the way. His tail came up in a fast, agile move, and—snap—the warrior’s neck was broken. He rose slowly, swaying on his tail, blood dripping from his face and the numerous slashes and cuts across his body. The crowd roared and screamed; they sounded happy about this result. Khawla did not respond to his fans. He did nothing but stand there, his head turned toward Aser and Astrexa, awaiting his fate. But why fight this hard if he didn’t want to survive?
Aser rose and stretched out his arms, and the crowd began to quiet down. Two warriors darted into the arena to pull their downed brother from the field, tossing him aside in a corner where other bodies already lay. I tried to ignore the macabre sight, but it was hard not to quickly count them and wonder if that was how many fighters Khawla had defeated already. Were all these fights bouts to the death? What was the point of this? It made no sense.
“Why don’t we give our guest a chance to catch his breath?” Aser said into the silence. Then, he gestured at Astrexa, and my nemesis rose from her languid pose atop a pile of pillows. As always, she was graceful and vicious-looking at the same time, drawing every eye. “Let us watch the future Queen of Thunder Rock as she ends her rival, the crown princess Sazzie.”
Oh no, why hadn’t I seen that coming? Astrexa was grinning widely as she moved to the edge of the fighting pit and dropped down onto the hard dirt. The crowd cheered again, thumping their spear shafts against their shields and slapping their hands against their chests. The noise was deafening, drowning out the instinctive panic clawing at my chest. Fight Astrexa? I couldn’t do that. For a moment, I was back in the woods outside the village, a hurt, clawing Ayala pinned to my chest. I had lost that fight, but I had gotten away because I had fought hard enough. I knew losing this fight would mean the end.
Then my mind flashed back to that moment right after the cave-in, when I discovered how badly hurt Reid had been. His magnificent body was pinned beneath a giant boulder, silver flashing over his arms. Silver flashing over my arms. Naga females didn’t have mating marks—or did they? I had done all I could to help Reid survive, and I wanted to believe that meant he’d made it. That even now, he was crawling out from beneath the rubble to make his way toward me.
The tears that had welled at the sight of Khawla’s treatment were nothing compared to the cascade that fell when I thought of my male—my mate. Tears were useless, I snarled furiously at myself. What I needed was the fire inside me, fire to carry me through this. I hated fighting; I hated all the violence I’d been forced to see or commit. But when I thought of Reid battling his way to my side even now, I knew I owed it to him to do the same. I had to live for him so I could return to his side. If I wanted what my brother had found with his human, then I needed to step up.
“Equals,” I said under my breath. “We are mates, and mates should be equals.” Reid deserved my protection as much as I deserved his. That resolution shivered through my body with such strength that, when I raised my eyes to meet my challenger, I knew I could win this. Her dark-blue gaze had been confident, mocking, drunk on her own power. It faltered now, and a slow smile spread across my face as I shrugged off my captor’s grip and moved across the blood-soaked battlefield toward her.
I was not aware of the silver glow on my scales until the crowd hushed and absolute silence fell inside the Hearth cave. It curved from my shoulders in spirals down my arms, pooling in my hands until my palms glowed the brightest. When I lifted a hand to look at what was happening, it felt like I was staring into a relic light source or a bright, open flame. The silver was still spreading, too, flowing along my chest, down my belly, and then to my hips. These were full mating marks.
“Yes!” I declared loudly, and with a brightly glowing hand, I brushed the last remains of my tears from my face. “This is the truth we have forgotten! Mating marks should not be one-sided! And my mate is human. We do not shun differences! We celebrate them; they make us stronger, they make us better! Like my human mate has made me better—has brought me this gift of the past!” I spread my arms, and the mating marks across my scales glowed even brighter.
Astrexa hissed in fury, but the crowd remained completely silent—eerily so. I could feel all their eyes boring into me, feel the unease that had settled over them. Jabbing my hand at the pile of dead warriors Khawla had left in his wake, I curled my lip in distaste. “You claim to be the most enlightened Clan, the Clan that guards us from another calamity, and this is what you do to each other? Needlessly waste blood, kill and banish your females, deprive your males of a mate!”
That had gotten Aser’s attention, and with a furious hiss, he rose beneath the red silk canopy. So far, he’d acted magnanimously, faintly amused, but I’d crossed the line now. Before he could say anything, Astrexa interfered. “You talk of mates!” she said gleefully. “But your abomination of a male lies dead beneath a tunnel collapse! He is gone, and soon you will follow him!” With a roar, she charged. There was no more time for words or displays, no time for posturing like what usually preceded these fights. My body knew what to do, though, having gone through these battles hundreds of times before.
Astrexa was also a familiar opponent; she had singled me out from a young age and relentlessly fought with me. Sometimes, we’d clashed multiple times a day. Now that I was not at war with myself over what to do, I felt free—stronger, faster. It was kill or be killed, and I could not die when Reid needed me. There was only one option: defeat Astrexa once and for all.
We were all fangs and claws as we clashed, and I held nothing back, driving Astrexa back across the battlefield with strike after strike, my mating marks glowing like beacons. Vaguely, I recalled campfire stories of the males. They niggled at the back of my mind, trying to tell me something important, but I could not figure it out—not until I struck Astrexa across the face and marred her cheek the way she’d marked mine. The female flew to the side, crashing against the dirt-packed, straw-strewn floor, and skidded several feet away from me.
I glanced at my hand in surprise, my eyes wide at how hard I’d managed to strike my nemesis. That had never happened before; it hadn’t happened before because I didn’t have a mate then. But I had one now, and my bond with Reid was not one-sided. I recalled the rumor: a mated Naga male grew stronger to protect his female. Maybe the myth was true, and maybe my mating marks allowed it to work both ways.
“Did not expect that, did you? I’m stronger now, Astrexa. It’s over. I don’t want the Thunder Rock throne, but you aren’t getting it either,” I told her as I gave her a moment to get back up. She hissed furiously, blood dripping from her face and from the claw marks across her chest. I only felt the sting of some scratches on my hip, nothing more, but I’d scored plenty of hits on her. I did not feel satisfaction about that the way I almost expected, and that relieved me. I did not relish seeing her in pain, humiliated, even if she deserved it. That wasn’t me; that was all her. But I was proud of myself for finally showing her that I would not take her crap.
“Surrender now,” I told her as she began circling me. She could not have signaled more strongly that she was running out of options. Unlike our male counterparts, we always fought face-to-face, but now she was circling to find an opening, to catch me by surprise. If she could, she’d stab me in the back at this point. “Surrender, and your life will be spared,” I warned her as I turned with her, rotating slowly to keep her in my sights.
“Never!” she hissed, her eyes flashing with fury and misplaced pride. The crowd was finally responding; I could hear them roar and hiss, but I did not look at them. If I so much as blinked, Astrexa would strike, and I was not going to fail at the last moment by making a stupid mistake. When she leaped at me, I was ready for her, and we grappled together, tails tangling, claws ripping.
When I rose, it was to tower over an unmoving Astrexa, curled in a ball on the ground. She was not dead, but I’d caught her across the throat in a bad way, and blood was rapidly pumping from the wound. I could not mask the horror I felt at being the one to do that, backing away slowly, my mating marks winking out like they had never been.
“Sazzie!” a voice called out, and in surprise, I turned to search for the source. There he was—my mate. He stood beside Aser, his hand wrapped tightly around the smaller Naga male’s throat, and his eyes glowed silver. He was all right. He was here! My warrior. My soldier. My mate. Standing so proudly inside the nest of the viper, its king his hostage. Yes! We were going to be fine; I knew he’d come for me.
“Reid!” I shouted back at him and began to rush across the pit toward him. I never saw the strike coming, though I should have. Pain flared through my body, and I went tumbling to the ground. Black spots danced in front of my eyes, and, from a distance, voices called my name.