Page 17 of The Naga Princess’s Soldier Mate (Serpents of Serant #7)
Reid
The distraction I needed came far sooner than I wanted it to, or maybe it just felt that way because I didn’t want it to be her. Sazzie shouldn’t have to put herself in danger—not ever—but she was. Instead of leaping into that pit and fighting the danger for her, I had to be smart about this and trust that she could hold her own. For a little while, at least.
Then she stunned not just me, but the entire crowd with her proud and blatant display. I could barely believe what she was saying; it was too good to be true. The mating marks—they did not lie, and neither did she: proudly declaring me her male, her mate. My brave angel. Never in my wildest dreams had I expected her to make such a bold move. If I wasn’t already head over heels for her, I was now. I loved this girl, this Naga female with the tender heart.
It felt like I was being torn in two as I passed the turned backs of the crowd and moved away from Sazzie rather than toward her. There were too many guards around the fancy sitting area Aser was in, so I could not approach him directly. Thanks to my mate, all eyes were on the fighting pit, where her bold declarations had now ended and transformed into a vicious clash between my mate and her nemesis.
The crowd was deadly silent, stunned by what they had witnessed, but the two battling Naga women made enough noise to cover my approach. It held them all riveted too, even Aser, who had risen and was watching them with a frown on his squirrelly face. There was a towering pillar not far from where the self-proclaimed King was located, and I used it to my advantage, climbing the thing as high as I could. My fingertips shaped into metal claws with a thought, the nanobots rushing to do my bidding.
Once I was high enough, I timed my leap just right and came crashing through the red fabric roof, directly on top of the viper in charge. We might have been tangled up in all that cloth, but my vision zeroed in on his body heat. My fist curled around his throat before any of his guards could interfere, clenching so tightly that all he could do was splutter and wheeze. “Call off your hounds,” I demanded. I knew he could not understand what I said, but I assumed he’d be able to infer from the context. I was right. He was already hissing at his males to stand down, afraid for his life. The crowd roared now, clamoring together, pointing and shouting at the sight of their King in danger.
I knew his type. They were all cowards at heart, willing to do anything to save their damn hides. “Sazzie!” I called out as soon as his warriors froze around us, uncertain about how to proceed with their leader in my clutches. Proving that this Aser was anything but a warrior, he did not even attempt to use his best weapon—his tail. He hung in my grip, clawed fingers biting into my forearm as he fought for breath, but otherwise remained completely limp. This was a politician, not a warrior, and I thoroughly detested politicians.
Sazzie had struck a disabling blow to her opponent just before my shout, and pride sang in my chest. Look at my brave angel, facing down her nemesis—the childhood bully she’d told me about. The one female, out of all those stupid challengers, who had tripped her up emotionally. “Reid!” she shouted back, elated, and our eyes met. I felt that look sear into me—so warm, so happy, and so welcoming. That look felt like home, and everything else started to fade into the background.
She hurried toward me, and I jerked Aser’s neck hard enough to make the male squeal in pain. “Tell everyone to stand the fuck down!” I warned. But unless Sazzie made that demand heard, I knew we were running out of ways to communicate. She was halfway across the fighting pit when disaster struck. I screamed her name in warning—and I wasn’t the only one.
Astrexa rose drunkenly behind her, the tip of a broken, discarded spear in her fist. When she charged after Sazzie, my muscles cramped, and I leaped without thinking—into the pit, toward her. I never let go of my hostage, and I knew I was going to be too late, even as I raced toward her. My angel began to turn; Astrexa was almost on her, and then there was a blur of dark blue—bodies tangling, colliding, and dust rising in a great cloud.
I knocked Aser out with a sharp blow to his temple, then dragged him with me as I raced across the dirt to that tangle of limbs and tails. The dust began to settle, and I could make out three bodies, Sazzie’s palest blue scales at the bottom of the pile. Astrexa lay on top, bleeding profusely from her neck and abdomen. I dropped Aser to the ground, picked Sazzie’s nemesis up by her arm and belt, and yanked her out of the way. She moved like a ragdoll as I tossed her, and though I could sense a heartbeat, I knew she would not last much longer. That threat was gone.
Beneath Astrexa was Khawla, and briefly, his presence confused me. I had not seen him move; I had not seen him at all, but here he was, between Astrexa and my mate. “Reid?” Sazzie moaned from beneath the limp body of the big Thunder Rock scout. It felt like my heart restarted at the sound of her voice, the blind panic and worry for her safety receding to the back of my mind so I could see clearly again.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” I demanded to know as I began to pull the warrior’s big body to the side. He was unconscious, and blood covered nearly his entire face in a macabre red mask. The broken spear tip was protruding from his abdomen, buried deep inside a jagged, gaping wound. He was heavy, but my nano-enhanced muscles had no trouble sliding him off Sazzie and into the dirt at her side. She rolled and sat up almost immediately, hissing, her eyes flashing. She did what I should have been doing: she scanned our surroundings for danger, and we were very much in danger still.
“Bruised, but fine,” she said, sounding surprised. “Back off!” she shouted before I could do so. Warriors had begun to drop into the pit with us from all sides, and her words halted their approach. I grasped hold of the unconscious Aser again and hauled him up in my arms, knife flashing dramatically so they would all see how much danger their leader was in. “Tell them to let us go, or he gets it,” I told Sazzie. I did not want to be holding this despicable coward; I wanted to hold my angel in my arms right now.
My angel took Aser’s brown-clad shoulder in her fist, the fabric bunching and tearing beneath her sharp claws. “We have your stupid King. Move, and he dies. Get it?” she snarled, and when she yanked, I allowed her to pin Aser to the ground beneath her tail and her claws. That left my hands free to check her for injuries, and I rushed to run my fingers over her spine and along her hips, where a few shallow scratches were all she had to show for her fight with Astrexa.
“Fuck, Sazzie! I thought you died,” I told her, my arm curling around her middle to haul her against my chest. I placed my boot on Aser’s hip to help pin him as I did so and twisted my head to glare at the silent, watching warriors. They had frozen around us, but they were angry—very angry. Without their leader, they were also unsure as to what to do. I hadn’t hit Aser hard; he’d rouse soon enough.
“And I knew you hadn’t, mate,” Sazzie responded, then baffled everyone around us by raising her mouth and pressing a kiss to mine. My body heated in response, battle readiness eagerly morphing into arousal that I wrestled under control with an iron fist. This woman kept turning my world upside down, and I was so fucking proud of her.
Then Sazzie proved how sweet and tender she was. She twisted above the unconscious, pinned Aser to look at Khawla’s prone and dying body. His wounds were very grave, especially the one Astrexa had struck—the blow meant for my mate. He was bleeding out, his breathing shallow and far too rapid, his heartbeat sluggish as it struggled to pump what little blood remained inside of him. He had given his life to save my mate, and for that, he had earned my deepest respect. If not for him, Sazzie would be the one bleeding out at the bottom of this fighting pit. “Can you save him?” my mate asked me.
Can I save him? We had barely saved ourselves; death still surrounded us on all sides. The angry looks on the faces of these Bitter Storm males made me wonder how long the threat to their King would even hold them back—not long, I was willing to bet. At some point, they’d decide they had enough. Sazzie looked at me with those big, luminous blue eyes, and I could not deny her anything. Besides, Khawla deserved a shot at life. After what he’d done to save Sazzie, I had to try.
Handing Sazzie my knife, I told her to keep him under tight control. “Tell them we’ll let him go if the three of us get safe passage out of their territory.” Then I went to my knees at Khawla’s side, shrugged out of my shirt, and pressed it to the gaping wound in his abdomen. The injury to his right eye was bad too, but I had to conclude it wasn’t life-threatening. The gut wound would get him first in any case.
My first-aid skills were a little rusty; I had not needed them much as a Shadow Unit soldier. Apply pressure, but then what? I did not have any supplies—not a med kit, a tissue regenerator, or even a bandage. And though I pressed hard against that wound, the bleeding was not stopping. We did not have long. I looked up from Khawla, snarled a warning at the warriors that surrounded us before I twisted my head to look at Sazzie. “I don’t know what to do,” I admitted to her. “I’m not a healer! And his wounds are really bad. I know we owe him, but I don’t think I can save him. I’m sorry.”
Sazzie glanced from Aser, who had begun to stir at her feet, to me with a soft look in her eyes. Then her arms shimmered with silver light that pooled in the palms of her hands. The markings spread, their glow curling down her chest, teasingly beneath the leather band that covered her breasts, then curling around her belly button and over her hips. They were proof that I had not imagined seeing them earlier—she had mating marks just like the males of her species. That glow caused the whole cave to hush again in stunned silence, and that alone told me just how special it was that Sazzie glowed for me.
My skin tingled in response, and though I knew I had no mating marks that could glow for her, my nanobots did not seem to have gotten that memo. They moved beneath my skin, rising to the surface in streaks across my bare arms and chest. They did not quite glow with light, but their silvery material made up for that. We matched.
“I know,” she said gently. “He’s dying. That’s why you are his only chance. Your machines, Reid. Can you give him some of those? They heal you.” Ah damn, that was clever thinking on her part, and it proved she’d begun to understand more and more of the technology inside me. My clever mate. My nanobots had clashed viciously with the Naga-made nano-healing bots I had been exposed to. Did that mean the horde of microscopic machines inside me was dangerous to a Naga? Maybe. But he was dying anyway; it was worth a shot.
“Abominations! Both of you, twisted, sick, filthy mongrels!” Aser hissed, rousing just in time to display his bigotry. I reached out and slapped him upside the head—not hard enough to knock him out, but definitely hard enough to rattle his teeth together. He hissed with fury, displaying his lack of front teeth, and Sazzie, beautiful angel that she was, wrapped her tail around his neck and squeezed.
Ignoring the spluttering King and Sazzie as she once again addressed the crowd that stared at us from far too close, I focused on Khawla. This time, I pulled my blood-drenched shirt away from his wound and slipped my fingers around the broken spear still lodged in it. It came free with a sucking noise that made me wince, and it made Khawla jerk and moan weakly. “That’s it, buddy,” I told him. That moan was hopeful; it meant there was more life in him than I thought there was.
From my pocket, I yanked the pilfered metal nail I’d found in our jail cell earlier. I held it up with a hint of trepidation, but Sazzie still had full control of the Bitter Storm king. She also had my knife, which was why I resorted to grabbing the nail. Slashing a cut across the palm of my hand, I hissed as I forced blood to drip from the wound into Khawla’s. This was breaking all the rules I knew about wound care—about sanity, about contamination. Then again, it wasn’t like we could keep a wound sterile in these conditions. The male was dying, and this was a long shot—a very long shot.
Of course, my nanobots eagerly fixed the wound in my hand, but they did nothing for Khawla. Unwilling to give up that quickly, I scratched another cut across my palm and pressed it against his injury. At the same time, I tried as hard as I could to will my nanobots not to heal my injury just yet. “Heal him, damn it! I need you to heal him!”
This wasn’t going to work, and as I stared into Khawla’s heavy-lidded gaze, it turned vacant, unseeing. There was a particular look to the eyes of a dead person—a flatness that only came from one thing: death. Resigned, I sat back on my haunches and allowed my nanobots to heal the slash across my palm. We had lost him. Now I had to think about the living, about my angel, and nothing else. Our situation was getting more dire, and it wouldn’t be long before it escalated into violence.
Sazzie and I shared a look—hers sad but as resigned as I felt. Then I took control of our royal hostage and, with it, I hoped, control of the situation.