Page 11

Artek

“You are not fit enough to leave,” I said to Khawla for the umpteenth time that afternoon.

He was driving me crazy, and it was hard to maintain a cool facade when all I wanted was to return to Nala’s side.

The need to know what she’d decided after learning of Haven was filling me with an anxious, restless energy.

I was certain the ever-observant scout could sense that, even in his weakened, delirious state.

“But I must!” he responded, as he had every time so far.

He was seated on the edge of the bed, his tail—wounded and bandaged—partially on the floor, partially curled into the medical nest. He was unsteady, his chest hunched around the worst wounds along his torso.

A weird quirk of nature had given Khawla scales that were non-reflective.

It made him, in the eyes of Thunder Rock’s females, unappealing but an excellent scout.

He also had an odd blend of blue and purple to his scales—a hint of a throwback to a parent who might have come from Copper Tooth rather than his own Clan, Thunder Rock.

Clans did not mix, not anymore, but once upon a time, they had.

Khawla’s dark hair was matted at the back, courtesy of lying on it for days on end, when normally he kept it in a neat braid.

His single good eye, the left one, glowed fiercely purple, another hint at a Copper Tooth ancestor.

The right was hidden behind a bandage, and though I had tried, I had not been able to save it.

The wound in his abdomen was the worst, though, deep, from a broken spear that had left splinters and debris behind.

It was not a wound he should be sitting up with, and I worried every moment that he was, that he’d tear it back open.

The male should still be asleep, forced into a healing hibernation by his own body, not just the pain suppressors and sedatives I’d given him.

“Kusha is dead, Artek,” Khawla said, his voice cool and hollow.

I winced, as this was news to me. Some of the females who had gone with Khawla to challenge each other—and the daughter of the dead Thunder Rock Queen—had not returned home yet.

Word was, they still had not settled on who would be Queen next, and the Clan was in such chaos that it had not concerned itself with the crashed ship beyond their borders.

“I am sorry,” I said to the Master Scout.

He had lost his mate, a pain I could only now begin to understand.

Nala and I had not done anything but dance around that truth, and already, the thought of losing her was so awful I could not contemplate it.

I was willing to give up anything, even my solitary home, which I so loved, if that meant being allowed to stay at her side.

Kusha had been with Khawla since they were very young, mated for over twenty years.

They had several younglings together. That was the reason he wanted to leave, to get back to his children.

“I still cannot let you leave. You will die before you reach Thunder Rock. Do you understand?” It was a rough deal, and I’d much rather have the male out of my home so I could spend time with Nala, but my oath as a healer kept me from letting him self-destruct.

“Your younglings are safe. No one at Thunder Rock would harm a child. Your brother is surely taking care of them.” Khawla bared his fangs at me, his one good eye flashing with anger, but then he swayed unsteadily.

I sensed that I’d won, by virtue of his energy running out.

He knew it too, by the angry growl that rattled weakly from his chest.

Helping him lie back down, I let the bed run scans, reassuring both of us that nothing had been further damaged by the stubborn male.

Then I gave him healing nutrients and set the device to regenerate more tissue.

Too many of these treatments at once, and the body might not cope, but I told Khawla that I’d try to push the pace to the limit.

By the time he finally succumbed to exhausted sleep, I was worn down myself, tired from the hard work.

My claws flexed around the rings and power stones that made up the handheld device I had used to assist in the healing.

My body was sapped of strength, depleted just like Khawla’s.

He was not the only one who came under strain from this work, but I was not about to tell him that.

Sinking to the edge of the nest next to his, I took a few deep breaths and rubbed the kinks out of my neck with adept fingers.

My belly rumbled loudly, which meant that Nala was probably getting hungry, too.

I rose, immediately driven to make sure she was okay, and came to a startled stop as soon as I turned.

I hadn’t heard her, but she was there, peeking her head through the curtains into my healing chambers.

Her hair was shiny and smooth, her face pink and soft.

Zap was poking her head through a little below that, her fur mussed from sleep.

“Nala,” I said, tongue flicking out before I could control the impulse.

Her scent drifted on the air, all her: soft, sweet, human.

I tasted it in my mouth when my tongue pressed against the scent receptacles at the roof.

I swayed toward her on an unsteady tail, then halted myself by gripping the edge of the nearest medical nest. This tired, my control was a joke.

Get too close, and I’d do all kinds of things I shouldn’t.

The temptation to flick my tongue against the pulse visible in her neck was powerful.

“Artek,” she answered, and then she smiled, her expression sunny and warm.

It lit up the room, sending sparks fluttering through my chest. I rubbed a fist against it, got my claws tangled in the longest of my gold chains, and then abruptly froze when I saw the glow of my sigils.

Damn it, how had that happened? I wasn’t even touching her.

But I was. My tail had wound beneath the beds, around the edge of the desk by the curtains, and slipped around Nala’s ankle.

It was the kind of gesture males used with their mates in the historical footage I had by spades on my home’s computers.

It was not the kind of thing a Naga male could get away with in the present, the females no longer tolerated such a claim, such softness.

Nala did not say anything about my grabby tail though.

She just smiled at me. “How’s your patient doing? ”

I glanced back over my shoulder at Khawla’s prone form, covered by a thin sheet and fast asleep.

This time, I’d made sure he stayed asleep for the next couple of hours instead of relying on his body’s natural inclination for healing slumber.

He’d make it—there was no other option—but he was still very fragile and worried sick about his younglings.

A male who had lost his mate tended to flounder, to fade.

I wondered how much longer he’d last after I’d patched him up.

Some stuck around until their younglings no longer needed them; Khawla might be one of those.

“He was very adamant about returning home to his younglings,” I found myself saying to Nala.

Sharing the male’s plight with her felt natural, and it eased some of the tension in my own chest. “He lost his mate recently, and he is desperate to get home to his young, who remain at the Thunder Rock Village down the mountain.” I gestured vaguely in the right direction, my mind wandering as I contemplated ways to get news on Khawla’s young.

But there was no way—other than to visit ourselves—and we could not leave the male on his own that long.

“Oh, that’s so sad. Naga mate for life, don’t they?

That must be so lonely for him now,” she sighed.

She slipped through the curtains and approached slowly, her gait lopsided on account of my grabby tail, but she didn’t comment on it.

I didn’t withdraw the hold; it was beyond me to do so.

I knew it was empathy, a gentle kind of concern on her face, but still, my instincts warred inside my chest, angry that she was staring at another male.

“We do,” I gritted out, voice rough. “Naga males mate for life, care for the young, and provide for the village. The females rule the Clan.” Once, females had not been so warlike, so competitive, and so unreceptive to a mate’s bond.

Our brightest Shaman minds had still not figured out what had changed in our genes to alter their behavior so irrevocably.

We just knew that a change had occurred.

Nala cocked her head, her expression curious and sweet—so very sweet.

She was so close now, rounding the edge of the nest I was leaning against. I bit my tongue so it wouldn’t slip out and taste more of her delicious scent.

“And when they mate,” she said, something dancing in her golden-brown eyes that made my scales lift along my spine, shivering together.

That ever-present desire twisted in my gut.

“Their sigils glow,” she added, and she reached out, tapping a dainty finger on the glowing marks along my chest.

I snatched up her hand before I could stop myself, yanking on her wrist more roughly than I should have.

She tumbled into my arms, lifted there by my possessive tail.

My growl filled the healing chambers, rattling the glass jars of medicine on the opposite wall.

Her gasp was drowned out by the noise, but I could see her form it with her mouth.

I buried my nose against her neck, riding instincts and nothing else.

She was mine; I wanted her—she couldn’t leave.

“Stay,” I snarled, my mind flashing to the humans at Haven, and the many, so many unattached males who guarded that place. “Don’t leave.” This was exactly what I’d feared would happen, the reason I should have stayed away when I was this worn down from the healing session.