Reshar left without another word himself, and he never even glanced back at us or spared a word for Khawla. My hunter said nothing himself either, just held me and stayed in place, watching what was going on with his single amethyst eye. Only when the door closed and we were alone did he relax his grip around me. “Jolene,” he sighed, “I should have never brought you here, but at least now you’re not dropping to dangerously low temperatures.” The reminder of those words I’d said to him when we first met also reminded me of his “You are not my mate,” and fury washed over me.
Yanking free from his arms, I stumbled over a coil of his tail but slapped away the one he raised to assist me. “Not your mate?” I hissed at him, jabbing a finger at his chest andwatching the play of gold light that shivered over his scales. His expression grew tight, but there was no indication whether it was out of guilt or anger. I couldn’t read him at all; he was too good at hiding, as it turned out.
“I can explain that,” he said, but I raised my hand to stop him. There was nothing I’d rather do than hash the whole thing out, but it was then I caught movement in the back of the small building. We weren’t alone. The discovery that three much smaller Naga were huddled in the back was like good and bad news all at once. Thesehadto be Khawla’s younglings—the ones he’d come here to see because he had a bad feeling. Clearly, he’d been right, or they wouldn’t be locked up in here with him. That was the bad part.
“Oooooh…” I said, and I stepped over Khawla’s coils, though he did not raise them to block my path. My eyes roved over the three small ones with fascination. The two in the front hovered protectively, one bigger than the other and clearly the boldest. That one had scales as matte and muted as his father’s, while the smaller one was a pretty blue but had bright amethyst eyes. His sons: Rasho and Daois. Which made the smallest, huddled figure Nisha, the baby of the family.
When my eyes latched onto her, the boys shifted even more into my path, and their father said nothing behind me. Either he was still stewing over the not-mate discussion or he’d taken a weird moment to actually listen to what I said. Perhaps he was just waiting to see what I’d do. They were used to obeying their females; maybe he didn’t know that he had every right to interfere if he wanted to.
Nisha had her father’s scales and her father’s eyes. She looked more like him than either boy did, and that included the pronged horn on her tiny chin. I’d already seen that every other Naga I’d encountered had only one, but Khawla had two, just like his baby girl. And then I saw the bloody gash cutting into her cheek, and horror struck me.
“Oh, poor baby!” I exclaimed, forgetting for a moment that, even young, Khawla’s two sons could probably do serious harm to me if they wanted. I rushed forward, caught their shoulders, and gently nudged them apart so that I could kneel down next to Nisha. “Who did that to you, sweet one? Let me see, I’ll take care of you, darling.” She blinked at me through her tears, and though I knew now that she likely couldn’t understand a word I said, she uncoiled to curl into my open arms. The tone of my voice had said enough, but I could hear Khawla murmur a translation for them behind me in a voice that sounded suspiciously choked.
She was so slight that it shocked me, her sinuous body trembling as I picked her up. It wasn’t just her face that was scratched up, but all across the front of her body and her forearms—scratches and cuts marked her. It was hard not to linger in the anger that filled me at the sight, but it would not help her right now. So, I made my voice calm and gentle as I carried her closer to the hearth and asked Khawla if he had any medical supplies. I kept telling the little one reassurances too, which didn’t need translating.
A leather satchel was set down next to me, and the boys brought me bowls of heated water and clean scraps of leather. My tiny patient clung to me but did not make a sound as I checked each wound and cleaned it with the rudimentary supplies. One or two cuts had already been covered with some kind of ointment. Khawla held a jar of it out to me, and I sniffed at it suspiciously. “What’s in it? Is it clean?” I didn’t want to rub anything into the wounds and risk an infection, but I also didn’t want to discard medication when it was a proven remedy.
He named things I did not know about, but then he said the magic words: it was made by Artek. He touched the patch that hid his damaged eye and explained further. “I was on death’s door, but the Shaman controls relics from the past and used those to heal me. I do not even have scars on my chest from the damage—the ointment works.” Then hepointed at one of a handful of glowing lights that sat around the small home. Those were ‘relics,’ as he called them, but really, they were ancient technology. I got the message: someone far more advanced than he had made this medicine. I made the choice to trust it.
By the time I was done checking every inch of the small girl, she’d given into exhaustion and fallen asleep against my shoulder. Khawla had snuck the tip of his tail around my ankle, and his sigils glowed, lighting up the room more brightly than the fire and the little relic lamps did. Now that my task was done, I had a moment to take a breath and look around. It was obvious right away that this was a home—his home, probably.
There was a pile of furs in a round bowl against the back wall, beneath a small window. That’s where I’d found Nisha, but it was clearly Khawla’s bed. A ladder led to a small loft where the children probably slept. Belongings were scattered about, too—bowls on a shelf, weapons in racks on the wall that nobody had apparently bothered to take, and baskets lining a wall with supplies. There were also carved wooden toys, and one boy was holding a Naga-shaped rag doll nervously in his hands. When my eyes landed on it, he held it out to me, his purple eyes glowing brightly. “Thank you,” I said politely.
“It’s for Nisha,” Khawla explained. “She’s technically too old to keep Vod, but…” Too old? I looked from the small doll to the small girl and gently tucked it into her limp arms. It was harder to tell, because she was not of a species I knew much about, but to me she looked no older than four. A four-year-old wasn’t too old for her doll, was she?
“Nonsense. I’m pretty sure I still have my dolls from when I was little. Didn’t stop sleeping with them until I was well into my teens…” I faltered then, because it wasn’t true—I didn’t have my dolls anymore. They’d probably been tossed to the streets when I’d been arrested and “executed,” or scavenged and taken by the neighbors. I didn’t own a singlething now, but still, that didn’t mean this girl couldn’t have her doll when she was hurt.
Khawla had translated that too, and his boys shared incredulous looks before they slid a little closer to me. “I can have Vod?” Nisha whispered then, surprising me when she fluttered open her lashes and pierced me with her amethyst eyes in exactly the same way her father could. When I hurried to nod, she squeezed the rag doll to her chest with a sigh and turned her face further into my chest. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, reminding me of the wards I’d cared for at the hospital, and the ones I’d visited at their homes in my spare time. Having never found the right guy to settle down with, they had been my children.
It felt like a moment out of time when I sat there with a little girl in my arms. She’d perked up enough to begin telling stories, and her brothers would sidle closer and closer until they were right next to me, too, interjecting comments when their sister got it wrong or skipped a vital part. It did not seem to matter that they couldn’t understand my words of encouragement, either. I didn’t have the heart to put a stop to it, even if we probably had better things to do—like plan an escape.
Khawla paced, though the loop of his tail remained curled around my ankle so I could understand his younglings. His oldest son, Rasho, would alternate between sitting with me and mirroring his dad. I watched them from the corner of my eye when he did, my heart fluttering in my chest over how cute it looked. Damn it, forget about being mad, this family had been through the wringer. Khawla had every reason to want to protect them, and after just ten minutes, I already knew I wanted to do the same.
To do that, we had to escape. To do that, we needed a plan, and possibly help. So I focused on the things I could control: making the kids happy for now, and helping them to bed when they began to flag. Nisha didn’t want to let go of me, so I sat with her until she’d fallen asleep. My skin brokeout in goosebumps when I discovered that Rasho was still awake and staring at me with a sharp look in his eyes. I went with my gut, leaning down to brush a kiss on his forehead, just like I’d done to his siblings.
Chapter 14
Khawla
I had not realized how starved my younglings were for a female’s kind touch until I witnessed it. Jolene was nothing like a Naga female, she was soft, warm, kind. She did not push them away or belittle them for not being strong; she hugged Nisha the way Kusha had cuddled with our sons. I had hated the distance having a daughter had created between my childhood friend, our younglings, and myself. Now, I tried to see it through the eyes of my true mate. For her, giving affection was free and easy, and she gave it to all three of my younglings as if she had plenty to spare.
The doubts I’d had about Jolene fitting into our lives were gone then. In fact, I felt silly for ever thinking that she could not accept the young of another. A Naga female would not, but Jolene was not Naga; she was human. She was a caretaker at heart; this came naturally to her. We would be going against every single tradition I knew, she’d raise Nisha like ahuman would. Now I wondered… would that change what kind of Naga female my daughter would one day be?
I watched from the shadows at the top of the ladder to the sleeping loft as she tucked my younglings into their nests. She even spared still-slightly-suspicious Rasho a kiss, and I wondered what that was like for my son. I really wanted them to like her, but this was a stolen moment in time; none of that would matter if we didn’t get out of here.
Msera told me that tomorrow the Queen would see us, but I’d already checked each exit of my home. There was no slipping away tonight, not without outside help. The response, when my Clan males had discovered that Jolene was my mate, told me I could not expect any help. They were as furious as she was to discover the truth.
One problem at a time, I could not fight the whole town, and I could not hide three younglings and a human as we snuck out. So I’d speak with Jolene, and at least make it clear that I had never meant to betray her by lying. That first exclamation had been the shock of discovery, not an actual denial, but I shouldn’t have let her keep believing it was true. I just hadn’t known how to wrap my head around the massive discovery. Perhaps I’d grown too jaded after all this time pretending to be Kusha’s mate. I could admit now that I’d been extremely unhappy, but had accepted it as the only way to survive—and protect my younglings once they came.
When she turned to come down the ladder, I slipped down before her, and I knew she had not seen me. Her eyes were terrible in the gloom, so I watched carefully to make sure she did not fall. She’d shed the blankets and my tunic in the warmth of my home, and I got to admire her slender shape and soft curves beneath her clothes. I had torn the shirt at the bathing chambers, but it had been tied shut around her waist with a leather cord. I needed only to pull one loop to open it and let my greedy eyes feast on her bare breasts again.
Forcing myself to stay still, I waited by the hearth, food piled into bowls. She came quietly, sat down to eat in silence, and, for the first time in a long while, my scales shivered along my spine. My control was terrible around her, and soon she’d learn what that meant.
As her spoon scraped over the bottom of the bowl, she finally raised her eyes to my face. Her mouth was set tightly, but I saw no real anger in her eyes, it wasn’t sharp or mean, just… resigned. “So what now? This meeting with the Queen tomorrow, it isn’t anything good, is it? Do you have an escape plan?”
If it were just me, I could have escaped already. The quirk of my scales would let me slip away even under the noses of the most highly trained hunters. Carrying three younglings and a human through the night made it impossible, though. I shook my head. “We will need outside help. We need an ally to provide a distraction…” That was the only plan I could think of. With just enough of a distraction, I was certain I could get us out, but it hinged on outside help. Help we did not have.
“Oh… We’ll have to ask that guy with the seafoam hair, the pretty one,” Jolene said. A growl rattled out of my chest before I could stop it. Pretty one? I knew she was talking about Reshar right away, and I hated that she called him that. I’d always been called ugly, different, and after I’d lost my eye, I knew that hadn’t done me any favors. It hurt my pride, but it was also a possessive jealousy that filled me. She spoke of another male that way? I was her mate, no one else.
