TWENTY-ONE
SABRINA, MY MATE
Darolus
My eyes snap open.I take a trembling breath and my lungs fill with Sabrina’s heady scent. But smelling my blood among it, I tense and lean up to peer around. Finding myself in an unfamiliar space, I groan as a sharp pain strikes me from my chest all the way to my back. My blood sharpens in the air and I lie down with a grunt.
Against me and between my side and tail is Sabrina, slumbering deeply, her hair partially covering her face. Stilling as I peer down at her, she seems slighter than usual, more frail. Shifting some of her hair off of her face, her features were strained and her body was fidgeting, trembling.
Noticing she’s cold, I shift her closer to my side.
Flicking my eyes to the open doorway beyond her, I sense another presence. Another female. One who I have not seen nor spoken to in a very long time.
“Melsya,” I call out, my voice gruffand low.
I hear her long before I see her appear in the doorway, lit up in the soft blue glow from the light outside.
“Darolussss,” she responds.
“I did not mean to attack you.” It is not hard to guess where I am or how Sabrina and I got here. I can smell the naga females all around me, knowing I had to have been brought deep within their domain. Though finally seeing a part of it for myself, I am unhappy.
She tilts her head at Sabrina and I shift my tail closer around her. “I now understand you were trying to protect your mate.”
My mate.“Yessss.” Whatever Sabrina might think I am to her, or she to me, she is my mate. There is no other for me, not even a female naga I would defend over her. “She is mine.”
“I did not expect you to find her when we left her. She was not quite within the border of your territory.”
I look at Melsya sharply. “It was you who hurt her?”
“We knocked her unconsioussss, yessss.”
“You are not supposed to go above ground,” I argue. How did I not sense them? Smell them, catch their tracks? I’d searched for a male naga for days, having not found a single hint of him, only to discover it has been Melsya and the other females all along? “You risk all of us.”
“We have our wayssss.”
“Your ways or not, you should not have brought me down here. You take too many risks. There are not only males to worry about now, there are humans. Nagas are being taken by them and their skycrafts are numerous. Not only that, there are now clouds.”
“I know.” She flicks her eyes to Sabrina then upward. “She told me some of what is happening.” Then she hisses and refaces me. “I made sure you were mated before weallowed you to continue living. Thanks to her, she is the only reason we risked ourselves in the first place. She cares for you.”
Hissing, I bare my fangs at her. “Now that I am awake, we will leave and you will stay beneath the ground, where you are safest. Not only are there humans and their skycrafts to watch out for, the forest is spreading faster now than ever before and others… males might come. I do not sense any of the other females nearby.” I shift to lift Sabrina and wince. “Where are they?”
“Do not move,” Melsya snaps. “Remember what I stabbed you with.”
I drop my hand to my wound with a cringe.
“A silver spear,” I say.
She hits her tail on the floor.
Recalling the blade sliding into me, bones and all with ease, and the shocking internal impulses burning me from within, I grimace, feeling the prickling sensation needling me everywhere at once all over again. I shudder, unnerved by the ghost sensations materializing in my body.
I lie back on the ground, knowing I may never fully recover from the wound. I may feel it, in some capacity, for the rest of my life.
“I will leave you to get some rest.” Melsya slips away.
Shifting Sabrina closer regardless of the internal ache, I doze alongside her, waiting for my wound to close and her to wake up, not fully falling asleep. I rouse when I hear the other females return, answering my question as to where they are. One of them brings me food and warily hands it over to me with the tip of her tail. Fear and distrust coursing through her eyes.
I take the rodent from her and devour it whole, using the water she brings me afterward to rinse the unpleasantflavor down, preferring straight meat to the crunch of bones, stringy sinew, and fur.
