Page 22 of The Naga Wanderer’s Wounded Mate

Chapter 16

Jasmine

My heart was in my throat the entire time Ekkire faced off against that group of naga males. They were all carrying bows and quivers filled to overflowing with arrows. This was not the average hunting party I’d seen come and go at Haven. These guys hung out in my neck of the woods, so to speak. They were archers, which meant my hiding spot on the ridge was not safe. As soon as I shot an arrow, they’d know where I was and return fire. I would not survive a hail of arrows.

Then I’d gone and given away my position anyway. That guy had tried to stab Ekkire, though, and I couldn’t let that happen. My hands were shaking as I held my bow, the wood creaking in my grip. It didn’t help that Dove had nosed her head out of my coat and was now severely distressed that Ekkire, or perhaps the blue sleara, had gotten hurt.

Ekkire though, I was definitely well past the point of liking him and starting to head into “I have a crush on him” territory. He’d allowed himself to get shot with no less than six arrows to protect the sleara. That was crazy! I wanted to yell at him for doing that and kiss him all over to show how much I appreciated it at the same time.

The tension had begun to ease in the group, and I was impressed by how Ekkire had defused the situation. Their leader had started to attack, the sleara had derailed things, and now my Water Weaver guy was solidly in control. It was… hot. He had them right where he wanted them. It made me realize how much power he had, which was surprising. What was it that had suddenly made them bend over backward to apologize? This was about trade, something Ekkire had that they needed.

I tried again to remember what I knew about the Water Weavers, but came up short. Either I hadn’t paid attention to Vera, or she hadn’t mentioned them. Why would she? There had only been one of them at Haven, and he was already mated.

Then he dropped the biggest bomb: that a human had protected him, and that I was female. That seemed to stun them more than anything, but after a brief pause, I was granted sanctuary status. It was the male that stood out—bright, canary yellow—that prompted the obnoxious knife guy to do it. But once I had it, all weapons lowered, and the males began to lower their backpacks and sit down to wait.

I wasn’t moving, though. No way. I mean, not only was my broken leg going to make that impossible, but Ekkire was wounded now too. Six bloody arrows jutted from the narrow tip of his tail. Well, three at this point, because the yellow guy was working on them. He’d slipped a healing device over his hand, so I could only assume he was a Shaman, like Artek.

That was good, very good, because I was pretty sure an infection had started. Adrenaline had sharpened my mind during this altercation, but the fever was already beginning to make me foggy and too hot again. “We’re going to be okay,” I whispered to reassure myself. I hated being vulnerable, and now there was a whole new group of males to prove myself to while I felt like I was at my absolute worst, injured, dirty, tired.

Reaching up, I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead. My vision was growing gray at the edges. Below in the clearing, Ekkire told the Shaman to snap off the arrow shafts and leave the wounds for now. I sagged back against the rock behind me rather than watch what happened next, but I knew anyway. Ekkire was too good a guy not to send the Shaman for me right away, at the cost of his own injuries.

My eyelids began to sink shut, lowering in a slow blink. When I opened them again, Ekkire was right next to me, his pretty green face full of concern, and a second pair of eyes peeking at me from beneath his hair. Oh… that’s where the sleara had gone. I guess that meant we had two now, wasn’t that cute?

“Come here, little hunter. Help is not far now,” he said huskily. His hands were careful as he lifted me from the ledge, yet pain scorched through me anyway. My leg felt like it was on fire, but my foot felt numb. In the back of my mind, I vaguely worried a nerve had gotten pinched or damaged; most of me, however, was consumed with the pain. I bit my lip until it bled, holding in the scream that wanted to break free.

“Fuck, Ekkire!” I let out anyway. “I think the leg is a goner. They’re gonna have to amputate.” I was making no sense now, but the feverish thoughts made it hard to think. It was bad, I knew that, but there was a healer right here. It did not make me feel any calmer, and then more pain came in a throbbing, rolling wave. I’d done too much, asked too much of myself, and this was the price I was paying. My body had had enough.

“We are not amputating anything, sweet one. Ish will help you, won’t you, Ish?” Ekkire’s voice was calm and soothing, and the warm wash of his golden sigils felt calming too. The color felt like safety now, something I could trust to protect me. I rolled my head to press it against his shoulder and was promptly licked at the edge of my hairline by a small blue mouth. I must have looked bad if even the feral little guy was offering me sympathy.

The bright yellow face of the Shaman from this Sun Fang party appeared in my field of view. He was beaming so brightly that not just the color of his scales was blinding. If he was in charge of my healing, at least I had no doubt he was eager to do so. Maybe he didn’t mind me being human as much as the others. There had to be hostility, and I braced myself for it; after all, this party of hunters had decided they’d rather join Thunder Rock in eradicating the humans on the crashed ship. They weren’t my friends, even if Ekkire had elicited an offer of sanctuary from them.

“No,” this guy, Ish, hurried to say as he swung his gaze along my body. “We are not amputating anything, I promise.” Then he halted and lifted equally bright yellow eyes to Ekkire’s face. “She can’t understand me, can she? Can she understand you?” He seemed curious rather than worried I’d bite his head off or infect him with some kind of disease. That’s what I imagined the naga feared in dealing with us, the ones that were hostile.

“She can understand all of you,” Ekkire announced, loud enough that it was clear he intended the statement to carry to all of the warriors. My hazy head caught up with the situation then. The majority had sat down, their tails coiled around their bodies and gear. Their leader was slithering back and forth through the dry grass nearby, watching me with deep suspicion on his curiously colored orange-and-brown face. The only one not staring in a way that made my skin crawl was the Shaman.

I bit back another scream when Ekkire and the healer began lowering me onto a fur spread across the ground. My leg was on fire, and black spots danced in front of my eyes. I held the scream in, though, because with that many people staring at me like I was a curiosity, I wasn’t going to put on a show. Just as it seemed we’d made it, my body settling into an awful, prone position on the ground, Dove decided to make her move.

She leaped from the collar of my coat with a little screech, wings flapping wildly. Then she barreled toward the Shaman and struck him square in the face with her claws outstretched. “Dove, no!” I yelled, trying to reach for the little sleara who surely thought she was defending me. Too late, and my body was definitely too slow. She’d drawn blood. The Shaman yelped, rearing back on his tail until he towered over me. Everyone was moving again, reacting, but my body was too tired to do anything else. I collapsed on the furs with a pained moan I definitely could not hold back anymore.

Ekkire caught my little friend in both hands, pulling her off the Shaman’s face and cuddling her against his chest. The Sun Fang leader shouted, furious, “What is it with these beasts? Have they gone mad?” That would have been funny if I wasn’t in pain and terrified for Dove’s life. I knew my guy had her, but could he keep hold of her without hurting her? What if the Shaman struck back? He was bleeding from several gashes on his forehead and cheeks; it looked like she’d absolutely shredded him!

“She was only defending her friend,” Ekkire explained, still struggling to keep hold of the trembling Dove. His tail had slipped free of me in the chaos, and the glow of his sigils had faded. He wouldn’t understand me if I spoke now, but more importantly, I really just wanted him to hold me.

Dove did her “chirp kee kee” so loudly that I winced, but it got the other sleara moving. I’d forgotten he was still there, but now he slipped from Ekkire’s shoulder and flew a circle around us. I could see the Shaman tense up, ready to fend off another attack, but the blue guy didn’t strike. He landed awkwardly on Ekkire’s arm, chirping, cooing, but Dove still didn’t settle. I tried talking to her too, urging her to calm, to settle down. It didn’t seem to convince her I was all right… When the blue guy leaped to the ground, picked up a small twig, and tried to fly back up to offer it to her, she finally stopped screeching, snatching the stick from his mouth, then twisting to lean over Ekkire’s elbow to peer at me with huge, silver eyes. “It’s okay, sweetie. Come chew on your stick over here.” I patted the fur beside my hip weakly.

It was a risk, but Ekkire seemed calm as he released Dove. She fluttered to the spot on the fur I’d patted, rubbing her head against my hip. Then she laid down her new stick, perched a paw on it possessively, and smoothed out some ruffled fur. To my surprise, she did not rebuff the slate-blue sleara when he landed next to her and began grooming her too. I’d been so distracted, staring, that I had not even realized the Shaman had bent back over my leg and resumed his assessment like nothing had happened. He did not even tend to the bloody scratches on his abused face.

Warmth washed over my leg as he powered the healing device around his hand with his mind. At least, that’s how I figured it was working, because there were no handy buttons. These were not the healing devices I recalled from my doctor’s office. The heat bathing my break pushed out the deep, throbbing pain, and my brain began to feel a little clearer.

“How did her leg break?” the healer asked, his tone conversational, a bit distracted. He had all his focus on my leg, which I found immensely reassuring. He was a very big naga, bigger than Ekkire, bigger, in fact, than anyone else present. I could see that as I gazed around and took in the many staring faces. He was like a bear with yellow scales and a massive pile of curly blond hair.

Ekkire slipped closer again now that the sleara had settled, and finally his tail curled in a thick loop around me, helping me prop up against his coils so I wasn’t quite so vulnerable and could better see what was going on. At the first touch of his scales to my skin, the sigils lit up again. That settled something inside me, but it caused a flutter of murmurs among our crowd of suspicious watchers.

“She was swept into a gully the earthquake opened up, then carried along by a wash of water from an underground spring,” Ekkire said. That was not what had broken my leg; that had come from a tail blow from a Thunder Rock warrior. I thought it might even have been the guy with the nasty mouth, but it had happened so fast I couldn’t be sure. Perhaps Ekkire thought the half-truth was better than the full story. After all, these guys had allied themselves with the very guys who’d attacked me.

“Ouch,” this Shaman guy said, his yellow eyes flicking to my face and growing soft and kind. “That you survived is a testament to your strength, tiny sky being. Do not worry, I am a most gifted healer, and you will be walking by nightfall.” Walking by nightfall? I doubted that. I’d seen what those healing devices could do, and healing a broken bone in just a few hours seemed extremely unlikely. For serious injuries like that, Corin always used the healing machines in the med bay on Ahoshaga.

“Doubtful,” I said through gritted teeth. He was still healing my injury with the device, but with his other hand, he’d pulled out a knife and begun cutting the ties of my improvised splint. Since Ekkire remained calm, I told myself I had nothing to worry about, but the knife so close to my body still made me tense.

“She says thank you,” Ekkire said tactfully, rather than conveying my prickly response. I shot him a glare and was surprised when he answered with a smile that was both gentle and warm. I racked my brain; had I seen him smile like that before? Maybe, but right now I definitely couldn’t recall, and I just stared, entranced.

“You are very welcome, sky being. I am delighted to meet you,” the Shaman responded, beaming a smile at me that was indeed very delighted. His words seemed extremely contrary to what this war party had been planning to do. Why was he being nice? Wasn’t he planning to kill my kind?

I started to ask, furious that he’d lie to me when I was already so vulnerable. I hated double talk. Ekkire spoke over my beginning protest, speaking louder than he probably needed to, to silence my suspicious exclamation. “Her name is Jasmine. Jasmine, this is Ishmakah. Ish is still an apprentice, but he is indeed a very gifted healer. We have met several times before,” he added, directing those words to me. I was certain he was trying to tell me I could trust this shaman, err… apprentice. That he knew him well enough to know I was in good hands, and to my surprise, it did help. It helped because I trusted Ekkire.

The healing was beginning to take its toll, though. Or was it the pain I’d been in for days now? My sore, abused body was finally starting to ache less, and with it came an exhaustion so deep it was terrifying. I fought it, fought against the sleep pulling me under as long as I could. In the end, I lost. I trusted Ekkire, did I trust him enough to guard me from all these others while I was at my most vulnerable? There was no choice. Darkness claimed me, and I could only hope I was still safe when I woke up.