Page 27 of The Naga Wanderer’s Wounded Mate

Chapter 21

Ekkire

I could not bring myself to leave Jasmine’s side. She had insisted on returning to the search, as it wasn’t over yet. Her determination to help people who still stared at her with open hostility… They didn’t deserve it, that’s how it felt. I could only hover at her side and fume quietly as I saw those suspicious glares, especially from the females gathered with the wounded at the improvised camp. Why? Jasmine had never done anything to harm any of these people; the opposite, in fact. Why could they not give her the courtesy of a warm welcome, the way I always received? Because she had legs instead of a tail?

My mate had hunkered down on the ground with Dove and Hunter, and she was petting the pair with delicate fingers. A reward for how they’d found yet another trapped Sun Fang male in the rubble. I did not know how she’d done it, but I knew it was all her. Somehow, in the span of a few hours, she’d trained these little creatures to search for survivors, their incredible sense of smell even more suited for the task than mine or that of any of the hunters here.

It was because they wanted to please her, the same way I did. I could not fault them for thinking that; I was eager to find ways to please her too. Her smile came so easily now, and while I could still see hints of the anger I’d first encountered, it was no longer directed at what I did. “Who’s left on the list?” she asked, breaking me from my thoughts. Her smile was warm and friendly as she lifted her velvet-brown eyes to my face.

“Five, one of them a youngling,” I said. We’d found far more alive than we’d expected, given the timing and the limited resources. Several bodies had also been recovered, but so far, unerringly, those that the small sleara located were all alive. I wondered if that was a specific scent they searched for, or simply a coincidence. Whatever it was, there was no denying that without Jasmine and the small creatures—generally considered pests by most—we would not have found this many at all.

“Okay, you have one more for me?” Jasmine asked, her voice turning cajoling as she stroked the spines of the sleara. They chirped their distinctive call, huddling close. Even I could tell they were getting tired. My mate had kept them supplied with fresh water from her waterskin and offered the ration bars from the pouch on her belt. Hunter always took them, but Dove turned up her nose at anything that wasn’t pure meat. She was holding a stick in her small paws, like it gave her comfort to have it, while more sticks jutted from a pocket on Jasmine’s coat.

“I will get her food,” I said, certainty filling me that this was the right thing to do. Like Jasmine, these sleara deserved my protection and care. I got it now, why she’d rescued Dove that first night, and what the bond brought both of them. When I said it, Hunter lifted his little head, and with a flutter, landed on my shoulder. His slight body settled with a warm weight, like he belonged.

As I slipped away, I couldn’t bring myself to go far. The mood was still grim, and Semirash was still glaring at Jasmine from a distance. The female was a little worse for wear after being buried for three days, but miraculously uninjured; she’d survived the ordeal better than anyone. She was not going to forget her confrontation with Jasmine any time soon and would carry a grudge. That’s what naga females did best, after all.

“Here,” Srahyi offered. An otherwise rather unremarkable male, he stood out only because he tended to be kind. I recalled the many times he’d offered to share his fire in the past, and his food, and any other supplies I might need. No trade expected. This time, he held out a still-warm bird he must have shot with his bow. The feathers were a purple-gray shade that matched the stone that covered everything here. “A thank you for the sleara.”

I took the bird, relieved this meant I didn’t have to go far, just as Jasmine began jogging after the pair. By now, we’d all seen this ritual several times over, and everyone held their breath in anticipation of what they’d find—closer to the edge of the plateau, which was no surprise, as we were running out of places to look at this point. The triumphant find moments later was skirting the edge of danger, and I realized I’d made a fatal mistake too late.

Jasmine began slipping as even her light footsteps disturbed the precariously placed rocks along the edge. The balance was disturbed; pebbles began to roll, then slide—more and more of them. Shouts went up, not just mine, just as the small sleara found their target.

We all saw it, but by then it was too late. The small face of a youngling among the rocks, a hand weakly rising, and Jasmine diving just as the whole ledge gave way. Someone screamed, I roared, and a flutter of wings, pale white and glittering blue, flurried into the sky. It was as if I flew too as I hurled myself to the edge, but I was not close enough to do anything. I could only watch with horror as she vanished from sight, the rush of rock and dirt covering everything behind her.

Others reached the edge first, peering over it as the rush of rock began to settle and the dust began to clear. Ilesekh was among them, but I hardly paid him any attention. “Jasmine!” I shouted, certain I’d just watched my mate plummet to her death. The ledge had a drop and then a steep slope, but I was certain a human sliding down that could not survive it—not when so much rock fell after her.

Ilesekh was shouting too, and it briefly jarred me from my panic. Why did he sound so worried? He could not possibly care about the fate of my mate… “Jasmine!” I shouted again, ignoring the strangeness and edging even closer to the unstable edge as I searched for her. Dove and Hunter landed on my shoulders, one on each side, their chirps as worried as my calls. Incongruously, I was still holding the dead bird that Srahyi had handed me.

“Jasmine! Where are you?” I shouted again, my eyes frantic as I searched for a way to get over the edge myself. I needed rope, and I began yanking it from my backpack with clumsy fingers. My trident clattered to the ground carelessly, and the bird met the same fate. Hunter and Dove both ignored the food to fly up and begin searching downhill for their human. I wished I had wings so I could do the same.

“Here,” another Sun Fang hunter offered me the end of the rope he’d already tied off around a large boulder nearby. I didn’t even know his name, but I took the thick, purple rope and began lowering myself over the edge. It would be dangerous on the lower, steeper slope, but I didn’t care. Many hands came to hold the rope steady as I began my descent. Except Ilesekh, who remained a frantically pacing figure on the ledge to my left.

With a purpose, I could ignore the pounding panic in my veins, though fear clung like a foul taste in the back of my mouth. I heard then that the Sun Fang leader wasn’t screaming for my mate, but calling out another name. The boy, I realized. The youngling Jasmine and the sleara had found just before they fell over the edge. That’s who he was calling for.

I lowered myself farther, my tail coiling to find grip against the rocky slope. At first there was nothing, and I could only lower myself hand over hand. The plateau had a bit of a lip here, overhanging before curling back into the steep slope. When my tail touched rock, it was all loose sleet and pebbles, and they slipped beneath me. Impossible to stand on, the kind of thing that could bury a male alive if he wasn’t careful.

“Over here! Ekkire! I’m here!” Her voice was so close, and it sounded so normal that I was certain I’d imagined it. I’d been scanning that still-rolling, settling slope of rock and dirt, searching the larger pieces of debris for a sign of her, but her voice hadn’t come from below me. I yanked my gaze up and found what was perhaps the most impossible thing I’d ever seen.

There she was, sitting down, legs slightly spread and braced against the slope. Her eyes were bright, red riding her cheeks, and her smile radiant. “I’ve got him! He’s alive! Tell them he’s alive, okay? They don’t need to worry!” It took me far longer than normal to understand what she was saying. I was fixated on her, searching her body for any injuries she might have sustained. I only noticed the small bundle she held, cradled in her lap, after I’d finally managed to tear my eyes from her face.

Then my breath briefly faltered, and I swore roughly. Above me, voices called, asking what was wrong. They could not see that Jasmine had survived, but they must have heard her voice. Excited chirp kee kees drowned out anything I might have said when Dove and Hunter figured out where she was. They barreled past me so fast that, even with their tiny bodies, I felt myself sway from the air their wings displaced. They landed in excited, eager heaps in her lap, right on top of the small bundle she was holding.

“Ilesekh!” I called out, tilting my head up to look at the ridge where the Sun Fang hunter still paced. “He’s all right—your son. Jasmine saved him.” I wasn’t sure how she’d done it; everything had gone so fast, it had been impossible to see. She must have caught the small boy just as he began falling, and somehow managed to direct their tumble over the ledge into this overhang. The only place they would have been safe from all the falling rock and dirt.

The expression on Ilesekh’s dramatically marked face must have looked identical to the one on mine when I heard Jasmine’s voice. The relief I saw there was so profound that my heart went out to the male, and I didn’t even like him. “Mess?” he asked, so breathlessly that it was clear he could scarcely believe the news.

“He’s uninjured but very weak, at least, I think so. I don’t see any obvious wounds.” Jasmine supplied more details, but I only had eyes for the way she held the small naga boy, and the way he clung to her, huge eyes in his tiny face. Was that what it would look like when she held our son in her arms? Why did that make my heart ache with a longing I’d never felt before?

“Ish there?” she asked, calmer than I was, it seemed. I still couldn’t get myself to do anything but stare, clinging to that rope, unable to find solid ground to stand on. She directed me on what to do, calm as can be. “Ask him if I can give him small sips of water and offer him the ration bar in my pocket, okay? Then you need to toss me a spare rope so I can make a bridge to you.”

“What is she saying? Is he breathing?” Ilesekh was waking from his daze and began making demands. As much as I wanted to linger in my own relief—and the strange discovery I’d just made about wanting children—only one thing mattered: get my mate and the youngling to safety.

It was a flurry of activity, much of it guided by Jasmine’s calm voice as she relayed orders to me. Hunter did not get it when Jasmine called for them to fetch, but Dove was quick to retrieve the rope from my hand. The weight was too much for her to carry alone, but even if Hunter did not understand “fetch,” he understood “help Dove.” Just as helping Jasmine was my reason for being, so helping the white sleara was for Hunter.

She cradled the boy with one arm, then tied her end of the rope around a solid root beneath the ledge. Her “bridge” allowed her to shuffle along it so she could reach me. Once she came in sight of those atop the ridge, shouts went up. The boy she held did not stir, but he had his small arms clutched around her neck so tightly she was at risk of choking. Not only had most of the able-bodied Sun Fang hunters gathered to watch, and to hold back Ilesekh, who might otherwise have hurled himself over the edge without a rope to get to his son. So had most of the female survivors and younglings, and any of the wounded capable of moving.

“Go, bring him up,” she told me when she reached me. Her hand patted my side, then curled around the rope I hung from. “I can make the climb alone. Bring him to Ish.” No, I wanted to tell her. No, I was not climbing up without her. I was not leaving her on this tricky slope alone. She was so determined to save a boy who was not her own, from a species so different from her, and from a clan determined to hate her.