Page 30 of The Naga Wanderer’s Wounded Mate

Chapter 23

Ekkire

For the first hour we were floating downstream in the water, I worried Jasmine would get too cold. I’d been certain it would be fine; Zeidon had talked to me about the technique he’d used with his mate. Jasmine was small, and that made her lose heat more quickly, so I worried anyway. Yet that small size also made it easy for me to keep her dry atop me as I floated on my back. I used my tail as a rudder, steering us without effort around any obstacles and creating warmth with my muscles.

The mating marks glowed warmly against her, too, and each time I pressed my nose to the edge of her cheek, she was still fine, cooling only a little from the occasional fine spray of water or the edge of fog we passed through. The stream was one I’d traveled many times before, especially downhill like this. It began to warm exactly when I expected it to, though it also leveled off a little and slowed our pace. The several-feet-high drop had come and gone, my body coiling to keep her dry and secure as we took the small plummet.

Now, in the early dawn hours, she began to talk to me. Her voice held that same croon-like quality that had entranced me before, and tamed sleara. First, she just talked of her family, and how she’d lost her parents to a factory accident when she had just become an adult. Whatever a factory was, it sounded dangerous, because three years after that, her brother had met the same fate. My mate had suffered heavy losses too early on, and it explained to me why she had a hard time letting anyone in. I had been devastated in the same way when I’d lost my father in a hunting accident when I was fifteen. After that, I’d been on my own.

What truly got my attention was when she talked about her job as a wilderness guide. “I worked for an agency at first, but later I started my own company. I’d take rich, privileged parties out into some of the most remote nature reserves on Earth. At first… that was fun. I was the girl, the novelty, the underdog. Other guides—male guides—would throw me their extras out of pity, you know? If they overbooked, they’d send their clients my way. Then they started preferring me over them, and things changed.”

My senses sharpened as I heard that, my arms tightening around her. I was not aware at first that I’d done that, but I could not help myself. She sounded hurt, not excited about her life, about doing what she loved. She sounded like it was a painful past she would rather not remember. Too well did I recall how she’d mentioned being hurt before, being unable to trust anyone. It was her past on Earth—the strange world she came from—that had inflicted these wounds on her. Wounds she’d felt made her unsuitable to be mine, though I knew that was not true.

“Ekkire,” she whispered, barely audible over the rush of water and Dove’s tiny snore from inside Jasmine’s warm, dry coat. “I wanted to share this with you because that seemed only fair, but you should know: if that means you don’t want me, no hard feelings, kay? We can still part ways after we’ve dismantled that bomb.”

I did not know what a bomb was, but I assumed she meant the device Ilesekh had seen Msera with. His means to destroy the sky wreck once and for all. What mattered far more were the words I did understand: part ways. Was she crazy? Hadn’t she heard me when I told her I loved her? Loved her the way naga had never loved before, until the arrival of the humans?

“There is nothing you could say, ever, that would make me want to leave you, Jasmine. Nothing. Do you understand? The mate bond chose right. I know that, and nothing can ever change it.” I wished I could turn her around so I could see the look in her pretty brown eyes as I said it. There was no answer for several moments, and unease filled me that I had not said enough—that I had not convinced her of my devotion. Then she sniffled, and when my tongue flicked out, it caught the edge of salt. She was crying; that was the taste of her tears.

“Oh Ekkire, you’re so sweet, you know that? You’re the kindest, most caring man I’ve ever met. I actually believe it when you say that, without a shred of doubt. Thank you.” There was a hitch in her words, another sign of the tears, but she sounded proud, relieved. I eased my grip around her a tad, relieved too. Good.

“The thing is,” she said, then swallowed roughly. “I’m not proud of this part, but ah… sometimes, being one of the few women in the field, it was my one selling point. It didn’t start out like that, it really didn’t. Some clients, though, —they thought I came included in the price. I couldn’t always say no.” Couldn’t or hadn’t been her choice? It took me a moment to truly figure out what she meant, the idea so foreign to me that it was almost impossible to wrap my head around.

She had chosen her moment to tell me this terribly, or perhaps perfectly. If she weren’t so dependent on staying warm, and thus safe and alive, by the way I swam… I nearly upended her into the cold stream anyway, so furious I saw red for several hot, blazing seconds. The sound of an avalanche rumbled in the pass around us, birds alighting with screeches from the trees. No, not an avalanche heralding more danger, but the sound of my furious growl. Trapped in the water between the mountain’s long arms, I could only howl out my anger on her behalf.

My prickly, wounded mate. Had I not sensed her injuries went more than skin deep? But this? No, I could never have imagined that was what she’d been carrying around all along. The fury took a long moment to die down, and even after the growl had eased, I still could not unclench my jaw. Jasmine had twisted her head up, peering awkwardly at the bottom of my chin, and risking her pretty eyes beneath my horn.

She did not speak, and neither did the sleara I’d woken make a sound. She stared at me from her coat’s collar with large eyes, one pair mercury, the other amethyst. I tested my ability to speak, uncoiled the loops of tail I’d curled around her to steady our course in the water, and still did not know what to say to take away her hurt.

“It is a very good thing those males live across the stars, or I would be hunting them this instant. They did not know the treasure they had; they did not deserve you.” I did not give voice to the very violent ways in which I imagined these males would meet their ends if the stars ever saw fit to bring them to me. They were gruesome, they were bloody, and they were still not anywhere close to what they deserved.

“Hey, Ekkire. If I didn’t love you so much, it might be annoying how perfectly sweet you are. You always say the right thing. How do you do that?” Her small hand reached up and touched the side of my face with a gentle finger. It was perhaps the only spot she could touch, but I liked it anyway.

Annoying how sweet I was? I had been thinking only of murder and death, and she thought that was sweet? I was still trying to figure that out as I spoke, because the only answer that mattered was that I loved her too. I did, so much. “You are my whole world, Jasmine. How could you think this would turn me away from you? It only makes me admire your strength even more.”

She made a sound that was half laugh, half frustrated little growl. “See? I did it again. Gah, Ekkire, no wonder you talk so little. You save up all the good words for when they matter. I like that.” Then her head tilted, and I knew she’d caught sight of the light of the sunrise coming over the hills below us. We were almost there.

“Remind me to tell you some fun stories, too. I have those. I’m not a complete mess. Even the story of how I got here is kind of fun.” How she got here? I sincerely doubted that, as I’d learned the truth of these humans from the outcasts at Haven.

They had been cast out by their own people—condemned unjustly, wrongly, even unfairly—for things they’d done. Vera had been falsely accused; Kalani and Reid had fought for the rights of others; Cosima had been hidden away like a dirty secret. Zeidon had explained to me that Farah had tried to help a child and had been punished for it. No, it wasn’t a laughing matter, but I knew it would be a story that would make me love my Jasmine even more.

“Then I shall tell you of the time I stole a weaver’s tools to try weaving myself, and made such a tangle of the string they had to cut me free.” It made her laugh, as intended, even without the full story. It made me realize something, and it was quite a shocking discovery, at least to me. I did know how to talk to people; she was right. I was very sensitive to Jasmine’s moods; I did not have to worry so much that I’d miss something. Just because I liked my quiet didn’t mean I was bad at the conversation parts.

She was still softly giggling over the promise of the anecdote, her body draped across mine and still almost entirely kept out of the water. Her outer layers were definitely getting wetter, though, and her laugh sounded tired. From the journey, the emotional upheaval she’d been through, and far too many near misses since the earthquake had separated her from Haven.

I checked the slopes of the mountains, now tapered off almost entirely into rolling hills. The sun was casting her violet rays over us at a steep angle, still barely climbing above the horizon. Soon, the water was not flowing fast enough to beat walking, and the riverbed would become too shallow. The landscape was also beginning to show more signs of the earthquake’s damage: toppled trees, broken branches, smaller slides of displaced earth and rock. The tremble had been felt less here, though it had reverberated up the hills and shaken loose the stone avalanche by the outpost. The damage would soon become as severe as it had been at the site of the sky wreck.

“Let’s get out of here,” I suggested quietly. “Day is almost here. We’ll be faster on land now.” It would also get her blood pumping and warm her up again. She had to be getting stiff from lying still, even if I could tell her cheek was still pleasantly, softly warm.

I swam us diagonally across the stream, rising as we hit a rocky bank. Once out of the water, I gently set her on her feet, my arms lingering around her waist until I was certain she was steady. “Good? Do you need a fire?” She glanced down, shook the soggy edges of her sleeves and the hem of her thick fur coat, then stomped her feet, which were definitely wet.

“Fire, but we’ll be quick. Tea, change of clothes, food, then we’ll move. The crashed ship is still hours away, isn’t it?” she said. I nodded, then handed her my fire starter and the fire-making supplies in their waterproof pouch. She instantly hunkered down to get to work in a good, dry spot. As she did, I freed her wet boots from her feet, collected more wood to feed the flames she’d started, and pulled out warm furs to replace the now-wet coat.

As soon as I knew she was eating and brewing a hot drink, I told her I was going to make some kites and slipped away. It would draw attention from anyone, even Thunder Rock if they saw them, but I hoped the kites would bring the dragon if it was still around. We were too far away for them to be visible yet, but I’d prefer to have them ready to go as soon as I knew we were in range.

When I came back to Jasmine with my gathered materials, she’d taken off everything wet and replaced what she could. There were no spare pants, but she’d used smaller pieces of fur to create footcoverings while hers dried. She’d also pulled on my tunic to replace the drying coat, and wrapped a fur pelt around her middle to stay warm. She’d even worked the leather to help it stay supple, and was dealing with the edges of her coat now. I smiled, impressed.

“I’ll make the kites while you do that,” I told her, “and then we must move quickly. It’s still far, and we have no idea when or what Msera plans.” The device was so ancient we had forgotten how to use it, but Corin might know. Corin wasn’t just good at the things our ancestors left behind; he was also inspired at making things explode. I’d seen one or two of his concoctions in action before. The story of how he’d once covered the escape of Zathar and his mate by blowing up the Thunder Rock bathhouse was also a favorite to retell at the campfire at night.

Jasmine was done before I was, her body working through tiredness with the air of someone who’d done it before. Someone who knew her limits and when to push. I liked seeing that; it was more proof that we’d work well together. She repacked everything so it could dry while we walked, and offered me bites of a ration bar as I tied the last string on my pair of kites in place. The sleara, I discovered, had been tucked into the hood of the tunic she now wore, a perfect little nest hanging over her shoulder.

“Ready,” I agreed, rising to show her the simple pair of small kites I’d built. They would fly high, and, coated with the shimmering red sap of a tefir plant, be highly visible too. On strips of light bark, I’d scrawled identical short messages and tied those to the kites’ strings. “I’ll let the first one up as soon as we reach open terrain.”

She nodded, her expression grim and worried. She had to be uncomfortable and cold from the water still clinging to her, but she made no comment as she kicked sand over the small fire she’d built. Moments later, we were moving, and it surprised me how easily we fell into a comfortable rhythm. This was urgent, and we were pushing ourselves to move fast, but her short human legs kept up with mine. She had no issue jogging at a steady pace at my side, sustaining a speed I had not thought possible for a human.

I gave that some thought as we moved, the urgency that had set us on this journey riding us both hard. Jasmine might be small and not as protected against certain environmental issues as I was, but she had clever solutions for them. More than that, her body was much stronger than it looked. Flexible and durable, she wouldn’t slow down a hunting party at all.

The mood became grimmer the closer we got to the plains where the sky wreck had crashed into Serant. The damage the earthquake had done became more obvious, and once we reached the edge of the first gully, we both paused to look. That gully was what had started all this, and it had nearly killed her. “I am glad I found you when I did,” I said, briefly touching her chin.

“So am I,” she said, smiling. Then she pointed at the far horizon, where the edge of a dark shape was only just visible. “You think they’ll see the kite?” I squinted at the shadow, trying to estimate the distance. Far, at least four hours away. Jasmine had already turned to resume her jog, likely deciding on her own that we weren’t close enough yet.

“The dragon might see it if he’s patrolling,” I said, pulling free the first kite and releasing it carefully. The construction would not last, the leafy canopy was fragile and easy to tear, but it might last long enough to be seen. “I’m going to try.” She halted with a nod, her hand tightening around the bow she held.

It took only a few moments to make it soar, and then I tied it off to a steady branch so it would stay up as long as the wind was strong enough. She had already jogged off, and I had to push myself to catch up. “If Msera sees it, he might launch that bomb immediately. We have to hurry,” she told me. After that, neither of us spoke; we needed all our breath and concentration to travel downhill through the rugged, damaged terrain.