by Naomi Lucas
I’ve never seen either from him and of all the naga males, he’s the closest to me. Not in distance, but in history. He and Vagan.
“I have a pod in my den, but it’s far from here,” he rasps, his eyes on the female before him. “Her screams when we move her… They destroy me.”
“You have a pod?” Gemma turns to him. “We need to get her there. Now! While she’s unconscious.”
I shake my head. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“Daisy can’t stay out here in her condition. She needs shelter, a place to rest, food, and medicine.”
Zaku growls. “Then we go.” He pulls his tail under him and begins to slowly push his hands under Daisy.
The female’s eyes fly open, her mouth parts, and she shrieks. Zaku roars and jerks his hands away. “I can’t help you here!” he yells.
A sob leaves the female, and her entire body convulses.
“Try again,” Gemma stammers. Her face has gone whiter than the snow-capped mountains.
Zaku’s hands shake.
Gemma leans over her friend and coos, petting her brow where she is unharmed. The Daisy’s cries lower to whimpers. “Shhh, sweetheart. We’re taking you to safety. You have to be strong, okay? If the pain gets to be too much, let it take you away.” Gemma looks at Zaku when Daisy blinks out tears. “Again.”
“I can’t,” he chokes.
“You can. You can do this, Zaku. You can do this. She needs you.” Zaku and Gemma share a look, and my first reaction is to pummel Zaku to the ground and kill him, but I force my mind to calm.
No one’s ever talked to one of us the way Gemma is talking to Zaku. She’s comforting him. She’s doing it while she’s still hurt and afraid, wearing clothes that are falling off her body, her feet bound. She’s showing more strength than Zaku, than any of us.
“Zaku,” she orders when he doesn’t move, her voice hardening. “Lift her. We don’t have time to waste.”
Zaku’s nostrils flare. He looks down at the female and closes his eyes. I place my hand on Gemma’s shoulder, curling my tail around her as Daisy screams again.
My soul winces.
Azsote joins us, and together we make the arduous, devastating journey to Zaku’s den.
Twenty-Six
Betrayal From Above
Gemma
The next several days are a blur. I barely sleep. I don’t leave Daisy’s side once we make it to the King Cobra’s lair. Zaku’s den. He doesn’t leave her side either, which means, Vruksha, Zaku, and I are hovering over Daisy day in and day out.
I rub my eyes.
If it wasn’t for Azsote, I don’t think any of us would take the time to eat.
I drop my hands to stare through the plastic screen of the medical pod. The buzz of it soothes me, and I’m just so thankful it works. It works, and Zaku has one. He didn’t like what it did to Daisy when he turned it on, how it stuck her with needles and shot her up of questionable stuff, but Vruksha and Azsote managed to hold him down and keep him away long enough for it to do its thing.
I wasn’t thrilled about it either, but I managed to keep it to myself. A pod over a thousand years old going to work on my friend? I can’t help but hope for the best and be terrified and suspicious at the same time. But suspicion is better than helplessness. And whatever the medical intelligence did… it worked.
Daisy hasn’t screamed since we laid her down.
She’s stable. Resting. And the pod, though not perfect, is keeping her clean. Zaku’s robots are keeping her fed... The burns on her flesh appear less angry every day.
I sigh and turn my head from where it rests on my arms and stare out the window. Vruksha is gazing out of it too, facing away from me. His glistening ruby scales dazzle me with their beauty.
It takes my breath away. He’s gorgeous in the light. My naga male.
I would paint him just how he is now, how I see him when he doesn’t notice me looking, gazing over the land he’s conquered. I would paint him with the sun at his back, and his spear held high, casting lightning upon his foes.
The picture would hang over my bed. I’d stare at it and touch myself.
He wants to go home. I feel it. He’s not comfortable here, in Zaku’s domain, and it shows. He’s always touching me in some way, like right now, his tailtip is curled around my ankle. He doesn’t let me talk to Zaku or Azsote without him. And when I’m about to faint from exhaustion, he winds me up in his tail and forces me to sleep on him.
I’d enjoy Vruksha’s concern if it wasn’t for the beds Zaku has. Beds with cloth blankets and sheets. He also has piles of clothes in every size and has let me have whatever fits, including shoes and undergarments. He has… luxury. His home is clean, bright, airy. He has dozens of working robots as well. They manage the place.
But Zaku won’t let any of us leave the front rooms, and I’m becoming curious about what he has hidden within his strange, ancient human home.
Outside his home, it’s different. It’s almost calm. The terrain near Zaku’s place is rough, sprawling, but still serene. There’s a view of the gorge, the mountains, including the one Daisy crashed into. We’re at the peak of one, and the view goes far.
It's nice as long as I keep my eyes off the lawn, where there are skulls everywhere and a pile of rotting pig corpses. But it’s easy to ignore them being as exhausted and numb as I am right now.
When my thoughts grow bleak, I can just look out the window and feel better. I forgot what it’s like to see trees, grass, and animals through a window. Even dead ones.
It’s usually stars, nebulas, asteroid fields, and planets.
We’re far from the facility, farther still from Vruksha’s bunker. I’ve been trying to map it out in my head. Zaku lives in the opposite direction from the facility, in a mansion built into the side of a mountain, like a king.
King Cobra…
I didn’t like Zaku at first, blaming him as the reason Daisy and I were sacrificed, but I’ve decided to hate him a little less.
He cares for Daisy. He never leaves her side, just like Vruksha never leaves mine. He worries constantly, and though he’s obstinate, almost bullish, and I want to slap him even when I’m sleeping, I can forgive him. He gazes at Daisy as if she’s his entire world.
But I keep my doubts. I still don’t know why Daisy stole a skiff. I wonder how long she flew it before crashing, where was she trying to go?
I hear a moan and I sit upright, flicking my eyes to her. Zaku is asleep across from me, sprawled over a cushiony chair, his large tail draped over the glass shield of the pod.
Daisy twitches. Her chapped, peeling lips part slightly, and another moan escapes.
“Daisy?’ I whisper.
One of her eyelids cracks open and finds me.
I sit forward. “Daisy?”
“Gemma?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
She shudders, and her eye closes. She tries to raise her hand, and I stop her.
“Don’t move.” But as I say it, the pod goes into action and a screen of Daisy’s current vitals appears in the glass. A robotic arm from the side injects her with something that makes Daisy sigh.
“Where am I?” she asks when the pod returns to normal.
“Zaku’s… house? Den,” I correct. “In his medical pod.”
Her one eye looks around, stopping on the large naga tail above her on the glass. She follows it over to the male snoring on the seat beside her. He’s still asleep, and I have a feeling his snores are drowning out our whispering. I debate waking him, but I want to speak to Daisy first.
I sense Vruksha at my back.
Daisy stares at Zaku.
My brow furrows, trying to read her, but her face is swollen almost beyond recognition. Is she afraid?
“Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?” I ask. “Anything at all? I’m glad you’re awake. We were terrified for a bit there… You were in so much pain.”
Her tongue pokes out to taste her lips. “I don’t feel anythi
ng right now.”
“I think the pod is pumping you with painkillers.”
Daisy’s eye shifts back over to me. “I crashed.”
My face falls. “Yeah.”
“I shouldn’t be alive.” Her voice is barely more than an airy, strained whisper.
“But you are.”
Despair washes over her, and my heart squeezes. “Daisy,” I continue, “you’re alive and you’re going to stay that way.”
But I need to know, I need to know if Zaku can be trusted. If she’s safe with him. I won’t leave her here if she isn’t. I’ve been watching the King Cobra, and though I now like him okay, it doesn’t mean he’s not a monster. Peter turned out to be a monster.
“I shouldn’t be,” she chokes. “I fell so far. My escape pod wouldn’t eject…”
“Don’t think about it anymore. It’s over. I have something I need to ask you, something important.”
Her lips tremble. “What?”
I lower my voice, leaning right up to the glass. “Are you… Are you with Zaku?”
Confusion flutters across Daisy’s face for a split-second, but then it’s gone. “He caught me.”
“But do you want to stay caught?”
Her eye turns glassy, and she looks up at the ceiling. “He calls me his queen.”
“That’s not what I’m asking…”
Her gaze goes to Vruksha. “Do you like him?”
I don’t think I could explain how I feel about Vruksha to another. Being with him is like being sated, free. It doesn’t make sense. My breath whizzes through my teeth. “I like him a lot,” I tell her.
A lot.
But does she feel that way about Zaku? I eye the naga male.
“I’m glad,” she croaks. “Gemma...” Daisy says, dodging my question.
“The crash wasn’t your fault.”
“I was shot down.”
Shot down? My brow furrows. Daisy shudders, clearly upset, and all I want to do is hold her, tell her it’s all going to be okay.
“Who?” I ask.
Daisy shudders again.
And a streak of fear bolts through me, constricting my throat. The ship here on Earth, the transport ship we took from The Dreadnaut, isn’t equipped with weapons besides a couple of turrets that can only be used while landlocked to protect it from thieves…
So that only makes one other option.
“The Dreadnaut shot me down,” she whispers.
Zaku groans, his tail slides on the pod. He’s waking.
“How? Why?” I ask. “They wouldn’t do that. Captain Michal would never fire on our own.”
Daisy’s eye goes wide, flicking between Zaku’s tail and me. “Gemma, I was trying to reach them. Tell them what’s happening down here.” Her hand shakes like she’s trying to rise again. “They know.”
She did what I was unable to do.
Daisy cries out just as Zaku snaps to attention, taking over. Daisy closes her eye as Zaku speaks to her in a soft voice. He hisses at me to back away. I reach behind me, and Vruksha clasps my hand. His tail coils the rest of the way up my leg.
Vruksha leads me away.
If what Daisy says about The Dreadnaut is true, my fears have been made real. Vruksha isn’t safe, and it appears neither are Daisy and me. I squeeze my eyes shut, suddenly overwhelmingly exhausted.
If Central Command knows what Peter has done, then there’s no help for us. We can only help ourselves. I turn in Vruksha’s embrace and rest my head against his chest. His hands tangle in my hair, his short claws grazing my scalp, prickling me with comfort.
“It’s time to go,” he says.
“I know.”
I have a promise to keep.
And more than anything, it’s one I want to keep.
Twenty-Seven
The Only Choice
Gemma
We don’t leave Zaku’s den for another two days.
Daisy begs for me to stay longer, and so the males fight each other for dominion. Vruksha is forced to give way to Zaku, because we’re in the Cobra’s territory, and the longer we remain, he gets a little more crazed.
By the end, I’m with him more than I am with Daisy, soothing his sensitive serpent manhood. But we’re never truly alone, not with Azsote lurking around. The Boomslang is always watching when he’s not out hunting. I see his envy building.
Zaku and Vruksha have noticed it too.
Last night, I found Azsote watching me change into softer clothes for sleep. Vruksha tackled him, injecting Azsote with his venom, forcing the Boomslang down. Azsote was then dragged out of Zaku’s den and tossed over the side of the mountain.
But he’s outside, waiting, and now that I know he’s there, that he’s willing to invade my privacy to see me naked, I don’t leave the front rooms of Zaku’s den.
I can’t be with Vruksha the way we both need.
I crave him. I crave the way he moves my body. The way he takes control of my limbs, winding me up in his tail and making me forget everything but him. Nothing else matters when Vruksha and I are alone.
So when I stuff my bag full of all the clothes and items Zaku’s given me, I’m hopeful.
Daisy wakes several times a day for short periods, and the pain in her gaze eases more each day. Whatever the pod is doing to heal her, it’s working. Even her burns have mended a great deal.
She dodges my questions every time I bring up Zaku. She won’t speak to me about him, but she also doesn’t seem to fear him. It’s possible I’m being overprotective, assuming a closeness she might not feel.
She’s chosen to stay and heal. I don’t know what that means when it comes to her and Zaku, but I take it she doesn’t know either.
“Are you sure you have to go?” Daisy asks. She’s lying on her good side today, facing me. The swelling around her eye has gone down significantly.
“I promised Vruksha,” I’ve told her this before.
“I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you too, but we’ll see each other again. I know it. We’ll be back soon, I promise.”
Though Vruksha is one word away from doing to Zaku what he did to Azsote, I know he and Zaku have an understanding. They trust each other; I can tell. They may never admit it, may not even realize it themselves since both males are reluctant to show weakness of any kind, but it’s there.
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am. Are you sure you want to stay?”
Daisy nods. “I want to heal.”
I purse my lips, search her face. “Okay. Enjoy this great view you have and think of me when you do, okay?” I hesitate to leave her. “I’ll search for a way we can communicate,” I tell her. It’s been on my mind. Peter took our personal comm ware before he gave us over to the nagas, and I want it back. There’s stuff here that can help us, I know it. I just have to find it first. “When I find it, you’ll be the first to know.”
Daisy smiles then her face winces in pain. “Good,” she rasps.
I rise. “No more dangerous missions without me? If you run again, wait for me?”
“We’ll see.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Zaku growls.
Glimpsing him on the other side. “Bye, Zaku,” I say. “Vruksha and I will be back,” I warn.
He hisses.
With one last lingering look at Daisy, I make my way to the exit where Vruksha waits for me. I pass through the barriers of the den’s entryway and find Vruksha on the broken steps leading away outside. The doors close behind me with a resounding, finalized thud, and glancing back, I’m surprised Daisy managed to escape this place at all.
She’s stronger than me.
Still, I can’t help but think there’s something Daisy isn’t telling me. Something about Zaku she’s not sharing. What’s behind the doors of his den, the ones he won’t let anyone pass through?
I chew on my lip. I’ll find out, I decide.
Vruksha snatches my bag, and I look up to find his eyes glinting. His scales
are rigid over his knuckles where he grips his spear.
He scents the Boomslang’s tension. Tension is how he describes the mating heat he feels since he doesn’t have another name for it. The way he gets—his bulge expanding—when he’s near me, tastes me, or sees me naked. Tension. The pressure of the seed, almost unbearable, filling his cock until spilled.
There’s no way of knowing what Azsote will do if it gets bad. Lately, he’s been giving off a smell that wrinkles my nose.
I didn’t know this until two days ago.
Apparently all the naga males have a knot on their cocks, one that expands and fills continuously until they spill the contents.
No wonder why I feel beyond stretched when Vruksha’s inside me.
“Two days,” he says. Vruksha’s eyes go to my feet, but fortunately, I’ve found some proper boots. “Can you walk? For now?”
Curling my toes, I nod. I take the long knife Zaku gave me, palming the handle of it where it’s sheathed at my belt. We make the slow descent down his mountain.
For the rest of the day, we’re scaling down one mountain, only to climb another. We stop occasionally to rest and eat, but never for long. Vruksha won’t let us. He’s tense, and as the hours pass, the muscles of his back and arms only bunch further.
When the sun lowers, his countenance darkens even more. It’s making me nervous.
He’s been cold since we left his bunker, and now that it’s just the two of us, his mood has only soured. My stomach twists. We have to talk; I know we do. We’ve kept our conversations to the here-and-now while with Daisy and the others, but they’re gone now. Nothing is stopping us but the trek—the wilderness.
I keep my mouth shut.
Vruksha is focusing on our path and staying vigilant. I’m right there with him. Every snap of a twig, every gust of wind, even the chirps of bugs and birds keep me on edge.
People lived here. I trail the heavy growth of trees with my eyes, pushing through several branches. My people. We were landlocked here for thousands of years.