Page 14 of Serpents of the Night

Lori leaned in Daskh and smiled at the loving brush of Slengral’s wing against her arm. In her mind they were no different than the other mates around them. She only hoped that they would be similarly accepted as one of them. Though the mated females didn’t stare, they did occasionally glance her way with varying emotions from suspicion, to hostility, to simple open curiosity. She certainly hoped that there were more like Shaleia and her mate among them. It would make their time in the shinara easier at the very least. And if she could leave established allies behind when they could finally leave, that would be even better.

Chapter 11

Kehtal was glad when the feast finally began to come to a close. Not since being held prisoner by humans had he felt so surrounded by an unknown and unpredictable potential for danger. In some ways, this was worse as he was surrounded by numerous large females who could kill him without reason or provocation. Or even accidentally in the heat of the moment.

A tremor crawled through him as he inconspicuously watched a large female sliding close, her glowing yellow gaze moving over them. His tail tightened, preparing to defend himself, his nest brothers, or his mate. It was sadly laughable considering how small he was, but he could do no less. His instinct and his own hidden damage saw to it. He had seen firsthand what happened when two females got into a dispute over a desirable male. The females had torn into each other with all the fury of males disputing over territory in the upper caverns.

For all the laws that were in place to protect the shinara from male aggression, it was made a sad mockery by their own violence. The laws that insisted that the males were the violent and dangerous ones were a lie, and the lie was a foolish one since it rid the shinara of the strong territorial instincts of powerful males who would protect the nests. Yet those males who would be an even match for the females' size and strength, and some few that would be of a size to potentially overpower them, like Daskh, were automatically expelled for that reason alone, while the females utilized selective breeding which encouraged smaller males making them vulnerable even as it made them desirable.

And a small, desirable male far too often got caught between the angry females. An unlucky male in that situation was more often than not mistakenly torn apart between them. Kehtal choked on the panic tightening his throat. Images of the small bright blue body of his brother Koru dripping with blood, flayed flesh dropping from him, and broken segments of his tail being torn off. Even his primary sant, which had emerged in response to the females’ pheromones, had been ripped free from his body, but he had mercifully been dead long before that happened. His beautiful head had flopped, his neck broken as they tugged his lifeless body back and forth between them in the haga’s inspection field. The terror that filled him then rose within him now under the female’s hard scrutiny. But there were other reasons he was afraid as well, beyond being scarred by witnessing what happened to his brother.

The female’s gaze lingered on him, and his insides clenched. It took everything he had to appear non-reactive to her presence. Though she was not equal to the size of the queen matriarch, she came close, her fuchsia scales shimmering with the sparkling red pigments of crushed dulo stone. Her mouth parted, her tongues moved and rose to the roof of her mouth, scenting him. Her wings rose from her side and fanned wide, sending her pheromones rolling toward him far more brazenly than the subtle invitations that the other females had sent as they attempted to entice Slengral. She still did not dare to sing and make her move that forward, but there was a hard glitter to her eyes that betrayed the fact that she was considering it.

Naturally, he did not smell it. Therein lay his secret shame that made him truly undesirable. Although his coloring was not considered flashy enough to be ideal, he was still considered an attractive and desirable male as a physical specimen, but he was not responsive to female pheromones. There were other manual ways to get him to respond, as the human scientists worked out, but he could not be enticed into mating simply by pheromone exposure—conversely, he could also not be calmed by it as other males of his species were. He had to truly desire to mate with a female in order for his sant to react and emerge and enthusiastically prepare for and enter into breeding. Even without the protection of being mated, he did not have the expected reactions. Even a mated male would show some reaction to the scent even if he rejected it.

The female’s eyes narrowed on him. She knew. A stronger tremor ran through him. She knew that he was damaged. Not of ideal size to serve the shinara as an inadvertent protector of the community nests by jealously defending their territory within the cave system, and undesirable for breeding, males like him were simply killed.

The first female who discovered his secret had nearly been successful in crushing him to death with her tail. It had been on the haga inspection ground where females came to look at young males who had come of breeding age to select a potential mate. He had still been numb with the shock of Koru’s death and had been staring at the blood smeared over the floor when the female came up to entice him. He had not even realized what she had been attempting until it was too late. The attack had come unexpectedly, her tail coiling around him with the intention of delivering a quick death. He still did not know how he clawed his way free. His memory of what happened was fragmented. All he knew was that though he bore no physical scars, he was certain that she did. He had a dim memory of her blood on his claws and her angry, shrill shrieks following him as he flew blindly through the haga.

This female’s cold, angry gaze reminded him of that female, and he drew back instinctively, certain that she would kill him. Or worse—used as an excuse to kill Lori just to make sure she was not breeding his traits.

“Kehtal? Are you well?”

His head turned to meet Slengral’s concerned gaze. Daksh frowned worriedly from Lori’s other side as he wisely held their angry mate in place so that she would not jump up and try to confront the much larger female, his gaze shifting between him and the female. Kehtal blinked in surprise. Daskh’s reaction he expected, but not Slengral’s. Although they had grown close as nest brothers, Slengral did not know his secret. But Daskh knew.

Daskh had found him. Daskh had hidden him in his cell until nightfall. And Daskh had fled with him a full two revolutions before his required expulsion from the haga to protect him. They had secretly nested together, though it was something that would be considered unthought-of among scholars in the shinara. Even Daskh’s mother, when she managed to get away from the shinara to visit her beloved son, had remarked on it from time to time with the concern of a mother and the academic scrutiny of a scholar. But she had accepted him all the same, and he had mourned her with Daskh when they discovered that she had died from a sickness that had swept through the shinara. She had been the only one who knew. Not even Slengral suspected that Daskh nested with him and had become just as accustomed to his presence as Kehtal had become accustomed to having the larger male there keeping him safe.

The female’s head turned toward his family and Kehtal went cold with fear, unable to anticipate what she was about to do. Her gavo rose, her wings widening threateningly. And then, as quick as it had begun, her wings snapped closed, her gavo lowering as she undulated away from them. The tension filling him drained out in an exhausting burst as Kehtal stared after her.

Kehtal’s mouth opened, but to his horror, he could not force a single sound out other than a garbled, faint hiss. Slengral’s brow lowered, his gavo twitching as he watched the female leave and join a small group nearby. She continued to casually glance their way, and a forbidding look crossed his face. In one smooth movement, Slengral’s tail shot over and entangled with Kehtal’s in a demonstration of protection, solidarity, and even perhaps ownership that many females would recognize since it was a common signal females used to warn off others. Lori jabbed him in the shoulder, a look of frustration on her face.

“Kehtal needs to get out of here,” she hissed. “Hell, I need to get out of here. I think I’ve reached my limit of being looked at like some oddity while half the females here try to seduce my mates like they think they’ve got some right to.”

Daskh grunted in agreement, his large gavo rising in an impressive display of warning. The small collection of females replied in kind, their gavos shooting up angrily but they obligingly turned away, giving their backs to them while Lori fumed helplessly in his arms.

“Slengral...” their mate growled.

Sighing, Slengral snapped his gavo in agreement and angled his body toward his mother. Kehtal’s gaze followed his and he immediately shrank into his nest brother. Hashal squeaked in protest from where he had chosen to hide under the male’s wing. Zathexa, it seemed, was already aware of what was going on and was displeased. He could feel the brunt of her anger, though it was not focused on him. Nor did she offer more than a look of annoyance to her son. Instead, her displeasure seemed centered on Lori as if she were the cause of the problem.

“Respectfully, queen matriarch,” Slengral began, but he was cut off by an impatient hiss from the queen.

“Yes, I know. I heard your mate. Humans speak loud enough that I am certain the entire room heard her,” she retorted, earning an amused laugh from several of the Seshanamitesh perched nearby. That same collection of females and their males seemed to be endlessly amused with everything they did. Kehtal had caught more than one mocking comment directed at their mate whenever Lori tasted anything or even moved in a way that they found odd, which had just fed his agitation throughout the night. “Go then,” she ordered with an impatient sigh, waving them off. “See to your human’s demands and your little nest brother’s welfare.”

Despite being stuck to Slengral’s side, Kehtal bristled over how the queen matriarch referred to Lori. He spat a sharp, venomous hiss that was thankfully completely muffled against Slengral’s wing which was pressed against his face. His nest brother, however, did give him an incredulous look as the male was unable to miss it. With a murmured platitude, Slengral lowered his head in a respectful tilt to his mother before ushering them up with a flick of his wings as he gathered up Hashal into his arms.

The eyes of every male and female in the room followed them as they rose from around their short table and laughter erupted among a number of them when their small mate was promptly lifted into Daskh’s arms. Kehtal met the gaze of a laughing male no bigger than him and bared his teeth venomously when the male’s mate was not looking. He may be nothing compared to the strength of a mature female, but he would take an opportunity to strike if it presented itself and let the male know it. The pale-yellow male smile dropped, and his mouth snapped shut with a look of alarm as he ducked beneath his mate’s wing. It was a weak victory considering how his own cowardice was pricking at him, but Kehtal felt marginally better as he followed his family out of the great hall of the palace and into the freedom of the night air.

Chapter 12

Daskh rose from the carved-out bed with a yawn, shifting the smaller orange tail off him as he did so. Lori mumbled softly in her sleep at the small disturbance, but he was glad that it was not enough to wake her. But then it took a bit more effort to wake his hithana. His sweet mate could probably sleep through a cavern shake with little more than a mutter of disgust in her sleep.

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he peered down at his family in the bed. Lori sighed and instinctively rolled back toward Slengral, as he expected she would. And also, as expected, it took only a couple of heartbeats for Kehtal to fill in the vacated space beside her. The smaller male wriggled sleepily into place against her back, his tail coiling over her legs and over Slengral’s tail. They looked so peaceful and comfortable, and part of him longed to rejoin them despite the prickle of unease that had interrupted his sleep. An unease born not from the inherent dangers of the caves—those he understood and could anticipate—but the unknown and hidden dangers within the confines of the shinara. It disturbed him more than he wished to acknowledge.

In truth, for all its sophistication, the technology available was less impressive and held little sway with him. He did not trust the deceptive illusion of peace of the shinara. Especially knowing that the queen matriarch was determined to get what she wanted from Slengral. How long would she push until she outright forced compliance? This was the shinara and what happened within the shinara was not answerable to any force outside of it. And Zathexa—though she had her council of noble matriarchs who could make things difficult for her if she moved wildly outside of the laws, or who could collectively endorse a challenger for her throne if they deemed her an unfit ruler, was the will of Shangla.

But Queen Zathexa was not all he was worried about.

He cast a concerned but fond look at their much smaller nest brother. Though he had shared a nest with Kehtal for revolutions, last night reminded him that returning to the shinara was bringing many unresolved things to the fore—and not just Slengral’s private battle with his mother and Lori’s struggle to win a place of recognition. The latter was going to be difficult enough. No one, male or female, had seemed to respect her during the feast outside of a smattering of elderly mated pairs and a lone female who was known for her bad temper and impatience with shinara politics according to gossip he overheard. But seeing Kehtal’s reaction had brought home just how vulnerable their nest brother was as well.

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