Page 56 of Serpents of the Night

“Always,” he replied without hesitation, bringing a smile to her face.

“Right. Good,” she replied happily as she tried to not start giggling again with the sheer giddy relief of the moment. “I need to turn the comm off before anyone tracks it but there will be a tracking signal that will start up for a short time. You will only have a few hours so you will need to travel fast, but it will be coming toward you so that should help some. Find that signal. You remember how I showed you to lock onto the signal when we tested for emergency procedures should I get lost in the Aglatha?”

He inclined his head slowly, his gavo snapping. “But Lori, this is not your comm. It’s uplink signal has not be prepared within my comm by you.”

“It’s okay,” she quickly assured him. “When we disconnect, I will need you to push the two buttons on the left face. The lower one would have allowed you to pull up my link but if you push them both together it goes into an emergency standby and tracks the coordinates of the last comm uplinked with yours. Do that and find me. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” he replied. “We are coming Lori,” he rasped, his holographic image winking out in the next breath as Sara reached over to the box the comm was plugged into and quickly typed in the code that disabled the uplink.

Lori stared at the blank screen in panic. He was gone again. Just that quickly and she lost him all over again without warning. She hadn’t even had a chance to remind her family how much she loved them just in case she never saw them again. What if—

“Lori,” Yuneril hissed, bringing her back to herself.

Fuck, the signal! Nodding quickly, Lori tapped the sequence to activate the comm’s signal. It responded instantly, the tracker lighting up with a pulsing red light illuminating the metal of the comm. With shaking fingers, she handed it over to Therxian, praying with all her might that her mates would be able to locate him quickly and return to her.

“Bring them back, please,” she whispered.

The male inclined his head gravely and looped it around his wrist. “I swear it,” he growled.

Lori nodded, her eyes drifting shut to protest her eyes from the spray of any sand or dust in the air as the males burst from the room with a snap of their enormous wings. Since she had her eyes closed, just maybe she would try praying to this Shangla—mother to mother—to return her males safely to her.

Chapter 45

Slengral’s eyes turned repeatedly to the signal moving on his comm. Why was it moving at such speed? He exchanged a cautious look with his nest brothers and both males frowned in response as they glided over his head to glimpse at the current location of the comm they were tracking. They found it as strange as he did. Lori was not alone, if she was attached to the comm at all.

Was it a trap to make their ashlava more agreeable? He would not put it past a Vehal male given what he was reared to believe about them. Regardless of where the comm had originated from, Lori had clearly come into possession of it in the mountains. He had no doubt since the moment the tracker turned on that she was among the Vehal, and it had weighed upon him since they lost connection with their mate. Such males could not be trusted. Vehal were known to aggressively claim females for their own, and that made his gavo expand fully with aggression as he flew toward the signal.

A grim smile hardened the corners of his mouth. If the Vehal thought they would be able to cleverly control him or his nest brothers then they were mistaken. If they thought they would succeed in keeping her captive and cooperative for one of their males to keep her as a mate, then they would quickly realize their error. He would deal with them without mercy and steal his mate back away to someplace safe. He would not allow a strange male to take advantage of the situation to force his way into their nest. And if any had dared to mate with her in the absence of her mates, he would be happy to kill them. Not only he would—but a quick glance at his nest brothers’ expressions and fully raised gavo confirmed that they too would help bring the male down. With Jathella carrying Hashal, even Daskh was ready to break males if necessary.

Their eager flight to their mate had quickly changed to a deadly-earnest hunt as they flew swiftly across the night sky. There were no caverns and tunnels to move along, they were Seshanamitesh of the night as they moved in and closed the distance between them and their enemy. It would be convenient if they had Lori with them so that they would be able to carry her away quickly, but if not, he had no trouble with scouting it out and then returning to rain down on it with the full force of the Seshanamitesh of Raza for the insult and daring. Regardless, they would take their mate away and establish a new nest hidden where their enemies would not find her, or their offspring.

They could not return to the colony as that would be the first place his mother would search for them, but Seshana was a big place. Perhaps they would start their own shinara. Jathella, Buosoa, and Kitanara were them and would eventually look for males to mate. Perhaps some of those mated at Raza would be interested in joining them as well so that Lori would not become too lonely for the company of other humans. The more he thought of it, the more viable the idea seemed. It would be a hard life at first, but they would not allow their mate to suffer.

After everything, they deserved peace and the tired part of him welcomed it. After being imprisoned for so long within the palace, he no longer had the will to continue fighting against the Aglatha. Nor did he wish to maintain a long, drawn-out conflict with the Vehal once they rescued their mate. All he wished for was a comfortable place to nest. He was heart-weary of living a difficult life without a truly safe place for his family. They deserved better.

And they would have it... just as soon as they dealt with this final obstacle.

His jaw hardening, he banked hard as he came around the side of the mountain and from the periphery of his vision, the rest of his formation sailed neatly behind him, their wings cutting through the gathering fog. The fog was rapidly thickening around them, but he had little trouble navigating within it. It distorted his vision a little, but it was not any worse than the pitch-dark depths of the caverns. The moisture in the air was merely a little disconcerting as he was not accustomed to such an abundance of water.

He glanced again at the comm. The signal’s pulse was becoming quicker as they closed in. It was not much farther. The other comm should be—there!

His head turned as they continued to glide along the mountainside as the rocks rose in peaks and ledges that broke through the fog, bare rock and hints of vegetation whispering seductively of safety. He ignored it, however, as his gaze fixed on two large shadows moving toward him through the fog. There was a hint of deep blue and green for a moment before two large males broke through the fog with powerful snaps of their wings. Slengral growled, and the sound was echoed by his formation as it slowly expanded, his nest brothers and females he could not consider anything less than his sisters, spreading out through the air, preparing for the attack.

A sharp, barking shriek pierced the air, however, and Slengral held up a hand, signaling his formation as his head cocked in surprise. It could not be. He sent out a warbling shriek in query and nearly fell from the air when the confirmation came, jubilant and strong. Therxian!

Slengral sent back a call of familial welcome to his brother as his formation slowly closed in once more, his sisters pulling back respectfully as they identified his relation to the one approaching them. Even Daskh and Kehtal dropped back some to give a polite distance for his reunion with his brother.

Therxian’s indigo color was unmistakable now as the male flew in closer and issued a call of welcome in return. Broad wings angling to the side, his brother swooped in a slow arc so that he momentarily sailed directly above Slengral before dropping through the air, rolling to his side in familiar acrobatics that drew a hissing bark of laughter from him. Therxian was always a rogue among the males born in the palace, and it seemed that his playful nature had not changed much as his brother circled and rolled around him playfully through the air.

The suspicion and anger Slengral held rapidly unraveled and faded as he watched his brother with amusement. This was not the actions of a male looking to trap and coerce him. Nor was Therxian of the temperament to do so. The male was too honest—something which had not served him well in the haga—to willingly carry out a harmful deception. He knew that his brother had disappeared within the territory of Vehal, but he had not imagined that it would be him who would find Lori. And if his brother had found Lori then she was truly safe. He did not have to worry about another male trying to claim her. His brother would not allow it.

Though that did not mean that his brother would not make the attempt himself.

His eyes narrowed on the male for a moment as he scented the air when Therxian glided close to him in an attempt to catch a trace of Lori’s pheromones on the male. To his relief, there was none, and he trilled softly as he snapped his wings open wide and joined in the game.

A song of greeting and kinship replaced their calls as they flew together, their wings and tails sweeping through the air as their gavos snapped and fluttered in accompaniment as they air-danced together. His nest brothers and his sisters continued to follow but now they were joined by the unknown green male who dropped into position with them. There was some anxious fluttering of wings as his family swooped around the strange male cautiously before slowly re-establishing the flight formation as if nothing had happened.

Therxian’s wings expanded fully as the male settled into a smooth glide at Slengral’s side, his red eyes turning toward him with a familiar look of mischief that Slengral had not even realized how much he missed over the revolutions.

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