VIPER (Naga Brides 1)

The Pact

Vruksha

"OUR TRUCE ENDS after they release the females,"

I growl, peering at themales around me. The King Cobra's mane flutters, the Boomslang nods.Others react; some don't respond at all. I take their silence as agreement.We're the strongest of our kind. The oldest. The deadliest. We saw thehumans' ship breach our sky and land within our forest.We're also competitors.

The fact that we've all come together for this—for them—is a miracle. It shows how much we want them, how desperatewe are to have them, and that we would risk our lives to make a deal withtheir keepers.

Their puny males.

Males who do not deserve the warmth of a female. They don't realizehow lucky they are to have females, so we will take their females and covetthem, mate them, make them queens to the lands we rule.

As is how it shouldbe.There are many wrongs that need to be righted, and many mistakes in ourpast that need to be fixed.My fingers tighten around my spear as I scrutinize the nagas gatheredtoday, sizing them up.

Some of us won't survive.Humans are different from us, at least from what I've seen, and it's morethan the way they look.We thought them long gone. A species that had been eradicated when wewere born on this Earth. Neither I nor the other naga males around me haveever seen a living one, not once, until recently.

They flew down from the sky in a large metal machine. Machines like theones here, but not overgrown with weeds, roots, and vines. Not ruined theway Earth was ruined.No, this machine—this ship of theirs—came to us clean of the forest andlanded outside the old ruins of a civilization long gone, deep in themountains. Other smaller machines came out with weapons and cleared theruins. They erected a barrier and cut down the trees.

The humans restored the ruins into what it once was: a military facility.

Meanwhile, I watched the robots from afar, from the shadows of the trees,and soon found other nagas watching them too. We didn't know why theywere here, or what they wanted, but we are determined to keep our secrets...secret.

At first, there were only machines. We didn't realize there were humanson the ship. The robots poured from their vessel in droves, destroying theterrain we once knew. A growl tears from my throat at the thought. Therobots left us alone, though, having one singular purpose, a purpose we nagasdid not know until several weeks after their landing.

They were making the facility ready for human inhabitants.Thinking back on that day quickens my heart.

Her red hair. My fingers twitch. I can imagine the softness of it runningbetween my fingers.

I've never seen such a shade of red as my tail...Zaku, the King Cobra, went to the humans when we realized they hadfemales among them. He made our presence known.

He wanted to meetthem, court them, mate with one... We were stronger, larger than their males,and thought that because of it, they should be ours.I did too.Perhaps we could offer our help in return? Who knows?Zaku came back enraged.

The humans turned their weapons on him,refusing his request. They told him this land was theirs, as it has always been,and as long as he abided by that, they would not kill us.

Hah.

I would like to see them try.I'd wipe the humans from these lands but they have females...and for thatreason, they remain alive.I want my red-headed beauty.I'll have to fight for her, kill for her. And I'm willing to do more thanthat, but I do not want her hurt. And fighting? I've seen enough death toknow accidents happen. 

They have machines, and not all machines can betrusted.It wasn't that long ago. Days, maybe? Seems like an eternity. The othernagas came together after word spread of what happened to Zaku.