Page 156 of Red Marked

I unlock my jaw. “Do they ogle you as well?”

She nods.

“Really?” I frown.

How have I never noticed that?

“Every day for the first month. I learned to be quick about it.” She walks to her locker and turns her back on the pad. Her clothes come off and go into the locker in one movement. The door bangs shut; she takes four quick strides into open space, and she’s in her scales before a single head has turned.

That’s how it’s done.

Star shifts, and there’s almost a collective sigh among the males. I note it takes a few of them much longer to undress and shift.

I’m sure they’re having to think about other things. Like their grandmothers.

Fuckers!

A few minutes later, we’re all in our scales and taking to the sky.

Atlas takes the lead group over the fence. I give him a mile, and then I take mine up.

Star slots into the middle of the formation, with Saber on her left and Ash on her right, Cindy strapped to his back. It also puts her directly behind me, where I can’t see her.

I look over my shoulder four times in the first ten minutes. She’s holding her position with her wings level, scanning the canopy in sections the way the manual tells her to.

Forty minutes out, a short, cracking bark carries back to us over the trees.

It’s Atlas.

I answer him, and we drop low and angle toward the sound.

By the time we clear the last ridge, the lead group has a ring around a big black-and-red male in a dry riverbed. He’s bigger than Atlas, which is rare since my second is such a big motherfucker. The male rears up with his wings spread wide and goes for the gap between Rift and Dane.

Atlas hits him from above. They go down in a spray of gravel. Atlas gets his jaws around the back of the male’s neck and throws his full weight across one wing. The male bucks under him. Atlas holds on. Brian is down on one knee, thirty feet away, with the rifle at his shoulder, and for once in his life, he’s looking at the right thing.

I’m going to have to have another talk with him.

The first dart takes the male in the neck. The second goes in an inch from the first.

The male sinks onto the stones.

My group lands in an outer ring. I put myself between Star and the riverbed, and I keep her there until Brian has two fingers under the male’s jaw and his eyes on the monitor strapped to his wrist.

“He’s under. Vitals are good.”

I step aside and tip my horns at her.

She moves in with her belly low, keeping to the male’s blind side. Cindy slides down off Ash with the reader. Star lowers her head until her chin is level with Cindy’s shoulder, and she watches Cindy find the scar behind the male’s ear.

The reader beeps. The screen turns green.

CAPTURE.

“We’ve got one!” Cindy shouts. Then she turns to the silver head beside her. “Green means he comes home with us. If it’s red, we brand him and let him go.”

Star chuffs.

The rig comes off the carriers’ backs, and the clock starts.