Page 167 of Red Marked

Star sits up slowly. Her face is wet.

“Holt. It’s you. It’s really you.”

He stares at her mouth. His own works for a while before anything comes out of it.

“Star.” His voice is thick and cracked with disuse.

I shift. I get one step toward them before Holt spins on me with his teeth bared. The snarl that comes out of that human throat is all dragon.

“It’s okay. Stay back,” Star tells me, with one hand up. She doesn’t take her eyes off him. “Yes, it’s me. I’m going to help get you home.”

“Home.” He swings back to her. “Go home. Want home.”

“Not yet. Soon, I promise you.”

He nods.

“I need your help first. I’m trying to find out who did this to us, so that we can all go home.”

“Home, Star…please,” he pleads.

“Yes.” She shuffles closer to him on her knees. Every inch she gains takes a year off my life. “I need to get the male who did this to us. I need to find him and make him pay. Then we can go home.”

“Home,” he whines.

“Listen to me, Holt. I need you to think really hard. The email about the hemorrhagic vaccinations. I forwarded it to you just before they raided us. Who was it from? Do you remember?”

He nods. He looks at the floor. He looks at his hands and turns them over, as if he’s checking they’re still his. When he lifts his head, his eyes have sharpened, and there’s a doctor looking out of them.

“Veridian Bridge,” he growls. “Veridian…Bridge,” he repeats.

“Are you sure?”

He nods again, harder.

Star looks over her shoulder at me. She’s naked and has a scrape of blood on one of her elbows. All things considered, she got lucky.

She’s smiling from ear to ear.

My hands are shaking. I’ve never been this relieved and this fucking angry, all at once.

“Thank you, Holt,” she says. “We’ll come back for you soon.”

“Go home.” He lifts his brows.

“Yes. Stay here…stay in this area, and we’ll come for you.”

“Home.”

“I swear, we’ll be back soon.”

He nods once.

“We need to get back,” I tell her. “We’ve been out on this training flight for too long already.”

She gets to her feet, still facing him. “We’ll be back. I swear it.”

Holt nods.