Page 2 of Red Marked

Good.

My dragon wants to dive right in and attack the male, but I put a tight rein on him.

I answer with one short bark, and we descend fast.

Six of us drop into a loose ring around him. He’s faster than expected and is in the air before Cindy gets a clean line on him. His wings hammer, and his jaws are open.

I meet him head-on, my weight against his, and it’s like hitting a wall. He gets a claw into my shoulder before I twist us both sideways and drop us to the ground so that Cindy finally has a shot.

The first dart goes into his flank, bouncing off the thick scales there. The second catches muscle, and it barely slows him. He’s dragging me through the canopy now, snapping branches the size of my leg, and somewhere behind me, I hear Rift get thrown clear of a strike that was meant for me.

She goes down hard into a stand of saplings, and for one second, nothing moves. Then her tail cracks twice against the dirt, and she’s back on her feet and circling.

The third dart lands in the big vein along his neck. Fucking finally. The big male’s wings stutter mid-beat. Then his dead weight drops onto the sandbar.

I shift quickly.

“Rift,” I shout. “Are you okay?”

“I’m a little bruised.” She’s sitting up, one arm cradled against her ribs, grinning like an idiot. “We took down a big bastard. I’ll live.”

Brian is already crouched by the male’s head, pressing two fingers under his jaw, watching a monitor strapped to his wrist.

“His vitals are stable. He’s under.” He looks up at me and then at the human female. “Scan him.”

Cindy brings the handheld reader over. There’s a scar behind the male’s left ear where the chip sits, old and healed clean, and the reader beeps once when she holds it there.

RELEASE.

Under it is a name – Holt – and an ID code.

Cindy is sure to keep a record of the male, including the coordinates of where we found him.

“He isn’t a candidate for rehabilitation,” Cindy says, sounding deflated.

“The day is still young,” I tell her. “There are plenty of males out here who are eligible.”

She nods once.

Brian brings the cryo-iron out of the case, already primed, steam coming off the tip in the morning air. He presses it to the meat of the big male’s left shoulder and holds it there for thirty seconds. The only sound, aside from the river, is the hiss of frozen metal against scale.

When he lifts it away, the mark is already going pale. It’s a large triangle, stark against the copper hide.

Cindy snaps a few pictures of the male with her cell phone. Those will go on record as well.

Next time, we will know to avoid him.

Once everyone is assembled, the shifters are back in their dragon form. Brian administers the reversal drug and mounts quickly.

We pull back and wait for the feral male to come out of it.

It doesn’t take long. His eyes open first, unfocused, then sharper. He gets his legs under him in stages, groggy on whatever’s left of the sedative, and when he finally finds his feet, he doesn’t look at any of us. He looks at the water, then at the sky, and then he’s gone, a low, ugly scream tearing out of him as he clears the canopy.

We head out, on the lookout for the next male. It doesn’t take us long to find him. This part of the jungle is teeming with them.

Saber gives a low, rolling growl, alerting us that he has seen something. He heads in that direction. And there, hiding in the deep undergrowth, is a large male.

When we drop the ring of shifters around him, he doesn’t bolt for the sky the way the last one did. He crouches low.