Page 241 of Red Marked

When we arrive, everyone is getting ready as normal. The camera on the corner of the admin block blinks its little red light.

Star and Rift come across the tarmac together. Star glances at me, and I give the smallest nod.

“Night training,” I tell them. “Same as before. Low grid, ten miles out. Nobody goes off on their own.”

We undress and shift. The females are on their side of the screen. Brian puts the rig on Dane, and we take off.

We fly nice and low, so all that the guard tower will see is a black knot of dragons going out over the trees. I doubt he’s even watching.

Once we reach the spot we left Jett, I fold my wings and grab him. It takes less than a second. I pull him up under me, tight against my chest, and go up through the leaves with my wings punching.

It all happens so quickly I doubt anyone would have noticed a thing. Then we climb and head out. Past the foothills and along the base of the range and out over the flat, thick, endless middle of it, where the jungle is at its deepest and there’s nothing but ferals and birds and deer for as far as a male could walk in a week.

I pick a sandbar in a bend of a river with the moon on it and descend.

I put him on the sand and shift.

The rest of the team land around the edge of the bar in a loose ring, and they stay as they are.

Star is on the far side with the water behind her, her silver going pale in the moonlight. She watches me and doesn’t move.

I crouch over Jett and start on the cord.

It’s wound tight, and there’s a lot of it. The steel in it drags on my fingers. I unwind it turn by turn and let it pile up on the sand.

Brian slides off the rig with a knife already in his hand and drops to one knee. He switches on his headlamp, preferring it for close-up work over the night goggles.

“Wrists first,” I tell him.

The very tip of the blade goes under the zip ties, and they pop. Brian moves down to the ankles and pops those too, and Jett’s legs fall apart.

I get a thumbnail under the edge of the tape at the back of his head and rip. It comes away in one long turn, then another. His head is still swollen, turning black and blue. His mouth falls open, and he breathes through it.

“Ready?” Brian asks.

“Yes.”

He goes back to Rex for the case. The cryo-iron comes out already primed, steam coming off the tip. He crouches and turns Jett’s face toward the sand with one hand on the back of his neck and puts the iron flat to the meat of his left shoulder.

It hisses. Brian counts under his breath, and at thirty he lifts, and the mark is already going white on the skin.

It’ll go white on his scales too. He will never be picked up or scanned. They’ll know he’s a release male on sight.

He belongs to the jungle now.

“Now for the reversal,” Brian says.

I nod.

He injects Jett. Then he’s up and moving fast toward Rex. Within seconds he’s clipped in, and Rex has stepped back before the syringe is even out of his hand.

I stay where I am, standing over him.

Jett’s eyes open. The good one first, then the other one as far as it’ll go. He looks confused for a few seconds, looking around him.

He sees me and lifts up to his elbows. His eyes narrow on me, and he jumps up.

I put a forearm into his chest and sweep at his feet with my leg; he goes down on his ass in the sand.