Page 243 of Red Marked

He isn’t listening to me. He’s crawling toward her.

“Star. Baby, please. I did it for you. All of it. I kept you alive. You’d be dead if it weren’t for me; you’d all be dead. I saved you⁠—”

Star’s growl starts low, somewhere in her chest, and builds until I feel it through the sand under my feet. Then she shows him every tooth she has.

Jett stops crawling.

She holds it a second longer. Then she turns her back on him and takes to the sky, and the downdraft off her wings throws sand in his face.

“Let’s rescue those females,” I tell the team.

“You can’t leave me!” Jett screams.

I pull my dragon up through my skin and take off.

The others come up behind me one after the other, and the sandbar drops away until Jett is a pale shape on his knees in the middle of it with his arms up.

“Please! Please, don’t leave me. I’m sorry. Star, I’m sorry. Please have mercy. Please forgive me. Please!” There’s a short pause, followed by, “You bitch! You fucking, stupid little bitch.”

And there he is.

The real Jett.

“Get back here! Get your ass back here, Star.” His voice grows softer the farther away we get. “I will kill you. I will find you and kill you. Do you hear me? How dare you? How…?”

For a second I am tempted to fly back there and end that fucker, but I don’t because Star is right. This is a fitting punishment for that asshole. Let him rot. Let him feel what it’s like to be left out here for dead.

Jett’s screaming follows us up over the canopy. Then the jungle swallows it, and there’s nothing but the sound of wings.

We make for the mountains.

We fly in silence. The range comes up black against the stars, and we follow the line of it, the way we did the first time, until the rock splits and the ravine cuts back into it.

Star goes in first. I follow on her wing. The others wait at the mouth.

The walls close in on either side, and somewhere up on the crags a shape lifts its head, and then another, and I brace for the alarm. It doesn’t come. What comes instead is a rumble, low and rolling, and then a chuff, and then another chuff from the other side of the ravine. By the time we clear the bend, there are three of them in the air above us, wheeling, calling down to the camp.

They know her wings.

We land on the open ground, and Star is out of her scales before her feet have finished touching the dirt. I take a second longer.

Scarlet hits Star at full speed and wraps her up, and Star hugs her back. The two of them stand there rocking, and Scarlet is saying something into Star’s shoulder.

The others either land and shift or come rushing out of the shelters in twos and threes, rubbing sleep out of their eyes. They close in around Star in a ring, and Scarlet finally lets go and steps back.

“It’s over.” Star’s voice carries. “It’s done. I’ll tell you the details once we’re back home.”

“Home.” One of the females chokes on the word. “We’re going home?”

Star turns in a slow circle so she can look at all of them. “Yes, we’re finally going home. It’s safe. We have him.”

Scarlet’s face crumples. The hardest female on this mountain sits down in the grass like her legs have gone from under her. She puts her hands over her face and cries.

Willow shrieks. Raven grabs Fenn, who drops the spear she is carrying. Someone starts laughing and can’t stop, and someone else is sobbing. They all go for Star at once, and she disappears into them, arms and hair and bare shoulders and voices. I stand at the edge of it and watch.

Scarlet gets up. She wipes her face, though it doesn’t help much, and she walks over to me.

She stops close. Red markings up her arms. Eyes still wet. The last time she stood this close, she was about to take my head off my shoulders.