Page 164 of Red Marked

I shift.

Rift’s teeth snap shut an inch from my arm. I duck under Flint’s jaw, turn sideways, and I’m in.

I hear the crack of bone. He must be shifting.

“Star!” Flint shouts as soon as he shifts. “Star, get back here! That’s an order!”

I keep going.

The rock is cold and damp against my shoulders, and it grabs at my hair. The floor is loose stone. I go as fast as my bare feet will let me, with one hand out in front of my face.

“Star! Stop! Fuck! You’re going to get yourself killed.”

The passage bends left and then right. Flint’s voice gets fainter. There’s a gray light ahead of me, and it grows; then the walls fall away from my hands altogether.

I spill out into a cavern. It’s enormous. The roof is so high I can’t see it, apart from one jagged hole where the moon comes through and lights a patch of the floor. Water drips somewhere. There are bones against the far wall.

It smells like him in here.

Something shifts its weight in the dark beyond the moonlight. Claws drag across stone.

He walks into the light in his scales. He’s so much bigger from down here. His head is low, his wings are half open, and there’s a rumble coming out of him that I can feel through the soles of my feet.

Then he’s coming straight for me with zero recognition in his gaze.

For a second, I’m tempted to shift, but I don’t.

My skin prickles with the need to try to save myself. Holt knows me like this. Not as a dragon.

“Holt.” My voice echoes off the rock. “Dr. Holt. It’s Star. Please…it’s me.”

He keeps coming.

“I was your PA. I sat outside your office for two and a half years. You hired me even though I couldn’t type,” I say in a rush. “You drink your coffee black with two sugars.”

He stops.

He’s on the other side of the cavern. His nostrils flare. His head tips to one side, and those green eyes move from my face to my hands and back up again.

Oh, thank goodness!

“That’s it. It’s me. Please, Holt. Shift for me. I only want to talk to you.”

He watches me.

His lips draw back from his teeth, and he snarls.

“Holt, please⁠—”

He charges again.

He doesn’t slow down. His eyes are the right green, and there is nothing in them. They don’t know me. They’re the eyes of something looking at meat.

He’s going to kill me.

Shit! Maybe this wasn’t the best plan.

I let go of my skin. My spine starts to stretch. The silver starts to come.