MARKED (Hunter Awakened) (24 page)

The four hunters exchanged another one of
those looks and then Dale took a hold of the conversation again.
“When a child is born to hunters, they're... marked. They started
doing it in the late fifteen hundreds so that if the group was
scattered, any hunter would be able to identify a child who wasn't
old enough to know who they were. We continued doing it through the
centuries.”

I swallowed hard, hearing the dry click of my
throat.

Dale pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and
the other three did the same. They turned over their arms so that
their forearms showed. On all four arms, halfway between wrist and
elbow, was what she could only describe as a brand. It was a cross,
but not just any cross. A Coptic cross. A symbol with which I was
very familiar.

“Your arm,” Dale prompted, unable to contain
the eagerness in his voice.

Wordlessly, I held out my arm. I watched as
all four looked down, their faces falling as they saw the smooth,
unmarked skin. Finally, I was able to regain my composure enough to
speak. “My parents... the people who adopted me, they knew that a
little girl with a scar would have a harder time getting cast,
especially a scar that looked like it had been intentional.”

Four heads came up at the same time, four
sets of eyes widening in varying stages of disbelief and shock.

“I wasn't even a year old when they had a
plastic surgeon fix it.” I ran my hand over the soft skin. “But
they had a picture of it and liked to use it to remind me how lucky
I'd been to have parents who'd pay for that kind of surgery.”

“It is you.” A wide smile broke across Dale's
face. “Olivia, you don't know how long we've been looking for
you.”

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