Marked by an Assassin

by Felicity Heaton

  A stark reminder that he was naked.

  One that had her eyes finally leaping away from him and fixing on the floor at his bare feet.

  She frowned as he limped past, her eyes drawn to his left leg and the mottled skin above his ankle. He had broken it. How?

  Her mind supplied that it had been in a fight, because by the looks of his body, he fought often. She might have been enraptured by his incredible physique, but that instant spark of lust he had ignited within her hadn’t made her blind. She had seen the silvery streaks that covered his skin.

  The sight of them stirred remembered voices in her head, whispers that had gone through the club the first night he had appeared in it.

  He was an assassin.

  Who was his target?

  His gaze burned into her, but this time she felt only cold.

  She knew the answer to that question.

  The hunters weren’t the only ones in this building that he was thinking about killing.

  She was his target.

  Aya lifted her head and pinned her gaze on the back of his head, refusing to let her instincts rule her. She wouldn’t back down where this male was concerned. He had no power over her and she was going to show him that he had chosen the wrong female to target.

  She was stronger than she looked.

  Snow leopard females were weaker than their male counterparts, but what she lacked in physical strength, she made up for in mental. Males were ruled by their animal side, driven by it to get physical in a fight and tackle things head on. If he wanted to tussle with her, she would use all of her wits and agility to place him at a disadvantage and emerge the victor.

  She watched him until he had disappeared from view and lingered for long minutes afterwards, her mind churning, a collision of wondering about the male’s history and wondering what Archangel would do to him.

  A weight settled in her stomach as she thought about him strapped to a black padded table in one of the small medical rooms, sedated and at the mercy of Archangel scientists.

  Memories bubbled up and she fought to suppress them, tried to keep them shoved down deep inside of her where they couldn’t hurt her. They were too powerful, easily breaking to the surface of her mind and swallowing her. The world around her faded, replaced by a startling splash of crimson on white tiles and the horrifying whirr of a bone saw.

  Aya shoved away from the dark memory, pushed away from the glass and threw up.

  A passing guard merely glanced at the mess she had made, and then her, and continued on his way down the white corridor.

  She backed away into the corner of the room where she had slept and curled into a ball, wrapping her arms around her knees and bringing them up to her chest. Time trickled past as she stared at the corridor, not really noticing the guards as they came and went, or the fae they escorted. It was only when she felt the male snow leopard’s eyes on her that she came out of her daze and lifted her eyes away from the spot on the tiled floor.

  His eyes were even colder now.

  Glacial.

  They froze her with just a look.

  Blood tracked down his bare chest from several dark marks, running in drying rivulets over his stomach, where they disappeared beneath a pair of black cotton trunks. Aya stared at them. It seemed Archangel had deemed him worthy of a little dignity. A reward for playing along and letting them run tests on him?

  She would have done anything they asked had their positions been reversed and she had been the one stripped naked.

  Just the thought was enough to have her trembling, memories of her previous time in Archangel’s hands surging back to the surface to torment her. She hugged her knees harder and rocked as she fought the onslaught, refusing to let it own her. She was stronger now.

  A survivor.

  Nothing would destroy her.

  The male’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of curiosity breaking through the ice, and then he was gone, stolen from view as the two hunters dressed in black fatigues marched him back to his cell.

  An assassin.

  She still found that difficult to believe.

  Whenever she looked at him, she saw a dangerous male, one that she knew she should keep her distance from, but one that she found impossible to put out of her mind. There was something about him, something held just beneath the surface, that told her he wasn’t all he appeared to be.

  He was more.

  Maybe she had been wrong about him.

  Aya lowered her head and squeezed her eyes shut. It didn’t matter what feelings she had about him. He was an assassin and he was after her, and that was reason enough to keep her distance and remain wary of him. She had to stop thinking about him as anything other than an enemy.

  A male who would kill her in a heartbeat.

  She needed to get her mind off him.

  A welcome distraction from her dark and worrying thoughts appeared in view from the right side of her cell.

  A huntress Aya knew.

  The pretty blonde led a group, her pale eyes fixed ahead of her along the corridor. Behind her, a large shirtless male trudged, his hands shackled in front of him and two guards at his back. Long rich brown hair laced with gold and held at the nape of his neck by a leather thong, and the smooth but sculpted contours of his face, painted a picture of sinful perfection.

  An image even she wasn’t unaffected by as his wicked lips quirked and he briefly glanced her way. Heat speared her, spreading outwards from her chest, and she muttered a curse.

  An incubus.

  The effect he had on her, and the lines of markings that ran up the underside of his corded forearms and snaked over his biceps and shoulders were definite traits of an incubus, but it was his eyes that were the dead giveaway.

  No other fae species had eyes that swirled gold and blue like his were.

  He shifted them back to the woman in front of him and Aya couldn’t miss the brief tensing of the huntress’s shoulders.

  His markings shimmered with hues of bright gold and cerulean.

  Was he using his charms on the huntress?

  Aya had seen her more than once in the city, but had never seen her shaken as she was now. She wasn’t the usual confident and cold female Aya knew. Her face was a mask of cool and collected, but her eyes betrayed her.

  They edged to her left, as if she wanted to look back at the incubus behind her.

  Maybe he had already used his charms on the huntress and she was still fighting the effects.

  Aya’s gaze drifted back to the incubus.

  The way he was looking at the huntress though, and his calm demeanour, left Aya feeling that something was going on and stirred her curiosity. She uncurled and leaned forwards, eager to study the male as much as she could before he too disappeared from view.

  There wasn’t a scratch on him, and the relaxed way he walked said he was comfortable with his situation. He hadn’t fought Archangel when they had captured him.

  Why?

  She frowned.

  Because he had wanted to be captured.

  Aya glanced between him and the huntress and back again. She knew that look he was giving the female. It spoke of hunger, but also of a deeper desire, one not born from lust but from the heart.

  He knew the huntress.

  Aya went to look back at her but she moved beyond the left wall of her cell and the incubus soon followed.

  Was there more to the huntress than met the eye?

  She’d always had a suspicion that there was something different about her. Her scent wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t quite… mortal.

  Another group moved into view and she studied this one with even deeper curiosity.

  Speaking of not mortal.

  The black-haired huntress held her head high, her amber eyes focused and intense, but Aya could sense the flicker of fear that she was trying to hide as she stormed along the corridor. This one didn’t belong here. She had heard the rumours about her.

  Sable was the hot topic of conversation in every
fae bar and club in the city, and beyond.

  Aya didn’t know what blood ran in her veins, but the rumours said it was mortal mixed with something powerful.

  The dark huntress’s lineage wasn’t her only reason for being on her guard.

  The great big brunet bare-chested male stalking the corridor behind her, an unconscious blue-haired male slung over his thickly muscled broad shoulders, was her number one reason.

  A demon king.

  The rumours were true.

  Sable was mated to the Third King.

  The brute snorted and shifted the male, jostling him. Aya wasn’t sure what breed the unfortunate male was, but she pitied him.

  It was wrong of a female and male of the fae world to assist in the capture of one of their own.

  Aya’s stomach squirmed, her anger immediately dissipating as a quiet voice whispered through her mind and chilled her blood.

  She couldn’t pass judgement on the couple.

  Because she had committed the same sin.

  CHAPTER 6

  Whatever cocktail of drugs they had given him, it really fucked with his control.

  Harbin prowled his white cell, attempting to work off the adrenaline caused by the nice round of ‘studying’ he had been subjected to in the grim operating room that had been his own personal Hell for what had probably been several hours but felt like several days.

  He had been a damned good boy in that wretched torture chamber, behaving himself so Archangel wouldn’t have reason to get feisty and do more damage than necessary. As much as he wanted to rip all their heads off and piss down their necks, he needed his strength more if he was going to make it through the next two days.

  Surviving until Hartt came for him and the mark was priority one, but the longer he spent in the white-washed Hell of this facility, the closer he danced to losing his mind and the harder it became to deny the base urges welling up to consume him.

  The worst of which was the itch to fuck.

  Being a snow leopard male on the cusp of sexual maturity blew most days, but it was made infinitely worse by the presence of the female.

  He hadn’t noticed the effects when he had been back at the club, surrounded by the swirling thick scents of the other fae and unable to see the female clearly in the flickering piercing colourful lights.

  But, fuck, did he notice it now that he had seen her several times under bright clear light, all of her damned beauty and lush plump curves revealed to him.

  And, fuck, did he really notice it now that his senses had honed in on her particular scent.

  She was all he could smell.

  Even when Archangel had been working him over, prodding and poking him while questioning him about Hell and everything else he had seen in his short life, he hadn’t been able to smell anything but her. Not the disgusting stench of antibacterial products, nor the rank odour of the sweaty little humans so eager to divulge his darkest secrets.

  He could only smell the sweet, subtle scent of mountain air that he now associated wholly with her.

  Gods, she smelled like home.

  And it was playing havoc with him.

  He turned and slammed his fist into the glass of his cell, pain ricocheting violently through his bones in response. The fiery zing gave him sweet respite from his turbulent feelings for a second, a brief moment in which he felt calm again and steady.

  Centred.

  A hiss sounded and he jerked his head up, his eyes narrowing on the pale vapour as it descended into the cell from above the door.

  It seemed Archangel employed nefarious tactics to deal with naughty prisoners.

  Harbin didn’t back away from the gas as it rolled towards him like a menacing fog. He closed his eyes, kept his head tilted back, and inhaled, taking the foul tasting toxin deep into his body.

  He wanted oblivion.

  He wanted to sleep through this nightmare.

  His legs wobbled, turning to jelly beneath him, and gave out a second later, sending him crashing into a heap on the ground. Sound spiralled around him, voices blended together into nothing more than a blur of noise. Darkness encroached and he welcomed it, reached out to pull it closer as his body succumbed to the effects of the gas.

  Sweet, sweet fucking oblivion.

  He smiled as he slipped into it.

  A sharp bang rattled him from the gentle cradle of darkness, its tender arms slipping free of him as light washed back into his mind.

  He groaned and rolled onto his side, curling into a ball for a moment before stretching out, reaching his limbs as far as they could go. Every muscle lengthened and warmth burned through him, a satiated feeling that could only come from a deep and restful sleep. He kept his eyes closed and assessed his condition as he continued to stretch, unable to deny his base instincts as pleasure rolled through every inch of him. There really was nothing like a good stretch. Most days, he denied himself that unearthly pleasure, but this time he indulged it. Revelled in it.

  Gods, it felt good.

  But not quite good enough to erase his awareness of his surroundings.

  Or of his new neighbour.

  The male muttered to himself and it took Harbin a moment to regain enough of his faculties to decipher his tongue and understand what he had said.

  “What is this magic?”

  Harbin snorted, managed to convince himself to stop with the fucking stretching, and sat up. “It’s called glass, Dumbass.”

  There was a deep pause, and he wondered whether the male had heard him.

  “Are you dragon?” The words came from his left, muffled by the white wall between them, but clear enough that they could have a conversation.

  He had to be going mad if the thought of conversing with someone actually made his day look bright and sunny when in reality it was stormy and dangerous as all fuck.

  But still, the guy was a dragon, and dragon shifters were damned powerful.

  They also didn’t belong in the mortal realm, which Harbin decided the male hadn’t quite figured out yet since he seemed rather calm.

  A softer banging sound told Harbin the male was tentatively exploring his surroundings. If they were going to have a conversation, then he would have to move closer to the dragon. He lumbered onto his feet and placed a little more weight than usual on his left leg. It ached less, the throbbing barely noticeable now. The sleep caused by the gas had done him some good, helping rejuvenate his tired body. If only Archangel knew. He grinned to himself. The bastards wouldn’t have knocked him out, that was for sure. They probably wanted to keep him nice and weak, easy to manage, so he would behave himself whenever they decided to take him from his cell and prod at him.

  He ran his thumbs around the elastic waist of his black trunks. At least his good behaviour had given him back one item of his clothing. Maybe he could get the rest back if he continued to play nice. Not that nudity bothered him. Plenty of his captors had stripped him bare in order to leave him with only his built-in weaponry, and he had managed to kill them all and escape. Even the ones who had attempted to pull his claws out had met with a grisly end.

  Harbin limped to the left wall of his cell and leaned there near the glass front.

  “Nope. Not a dragon… but it helps in my line of business if you know your languages.” He had met enough dragons in Hell to know it paid to speak their tongue. Their English was often more than rough around the edges and the last thing he wanted was a sixty foot reptile with a temper misunderstanding him.

  No assassin crossed a dragon.

  Well, none that lived to tell the tale anyway. He was sure some idiots thought they could tackle a mark of that magnitude and that their target ate them and used their bones as toothpicks.

  “Where am I?” The male’s voice grew louder and Harbin could almost sense him on the other side of the wall, resting close to him.

  He was powerful. Too powerful for the cell to hold if he lost his temper?

  The thought of escaping and grabbing the female snow leopard in the panic
had his heart leaping in his chest, and he had to draw a deep breath to settle himself. He wasn’t in any danger. He didn’t have to fear Archangel or give in to a need to escape that only made him weak and pathetic.

  Hartt was coming.

  And, fuck, for once Harbin couldn’t wait to see Fuery.

  The mad bastard would tear Archangel a new one when he popped into the facility with their boss, and Harbin wanted to see the dark elf rip through the mortals with his sword.

  He wanted to put them to his own blades too.

  Harbin pushed the pleasing image aside and focused on his neighbour. Maybe he could get some information out of him or use him to his advantage in some way. He just had to push his buttons a little.

  “A complex filled with bastards. From the twittering I’ve heard during the past day, they’re quite excited about you.” Lies, but probably the truth. Archangel got excited about anything rare landing in their hands, and you didn’t get rarer than a dragon shifter.

  Which led Harbin to wonder how the hell they had gotten their dirty paws on him.

  “Where is Anais?” There was desperation in those three words, and it gave all of the dragon’s feelings away.

  He felt deeply for whoever Anais was and the maturing side of Harbin could appreciate that, his screwed up instincts finding it sweet and appealing. He didn’t need a damned mate. There was no time for love in his life, and bitches definitely didn’t deserve a drop of affection from him. Females were traitorous, backstabbing whores.

  “She a dragon too?” Harbin ground the words out as politely as he could manage given the anger churning in his gut, the fury roused by the thought of the female who had betrayed him.

  She had used her wiles on him, had seduced him into believing she was attracted to him and desired to be with him. He had been stupid enough to think she was being honest, that she might be more than a tumble in the hay. The barbs of her lies still stuck in his heart, slowly working deeper, tearing it apart.