Marked by an Assassin

by Heaton, Felicity

  Red eyes.

  The leader.

  A burst of strength went through her and she lashed out, slamming the flat of her palm into his face with as much force as she could manage. He grunted as it connected with his jaw and knocked him backwards, forcing him to release her.

  She sprang to her feet and ran for the wall, the pain in her twisted ankle forgotten as she made a break for it. He spat out something dark in the language of the demons and his boots sounded on the tarmac. Her pulse accelerated and she leaped, hitting the brick wall ten feet up. She kicked off, twisted in the air and shot towards the other building across the narrow alley.

  Her bare feet struck it first and she kicked off again, propelling herself upwards. The roof was close now. If she could reach it, she might be able to escape.

  Freedom was so close that she could taste it.

  She hit the wall, twisted and leaped again, gliding effortlessly towards the top of the second building. She sailed over the low wall surrounding the flat roof, landed and rolled, coming up onto her feet.

  Freedom looked a lot like death.

  Tall, wicked and terrifying.

  Aya had a flash of her dream, felt a ghost of fangs against the back of her neck, and her body betrayed her, heating in response, aching for the male stood before her.

  He breathed hard, his chest heaving beneath his tight black t-shirt. The black fatigues and boots he had paired his top with caused him to blend into the night, little more than a deadly shadow. Only the moon outlined him, highlighting his wild silver hair and turning his skin pale. His right cheek bore more scratches than the ones she had placed on it when he had kissed her and a trickle of blood ran down to his jaw as she stared at him.

  Her eyes widened. Silver and black. He had been the one fighting the two witches in the alley.

  Her breath left her in a rush. It wasn’t possible that he had come charging in like some white knight to protect her. He wanted her dead.

  Didn’t he?

  “I killed one… but they’ll be coming back for you,” he growled in a thick deep voice that did funny things to her insides, making her quiver and forget that she was meant to be afraid of him.

  He was her mate. Her male. Her fated one.

  Hers.

  She shoved that stupid notion and the instinct that had birthed it away, determined not to become a victim and lose her life because she had been muddled by the primal needs coursing through her. Harbin was her mate, she couldn’t deny that, but he wasn’t hers.

  He was just an assassin looking to claim her head and probably a nice fat pay off in exchange for it.

  That was the only reason he had stopped those witches. He was protecting his interests, not her.

  He shattered that belief.

  “You’re not safe here anymore.”

  Aya could only stare at him, struggling to take that in and make sense of it. He wanted her safe?

  He had been watching over her and had revealed himself the moment she had been in trouble, rushing in to protect her, battling males who could have easily killed him and sold him for parts on the black market.

  For her.

  She shook her head, wanting to deny it, but it was there in his silver eyes. His expression was devoid of emotion, revealing nothing to her, as cold as a glacier and just as forbidding, but his eyes betrayed him and told her everything. He had wanted to protect her.

  He still wanted to protect her.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered and she frowned.

  She was about to ask what part of the Hell she had been through he was apologising for when he raised his hand to his mouth.

  She heard a soft puff of air.

  Felt the sharp sting in her neck.

  Saw the world twirl into darkness.

  The last thing she knew before oblivion swallowed her was Harbin’s scent of spice and snow, and the warmth of his arms around her.

  A muttered curse.

  And the soft press of his lips to the spot on her neck where the dart had struck.

  CHAPTER 13

  Harbin had been tracking Aya for the past two nights, watching her from a distance and studying her every move. She followed a routine, leaving late in the evening and heading towards the Underground station close to her small apartment in what he could only describe as one of the more unsavoury regions of London.

  That was being kind.

  He had visited places in Hell that were safer and cleaner.

  The first night he had hunted her down, locating her in what he now knew was her favourite restaurant in the neighbourhood, he had wondered what the fuck had made her move into such a rough area.

  It hadn’t taken him a long time spent perching on the corner of the roof of a building and watching the locals moving around the streets below to realise why she had come to this place.

  Fae and other species lived here.

  Her instincts as a snow leopard were driving her to find others similar to her in an effort to feel as if she was part of a pride. That instinct rode him sometimes too, when he was away from the guild for weeks on end, driving him to return to the place his primal side had decided was home now and the people it viewed as his new pride.

  He sighed and tracked her as she walked, huddled into her thick grey coat, braced against the cold.

  Odd that she felt it so keenly having been raised in the mountains.

  He canted his head and hunkered down, balancing on his toes and resting his elbows on his knees. Life in the mortal cities had made her soft. It had changed her.

  Life in Hell had changed him too, but where she had softened, he had hardened. He could walk naked in the snow and not feel the cold. He could walk across fire and not feel the burn. He had mastered his body, had gained complete control over his emotions and decided what he felt.

  But she had broken that hold, and now he found himself coming to this same rooftop every night to watch her carrying out her life, running through her routine.

  First a stop on the steps of her red brick apartment building to button her coat over a heavy wool jumper, the colour of which changed each night.

  Tonight, it had looked like blood to him.

  Then she moved off, heading towards the central hub of the area she called home, stopping at her favourite restaurant.

  He hadn’t realised she was partial to Italian food.

  But he did remember now that she was fond of food in general. It was the bane of his species. Living in a freezing climate meant they would have had to consume vast amounts of calories if they had been mortal, but they were shifters. Their metabolism ran at a faster pace, meaning they had to eat almost double the amount a mortal in such low temperatures would have to consume to remain alive.

  He had shaken his instincts to eat hearty meals when he had moved into the guild, slowly adjusting to the warmer climate.

  It seemed Aya hadn’t quite adjusted enough.

  She made her way through a huge plate of pasta each night, together with bread and other accompaniments.

  And dessert.

  He smiled.

  She always had loved sweet foods.

  His smile faded as that thought came out of nowhere, hitting him head on and rattling him. What the fuck was he doing?

  Why did he come here every night to watch her?

  He scrubbed a hand down his face.

  Because he couldn’t stay away.

  He tried every night, heading out in a different direction, mixing up what he did when he was out in the city, even ending up in front of one of the portals that would take him back to Hell if he uttered the right words.

  No matter what he did, he always ended up back here, watching her.

  Fuck, he had even tried hitting a fae strip club.

  That had lasted around a minute.

  The amount of time it had taken him to glance at every female present and realise none of them were a patch on Aya.

  He growled and shoved his fingers through his hair, tugging it hard. How many tim
es was he going to have to remind himself that she had tricked him into tracking her down by placing a contract on her own head, just so he would end up in Archangel’s hands?

  She had betrayed him.

  He had vowed that he would talk with her, ensuring she knew the truth about the people she had trusted, the ones who had tortured her for years and poisoned her mind with their lies, and then, well, he wasn’t sure what happened then.

  Either he killed her or he gave her a chance to cancel the contract and walked away.

  He was sure that once he was back in Hell, his arse on the line in another mission, that he would soon forget about her and his life would return to normal.

  Killing, healing and then fucking whatever piece of arse took his fancy. Rinse and repeat.

  His heart whispered treacherous words and he tried to ignore them, but they refused to go away, circling his mind like vultures bent on picking at a carcass.

  His carcass.

  The one that had been devoid of a soul for years, following a meaningless routine. The death and the pain had been glorious, had made him feel alive. Screwing a stranger in some grimy back alley just to scratch the biological itch that rode him ever harder as he came closer to sexual maturity while avoiding experiencing even a hint of intimacy? That had left him feeling dead inside.

  Females were bitches though. Betrayers. He had learned that lesson and he wasn’t going to put himself through that again. Never. He couldn’t control the urge to fuck, but he could control how it went down, and it went swift, hard and without any intimate contact. Just the way he liked it.

  A flash of Aya in the room at Archangel, her white strapless bra and panties stark against her creamy skin, and her entrancing eyes fixed on him, had him instantly hardening in his trousers. He palmed his rigid cock, cursing her name and his lack of control. He wouldn’t get involved with her. Never.

  He couldn’t trust her. She had proven that to him. She had set a trap for him and he had fallen right into it. She had given him over to the people who had destroyed his life without hesitation, and he would make her pay for that.

  He gritted his teeth and pressed his palms against his knees, his fingers curling over and claws digging in. His eyes narrowed on Aya as she walked the main road of her neighbourhood.

  She had played him, and now he would make her regret it. He would show her how wrong she had been about Archangel and he wouldn’t stop telling her all the gory details of his past, all the horror he had witnessed that night, until she broke down and showed him she regretted what she had done.

  Just as he regretted his actions.

  If he had to live with his sins, then she had to live with hers.

  He might have accidentally placed her into the hands of Archangel twenty years ago by allowing one of their members to play him for a royal fucking idiot, but she had turned around and done the same to him.

  And she had known exactly what she had been doing when she had thrown him to the wolves.

  Cavanaugh’s deep rumbling voice echoed around his mind. Harbin focused on it, allowing the words to soothe his darker side now just as they had when his brother had spoken them during a private talk back at Underworld. Cavanaugh had been kind to him since he had walked back into his life, treating him gently and with great care, but he had been firm about one thing.

  Giving Aya a chance.

  It had taken some convincing to get Harbin to agree to that, his brother countering every point he tried to make, forcing him to look at it from the other side. Her side. Cavanaugh had given him a lot to think about, and in the long quiet day that had followed it, when he had been alone in his temporary quarters in the nightclub, Harbin had done just that.

  It had led him back to the feeling he’d had in the Archangel facility, the need to make Aya see the truth and free her from Archangel’s clutches, breaking their hold on her mind.

  He sighed and watched her. Small. Weak. She needed his protection, and as much as his darker side wanted to punish her for what she had done to him, he couldn’t allow his bitterness to stop him from seeing to her safety.

  He couldn’t allow himself to think of her actions as a betrayal.

  Archangel had deceived her. It had deceived him.

  He had to stop following her, watching her from a distance, and confront her. He had to face the fear that he might not be strong enough to control himself around her, unable to suppress his need to retaliate and lash out to protect himself, or kiss her again.

  Gods, he was messed up, still torn between punishing her and kissing her.

  He had hoped that in time those twin urges would fade to a manageable level, but they only seemed to be growing worse the longer he delayed talking with her.

  He tried hard to push away the feeling that she had betrayed him, but it was difficult. Whenever he managed to subdue it enough to head out to hunt for Aya, it came back again, rising inside him like a black tide, an oil slick that smothered the softer side of his heart that she had brought back to life. It pushed him to lash out at her, filling his mind with poisonous thoughts, telling him that she had hurt him.

  She had.

  But gods, he had hurt her first.

  “What the merry hell are you doing?”

  The deep male voice coming from behind him had Harbin on his feet and facing the owner in a flash, his claws at the ready and a growl leaving his lips. How the fuck had the male snuck up on him? He had been absorbed in watching Aya, but he had still been alert, aware of his surroundings.

  The only plausible answer was teleporting.

  But the male was mortal.

  “I didn’t hire you to stalk the female to death,” the male said, his English accent bearing a regal edge that left Harbin aware of what this male thought of him.

  The bastard thought him lowly and disgusting, and that speaking with him or being in his presence was beneath him.

  Harbin bared his fangs on a snarl, concealing the intake of breath that he pulled over his teeth to catch the male’s scent.

  A witch.

  No wonder the bastard had been able to sneak up on him. Harbin despised witches. He curled his lip at the wretch, feeling it was only fair he let the male see what he thought of him since he had been so kind as to make his feelings about Harbin clear as day.

  The witch narrowed red eyes on him. Everything about this male was darkness incarnate, from his black trousers and the long black robe he wore over the top of them, to his black hair, to the scent and sense of magic that bled from him. “Well?”

  It took Harbin a moment to recall that there had been a question, and when he did, he barely hid the shock that rippled through him.

  Aya hadn’t hired the guild to kill her.

  This male had.

  He stared the male down, swiftly studying him and putting everything about him to memory. Why would a witch hire him to kill Aya?

  He took another deep breath and stilled.

  It was subtle, but hidden amongst the scent of death and magic, was one that was all too familiar to him.

  A scent that was branded on him and one he could never forget.

  The scent of the Archangel huntress who had betrayed him.

  A growl rumbled up his throat but he caught it in time, holding it inside, and schooled his features to hide the emotions running riot inside him. The male was allied with the bitch he had been searching for since that night twenty years ago.

  He was being played all over again.

  “I’d love to kill her… but I’m under strict orders to wait for my boss and a fellow assassin to get their arses here.” Harbin folded his arms across his chest, positioning his fingers on his biceps in such a way that the male would see his claws were out and he was ready for a fight if he made a move.

  The witch’s eyes narrowed into fiery slits. “You require three males to kill one little female? Perhaps we have hired the wrong guild.”

  We. Either there was more than one witch involved, or he was talking about the Archangel hunt
ress he was in league with.

  Harbin snorted. “My part of the job is purely tracking. Fuery wants the kill, and I don’t tend to deny Fuery anything. He has a tendency to kill people for that sort of thing.”

  The way the male’s skin blanched told Harbin that he was aware of Fuery and knew the legends that surrounded him.

  Legends that were all true.

  The witch stared at him for long seconds, a calculating edge to his red gaze, and then nodded stiffly. “Very well.”

  He disappeared.

  Harbin’s shoulders sagged and he looked back towards the place where Aya had been, but was now gone. He didn’t trust the witch. The bastard’s eyes had slid towards where Aya had been walking just before he had nodded. Was he going to go after her?

  Was he on to him?

  Harbin was sure that he hadn’t revealed his surprise to the male, or the anger that had washed through him on realising who the male was working for and that he was being set up again, but what he didn’t show on the surface could easily be detected by a spell.

  He stared at the spot on the street where Aya had been, focusing on her scent and drawing deep breaths of air down into his lungs to catch it again. She would be heading home now, having passed the evening meandering around the late night shops and some cafes that stayed open into the small hours.

  The Archangel huntress had hired him to kill her.

  The thought of finally getting his hands on her and having his vengeance reawakened the colder, emotionless and lethal part of himself that had been in command for the past twenty years, filling his mind with pleasing images of luring her to her death.

  The woman wanted him to kill Aya, because she knew Aya was connected to him.

  He could use Aya to draw the woman and the witch out, and eliminate them both in one fell swoop.

  His deeper primal instincts pushed back against that idea, focusing on what would happen to Aya if he walked down that dark path.

  The huntress must have known Aya back when she had been a captive of Archangel and now she was using her to get to him. He couldn’t use Aya in the same way. His every instinct demanded that he protect her and keep her close to him, and did nothing that might endanger her.