Marked by an Assassin (11 page)

She shoved the flat of her palm against a glass door and sweet night air washed over her, the coolness of it sending a wave of calm through her as she could finally breathe again. She strode out into the welcoming darkness, heading for the spot in the centre of the courtyard where the amber glow of the lights emanating from the rows of windows on the walls of the quadrangle barely reached.

Aya tipped her head back and breathed deeply, trying to centre herself again and settle her turbulent thoughts and feelings. Her fingers stroked over the soft material of her silver halter-top, a methodical rhythm that slowly calmed her.

What had she done?

It was her fault that Rocky and the others were in the hands of Archangel, and while she had been able to meet with a senior member of staff before her encounter with Harbin and secure their release, she didn’t fully trust Archangel to hold true to their word.

Not anymore.

All because Harbin had shaken her.

She had thought herself prepared to handle facing him and finally having her revenge, making him pay for the years she had suffered at the hands of madmen and the close to two decades of reliving those nightmarish times that had come afterwards.

She had been wrong.

With only a handful of words, backed up by the pain that had shone in his silver eyes, hurt that had called to her deepest animal instincts and had made her want to soothe him, he had punched a hole in her beliefs and ripped them apart.

She paced the small patch of darkness, the gravel crunching beneath her black boots. Her hands still shook, but not as violently as they had been when she had returned to the small room where her clothes had been waiting for her and had dressed. She had barely been able to fasten the button on her black jeans. It had taken her close to ten attempts before she had finally managed it.

It wasn’t only Harbin’s words that had shaken her though.

Her lips tingled and she pressed trembling fingers to them, her breath hot on their tips as she thought about the kiss.

She’d had a deal with Archangel, a plan they had agreed on, and they had changed it. Twice. When she had contacted them about Harbin, they had agreed on a plan, one where they would wait until two days after her call and capture both her and Harbin together, taking them into custody when they were alone outside the club in order to maintain her cover as just another member of the fae community.

They had promised to do things quietly, and that only the two of them would be captured.

The senior member of staff she had met with tonight had apologised, stating that it was another operation that had seized her and the others the night after she had contacted Archangel, and she had foolishly believed him.

Until they had changed the plan again.

They had sworn the barrier would remain in place, keeping Harbin separated from her. They had lied, and that only weakened her trust and made her feel they had been lying to her from the start.

Harbin had been so swift to enter the room, to cross it and reach her, that she hadn’t had time to react. She had been in his arms, her back pressed to the wall and his powerful body caging her before she could move, and then his lips had captured hers and she had been thrown back close to forty years to a fumbled first kiss in a snowy mountain village.

Aya spat out a curse and dragged her fingers away from her lips.

That kiss had meant nothing. He had made that perfectly clear to her then. He felt nothing for her, but that hadn’t made it hurt any less when he had betrayed her.

She looked back at the doors she had exited.

If he had betrayed her.

He hadn’t been lying when he had said that Archangel had killed his sister and mother, and part of her believed he hadn’t been lying when he had said Archangel had used him too. She had already known he had told them the location of the village, but the tale she knew differed from that point.

When Archangel had changed hands, and she had been set free, a huntress had been sent to speak with her about everything. The pretty blonde female had told her about that night and that she had been there, and that Harbin had been given money and his pride given protection in exchange for three males and a female. Archangel hadn’t intended to spill blood, they had only fought to defend themselves when the males in the village had attacked them.

Aya had believed her.

She had been alone, afraid and angry, and she had needed someone to direct that fury at and the huntress had given her a target.

She had directed Aya’s anger away from Archangel and made her focus it on one of her own kind.

Aya slumped to her knees and stared at the golden gravel, reeling as everything clicked into place.

The huntress was the one who had seduced Harbin.

Aya could easily see the bastard falling for her beauty, with her glossy blonde waves, shapely figure and stunning green eyes, and it hadn’t exactly taken much convincing for him to fall into bed with anyone back then. A pretty smile and a little flattery, and any female could have had their way with him.

Except her.

Gods, she hadn’t realised just how bitter he had made her, and it only churned the guilt already brewing in her stomach, making her sick. She had believed Archangel because she had been upset with him, filled with jealousy and anger that she had held on to for twenty years after they had kissed. Jealousy and anger that had only grown with each female she had seen him cavorting with in the village, and each trip he had taken down the mountain to slake his lust with the mortals.

Maybe she was doomed to place her faith in the wrong people.

Forty years ago, she had believed Harbin had felt something for her, and he had crushed that belief.

Yet no kiss had ever stirred heat in her veins as his had.

She wished with all of her heart that when he had kissed her in the room that she had felt nothing but cold fury, but that kiss had melted the ice in her veins and the thick glacier that encased that heart, making her burn for him all over again.

Damn him.

She knew why he affected her so deeply too.

It had hit her the second she had stepped into the room and he had looked at her, his eyes bright silver with hunger, need that she felt sure he was probably blaming on his impending maturity, but she knew stemmed from something else.

She was his mate.

The feeling had drummed through her, an awareness that she had found hard to shake during her time locked in that room with him, and that was impossible to escape even now that she was free and he was probably back in his cell.

How long would it be before he realised it too?

Would he come after her when his instincts finally told him that she was his fated female?

Her heart beat harder, and the walls around her closed in, the darkness choking the air from her lungs as her instincts roared at her to run. She needed space and time, needed to escape and taste the fresh air of freedom in her lungs. She couldn’t do this.

She shoved to her feet and eyed the archway cut into the side of the building at the opposite end of the courtyard.

Freedom beckoned but she couldn’t convince her feet to move.

She had already tried running from him, had fled to this courtyard, but she hadn’t been able to outrun her desire for him. It still drummed in her blood, quickening and setting fire to it. Nothing she did could douse those flames now, not with the memory of his kiss branded on her mind and her lips.

Gods, she needed to speak to Rocky. She needed to talk to someone. She was going to drown in her thoughts if she didn’t.

The things Harbin had said kept her pinned in place, and the need to know whether he was telling the truth warred with a desire to pretend those words had never left his lips.

She couldn’t face the thought that Archangel had lied to her.

She had trusted them for too long.

After her release, she had begun to work with them as a sort of informant, feeding them information about dangerous immortals. She had believed that by working with them that she had been protecting the fae, shifters and other immortals who wanted to live in peace. She had spent fifteen years assisting them.

The thought that they might have lied to her to gain her trust, just as they had apparently spun lies of a more wicked nature to Harbin in order to gain his twenty years ago, hollowed out her insides and left her cold.

Archangel had put her through three years of Hell, but the tests they had run on her had been nothing compared with the experiments they had done on the males they had captured with her. While the scientists had put the males through a more physically painful course of experiments, they had labelled her as a more valuable asset because of her gender, and had instead inflicted a round of studying on her that had been invasive and had left her emotionally scarred.

She closed her eyes and shut out the images that wanted to bombard her, the memories she did her best to keep contained to her nightmares. That time was in her past now, but some days it still felt as if it had been just yesterday that they had laid her on inspection tables and invaded her body, studying how she differed from a mortal female.

The need to run overwhelmed her again, this time born of a deeper fear, one she couldn’t brush aside.

She couldn’t face the pain of rejection all over again. No snow leopard male would ever want her as a mate, could ever feel anything for her, because she had overheard the scientists that had studied her and the one thing mature males of her species desired was the one thing she couldn’t give them.

She couldn’t bear offspring to help the survival of their species.

Aya looked back over her shoulder again, unable to ignore the urge that beat within her, drawing her back to the cellblock.

Back to him.

The need to run from him clashed with another need, one that began to grow, becoming strong enough to subdue the urge to flee.

She needed to know the truth about everything.

She needed to speak with Harbin again, but she wasn’t sure he would be rational. He was too different to the male she had known for most of her life. The coldness in him, the darkness that seeped from him and warned her to keep her distance, set her on edge and made her want to obey her instincts and do just that.

Was this what life as an assassin did to people?

The male she had known back in the village had been filled with life and light, with easy smiles and quick wit. He had been a little wild, but he hadn’t seemed capable of cold-blooded murder, and she knew from her research that he had done some terrible things during their time apart.

What had driven him to step into such a dark and dangerous life?

Her heart whispered the answer to that question. It had shone in his eyes when he had told her that Archangel had murdered his mother and sister, and now she knew of that event, she could see that the times he had been escorted past her cell, his eyes filled with icy darkness, that he hadn’t been plotting her demise. He had been fighting his need to attack the Archangel hunters who guarded him, and possibly every other mortal in the building.

Archangel had set him on the dark path to becoming the cold, emotionless assassin she had met in the nightclub.

A male who was nothing like the one she had fallen in love with forty years ago.

She needed to speak with him.

She turned back towards the doors and the high shrill of an alarm sounded. The lights from the windows on all three floors of the building surrounding her flickered as hunters rushed through the corridors and her heart kicked off at a pace. What was happening?

She listened hard, tuning out the wailing alarm in an attempt to detect what had triggered them.

Someone screamed. Another joined in, a shriek of agony that was cut short and made her cold inside.

It was an attack.

Her stomach dropped.

She pushed off hard, sprinting towards the glass doors.

Harbin.

Harbin paced his cell, his bare feet silent on the cold white tiles. Only the sound of his breathing and soft swish of his newly reinstated black jeans filled the tense silence. The return of more of his clothes wasn’t a good enough exchange this time, not as payment for what Archangel had put him through.

Hell, if he was honest with himself, he didn’t deserve the damn clothing. They should have stripped him bare again and put him in solitary for what he had done to the female.

The darker part of himself rebelled at that thought, pushing back against it, pointing out that she was the reason he was trapped in his own personal Hell. She had betrayed him. She had lured him to her, had tricked him into falling into Archangel’s hands, and had orchestrated a meeting that had rattled him.

All for the sake of revenge.

He wouldn’t have been as pissed if she had been in the right and events had followed the path that she believed they had taken.

But they hadn’t, and he was furious.

He would never have knowingly betrayed his kin, and the fact that she believed he had sat in his gut like acid-coated lead. What sort of male did she think he was?

He huffed and strode back across the small cell as his mind flashed images from his past at him, reminders that he hadn’t been the most stellar member of his pride. He had never embraced his duties as the son of their alpha, or taken on any form of responsibility, or done anything that benefitted his people. He had been lapse in his studies, lazy in his work, and had spent most of his days in the lead up to being exiled in the arms of whatever female would satisfy his latest itch to fuck.

Gods, he hoped she hadn’t been one of the many he had bedded at the pride, but it would certainly help him understand the weird rush of sensation he’d had when he had been kissing her and would go some way to explaining why she hated his guts and had been happy to swallow the bullshit Archangel had fed to her.

He doubted she would have believed them if they had said his brother, Cavanaugh, had sold her out or anyone else at the pride.

The devious bastards had probably overheard something she had said about him during her captivity and had used him all over again, painting a big target on his chest for her knowing full well that she harboured some sort of resentment towards him and would take the bait.