Marked by an Assassin (17 page)

It hadn’t taken him long to find his feet and have her pinned against the wall, his body caging hers as he kissed her harder, desperate for more of her.

That time he had kissed her, she had welcomed it, wrapping her arms around him and tugging him closer.

He had bumped against her and snow had rained down his back, the icy chill nothing when he was burning from the fumbled kiss, losing himself in her.

Only the crunch of boots on compacted snow had broken them apart and she had hurried ahead of him down the alleyway. He had followed her home, seeing her there safe, before returning to his own one, still lost in a daze from the feel of her kiss and the urges she had awoken in him.

Fuck, he had dreamed of that kiss for weeks. He had wanted to do it a thousand times over again and had gone to school every morning filled with the hope he would see her again and she would let him kiss her.

She had avoided him though, always fleeing whenever he found her alone, and in the end he had been nothing more than a typical teenage boy. She hadn’t wanted to kiss him, she had made that clear with her behaviour towards him, and so he had found a female who did.

He had embraced the passion she had unleashed in him, working his way from kissing and fumbled touches to bedding the females who approached him, all of them eager to attempt to secure a place of power within his family by securing him as their mate. He hadn’t been interested in a mate, or anything resembling a relationship. He had been consumed by lust and a desire to learn more, to sate his needs, and he had. Being immature, he hadn’t been able to impregnate the females, so he had slept with them freely, not thinking about whether they were interested in more than sex with him because he wasn’t interested in anything beyond fucking them.

When he had grown bored of the females in the village, he had started heading down into the town, sleeping with the mortal females there, knowing he couldn’t impregnate them either so he could do as he pleased with zero consequences.

Or so he had thought until the fateful night the Archangel huntress had set her sights on him.

Harbin scrubbed a hand down his face and groaned as he realised that Aya had spent twenty years seeing him chasing other females after she had been the one to give him his first kiss.

He hadn’t really given any thought to how it might hurt her but he suspected now that it had, and that hurt had made her an easy target for Archangel’s lies.

Gods, she had to hate him.

Despise him.

It was a lost cause, but he couldn’t deny his need to find her and explain, to make her see that he hadn’t sold her out. He couldn’t deny his need of her.

It was primal and deep, the call of the wild, and it demanded things of him that he had no right to feel or desire.

Not when there was zero hope.

He had made sure of that by whoring himself in the village with the pride females and down in the town with the mortal ones.

He had made his bed and now he would have to lie in it, alone, forever.

A female like Aya would never want a male like him. She could never forgive his sins. She could never love him.

Because he didn’t deserved to be forgiven or loved.

Harbin watched as Cavanaugh tucked a rogue strand of hair behind Eloise’s ear and lingered with his fingers on her neck, his silver gaze soft with love and flooded with warmth. Eloise lifted her hand and placed it over his, holding it against her as she turned her head, closed her eyes and pressed a kiss to the heel of his palm.

Harbin shut his eyes and tried to stifle the pain as the past and the present clawed at him, ripping away the softer parts and leaving his chest hollow and cold again.

He didn’t deserve what Cavanaugh had.

He didn’t deserve a fated female, the one female in the universe meant solely for him, and the only one he could truly bond with to forge a connection that most snow leopards could only dream of because finding your mate was more than merely rare. It was almost impossible.

Male snow leopards searched the globe for their fated one, and most never found her.

His had been in front of him all along and he had been too blinded by lust, too overwhelmed by desire, to see her, and now she was lost to him.

His animal side cried out and he couldn’t contain the pained roar that left his lips, a call filled with the yearning that had been growing inside him, one he felt sure was going to consume and destroy him.

A call for his mate.

A call for Aya.

Aya paused mid-step and looked back along the alleyway between the brick buildings, sure she had sensed someone behind her. No one was there. She waited a few seconds more, studying the shadows of the quiet London side street, and then started walking again, heading towards the main road that would take her to her small apartment. She pulled her thick grey wool jacket closed over her mulberry jumper, folding her arms across her chest, and kept her head down as she walked, her leather boots loud in the silence of the night.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had the unsettling sensation since making her excuses and leaving the Archangel facility.

The first time had been that same night, a few hours after Harbin, the dragon, and many other prisoners had escaped, Rocky included. She might have had a hand in helping some of them, but Archangel didn’t need to know that. They had been a little too happy for her to leave after questioning her, and she suspected they were going to be watching her for a while, so she had been keeping her distance from Switch and any of the escaped fae and immortals.

At first, she had put the odd sensation down to them tailing her, but she had sensed no one near her. When she had studied the feeling, setting aside her fear that Archangel were coming for her and those she cared about, she had discovered something unsettling.

It wasn’t a sense that she was in danger. It didn’t stem from the feeling that someone was stalking her.

It tugged at her animal side, making it restless, and that was why she had automatically associated it with her being in danger.

When it was quite the opposite.

Her snow leopard side was drawn to the source of the sensation, so much so she had awoken last night to find herself standing at the window of her bedroom, on the verge of lifting the sash.

She had wanted to shift and drop to the pavement below, had ached with a need to seek the origin of the call that drummed in her blood and lured her to it.

Harbin.

Gods damn him.

She hadn’t anticipated this. It was a complication she didn’t need, not when her head was already tied in knots, her thoughts still tangled. It felt impossible to find the end of the right thread, the one she could pull to make the whole ball unravel so she could finally know what to believe.

She hadn’t found the courage to question Archangel about what they had told her all those years ago or the huntress who had been the one to meet with her, but she was beginning to believe Harbin. Little by little, day by day, that belief grew and the faith she’d had in Archangel weakened.

Little by little, the need for answers grew too, and more than once she had found herself standing outside Underworld, staring at the sign and considering going in. She hadn’t lied to Rocky when she had said she avoided the club because a snow leopard shifter worked in it and she had wanted to stay away from him, but she hadn’t exactly told him the entire story.

Harbin’s brother was the snow leopard shifter, and until recently he had been the alpha of her pride.

She wasn’t sure that he would recognise her, but she feared that he would or that Harbin had been in contact with him and that he would try to detain her.

Harbin was still in London.

She knew it because if he had left the city, she would no longer feel drawn to him. The compulsion to find him would have faded as the distance between them had grown, until it had finally died completely.

He wasn’t staying at Underworld though, or at least he hadn’t been there the times she had ended up outside it, because she hadn’t felt him nearby. The closer she came to him, the stronger the pull towards him grew. It was part of the reason she couldn’t face him in order to get the answers she needed. It was too dangerous. The pull she felt towards him was already strong while the distance between them was no doubt great. If she was in his presence, it would be unbearable.

She wasn’t sure she would be able to control her primal urges and she was damned if she was going to surrender to them and to Harbin.

His kiss had rocked her, shaken her world all over again, but she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice and believe it had meant anything.

The last time she had stood outside Underworld, she had caught his scent though.

Aya paused again, the memory of his smell flowing through her, the masculine mix of spice and snow warming her despite her best efforts to not allow it to affect her.

Gods help her. She wished Harbin would leave the city and release her from his wicked spell, because she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. She hadn’t been prepared for how deeply seeing him again would affect her, turning her world and her feelings on their axis and leaving her thinking about him almost constantly.

Dreaming about him.

The nightmares of her past no longer haunted her sleep. He did. A vision of sensuality and danger, an alluring and tempting male that she never quite found the will to resist. If she couldn’t resist him in her dreams, how could she expect to do so in reality if their paths crossed?

His kiss had shocked her, had made her realise just what he was to her, and she had wanted to flee in that moment, to run and not look back. She still wanted to run away, even as the rest of her wanted to run towards him. She wasn’t strong enough to deal with this turn of events. He had crushed her heart once and it had never completely recovered from that blow. She wouldn’t risk it again, because she feared this time the damage would be devastating and permanent.

But she still needed answers, or she was going to go mad. She had to know whether he had been telling her the truth and Archangel had used and betrayed him.

Maybe she could call Underworld and ask to speak with Cavanaugh. That way she would get her answers, and she would remain safe.

Although, she wasn’t sure how honest Cavanaugh would be with her. He had been her pride’s alpha, a position where he had been responsible for being truthful to his kin and open with them, but he was also Harbin’s brother. There was a high chance that the behaviour towards his kin that had been ingrained in him wouldn’t stop him from doing all in his power to protect his brother. There was a chance he would lie in order to pull her into the web of deceit Harbin had spun and snare her so that male could find her.

Because he was hunting her.

She knew it in her heart, sensed it during the times she felt compelled to find him. He had been close to her every time.

Watching her from a distance.

She was his mark, but more than that, she had hurt him and she was beginning to understand that he had grown into a male who embraced vengeance over walking away. The pride had taught the latter, instilling a desire for peace in all of its members, and Harbin had turned his back on that.

He had changed dramatically, transforming into the dangerous male now after her.

An assassin.

Because of Archangel?

She had to know the answer to that question, because she felt she was going to go mad if she didn’t get it. She couldn’t allow her fear of Harbin finding her and what she might do if it happened to control her moves and her thoughts. Cavanaugh was a good male, and as much as he loved his younger brother, he wouldn’t hand her over to him. He had proven himself a male who preferred to take the peaceful route over the violent, and a male who would never place a member of his pride in danger.

He would protect her from whatever plan Harbin had for her if she went to him.

He was no longer the alpha, but he was still the male she had known her entire life, one dedicated to protecting others.

She hoped.

The tiny seed of doubt took root in her mind and began to grow. Cavanaugh had left the pride. She had heard the rumours. He had left it in the hands of a male unworthy of the position of alpha and many had suffered. He had allowed his people to come to harm.

A chill went through her.

He might do the same to her.

She pushed back against her doubts and drew down a deep breath to steady herself.

She also knew that Cavanaugh had had a good reason for wanting to free himself of the role of alpha, one she couldn’t hold against him.

Although, phoning the nightclub still sounded more appealing than risking her neck.

Or her heart.

Aya mounted the steps of her apartment building, slid her key into the lock of the main glass door, and twisted it at the same time as pushing it open. A low lit hall greeted her, not the cleanest of spaces, but it was home. She trudged up the stairs to her floor, her thoughts stuck on repeat, replaying the terrifying moment when Archangel had broken with their plan and had lifted the barrier between her and Harbin, allowing him to charge into her side of the room.

She had thought her number was up, that he was going to kill her, and then he had been kissing her.

Gods, he had kissed her.

It had been almost forty years since their first fumbled kiss, and she had been close to many other males in that time, but no kiss had made her burn as Harbin’s did. He set her body on fire with only a brush of his lips and had her resolve melting, her limbs turning to rubber, when he turned up the heat and his kiss grew more demanding.

She warmed inside and lost herself for a moment, forgetting where she was, transported back to that room and the way his hard body had caged her and his lips had mastered her—body and soul. Gods help her.

She shook herself out of her daze and pushed on, striding down the narrow dark corridor to her apartment door. She opened it, stepped inside and pressed her back to the door as it closed behind her, her breath leaving her on a sigh. She had to pull herself together. She was stronger than this.