Sin Undone

He glanced at the ring on her finger. “I’m sure the trade-off will be worth it.” “Not for me. I like breathing.” She maintained eye contact, but kept her peripheral vision on his hands. Wisely, he kept them wide apart and always moving, making it difficult to keep track of both at all times. “Who are you working with? I know you aren’t alone, and you haven’t been an assassin long enough to sense my presence.”


“Does it really matter? The entire den wants you dead.” He lunged, and the silver tip of a dart glinted in the dappled sunlight. She hit the ground and rolled, slid her Gargantua-bone dagger from its sheath at her waist, and popped to her feet. The crack of gunfire deafened her as the whisper of a bullet brushed her shoulder. She slashed out with the dagger, knocking the pistol to the ground. Marasco snarled, and suddenly, a four-hundred-pound lion was coming at her. She blocked with one arm and buried the dagger in his side with the other, but she went down beneath the beast. Her spine cracked hard on a rock and his giant-ass paws pinned her shoulders.

Then, suddenly, he went airborne. Conall stood next to her, fists clenched, fangs elongated. He had a faint, satisfied smile on his face, and if she hadn’t been in so much pain, she’d have thought it was hot.

Marasco hit a tree with enough force to splinter the trunk, but he landed on all fours and charged again. Sin launched the dagger, which had tasted his blood and would now seek him out, and never miss. It struck his chest dead center. Shock flashed in Marasco’s eyes as he stumbled. He stayed on his feet, still pushing forward, but he’d lost his momentum and, staggering, he lost his hold on his lion form.

Now human, he collapsed, rolling to his side, blood gushing from his chest and his mouth. Dropping his medic bag, Con kneeled next to him. Sin cursed. Con was seriously going to pull some paramedic shit—

He twisted the knife. Marasco moaned through clenched teeth, too well trained and conditioned to react much to any kind of torture.

“Tell me who you’re working with,” Con said coldly, but Sin knew the lion wasn’t giving anything up, for the same reason he wasn’t screaming in agony.

“Go… to… hell.” Marasco’s golden eyes glazed over, and his chest stopped moving, and instantly, something popped painfully in her chest as the assassin bond with him broke.

Con yanked the blade out of the lion-shifter’s body. “We gotta go.”

“We need to double back to the house.” She took the dagger from him and wiped it on the dead shifter’s jeans. “I want to see who he was working with—” She leaped to her feet as the sound of… hoofbeats?… thundered in her ears.

Con cursed. “Now.”

He dragged her by the arm to the Harrowgate. She barely had time to steady herself before he threw her inside the capsule-like room and dove in after her. As the hazy curtain formed to seal them in, an arrow punched through the hardening veil, whispered across Sin’s cheek, and pierced the wall between Australia and New Zealand on the Earth map.

“Who the hell was that?” she yelled, as Con slapped his palm on the glowing map. It burst into a dozen neon-colored lines that were etched into all four of the obsidian walls. “It’s not one of your guys?” He tapped Europe, and the continent grew larger as the others vanished. He kept tapping it out until he pinpointed somewhere in Romania. The door shimmered open, and she turned to grab the arrow—often weapons gave away clues as to their owners’ identities—but it was gone. Son of a bitch. Who the hell used dissolving arrows? She’d never even heard of them.

“None of my assassins shoot disappearing arrows from horseback.” Which could mean that good old King Arthur was from another assassin den. Dammit! She’d known there was a possibility that her guys would get others involved, but the reality… well, she hated to admit it, but their fierce desire to see her dead stung. And now she was truly fucked.

She stepped out of the Harrowgate and into a dismal, cold, gray day. She thought it might be afternoon, but it was hard to tell, since the sun was hidden behind the thick clouds and fog. “Where are we going?”

“A warg stronghold.” Con swung around. “Test my virus levels.”

She bristled. “A please would be nice.” At his glare, she huffed. “Fine.” She gripped his wrist, charged up her gift, and probed his blood. “You just fed, so levels are really low.” “I’m still going to be careful.” His tone turned wry. “So no unnecessary biting, screwing, or bleeding on anyone.”

“Do you regularly bleed on people?”

He dropped his medic bag next to the Harrowgate. “You’re a ball of laughs, you know that?” He took off along a grassy, worn trail, leaving her to follow. “Hey,” she called to him. “I’m known throughout the assassin community as a funny person.” Con missed a step. “See? That was funny.” Better if he’d fallen on his face, but she’d take what she could get.

He ignored her, kept walking, though they didn’t go far. They were, apparently, near the base of a mountain range and down in a fog-shrouded valley. Sin could make out a walled town where the mists thinned. From what she could see, only one poorly maintained road ran to and from the village. Clearly, no one came here who wasn’t either lost or actively seeking the town.