Marked by an Assassin by Felicity Heaton Page B

barrels, ropes, and boxes were strewn across the white tiled floor. Did they think he would be tempted to play with the stuff?
    “Make yourself at home.” The male voice barked over an intercom on the left wall, above which was a small camera.
    They were watching him.
    He spotted more cameras on the other walls, and in the corners of the room too.
    They honest to gods wanted to see what he would do when faced with all the shit in the room with him.
    Fuck all. That’s what he was going to do with it.
    Instead of surrendering to his natural curiosity, he started pacing the room, cataloguing everything about it. There was a deep gully across the middle of it, cutting it into two squares. He glanced up at the ceiling, at a dark band there. He would bet his left nut that there was a barrier up there, ready to slam shut and divide the room into two.
    Harbin casually strode away from his end of the room, towards the place where the barrier was hidden in the ceiling, curious to see what would happen.
    He was within a few paces of the gully when the scent of male snow leopard hit him. His nose tingled, his primal instincts firing and seizing command. He peeled his top lip off his teeth and dragged the air over them, tasting the male’s scent.
    A snarl rose up his throat and he stalked towards the first item that smelled of the male, a barrel just over the gully on the other side of the room. He halted a few feet from it, stealing back control of his body and refusing to give in to the need to rub the damned thing to erase the male’s scent from it.
    Archangel were fucking with him.
    Maybe they wanted to see how long it would take him to cave and let the need to scent mark everything seize control of him.
    He huffed and forced himself to turn around and walk away, back towards the end of the room that didn’t smell of the male.
    It was a dangerous game they were playing. This close to sexual maturity, the scent of another male affected him deeply, triggering a primal need to fight and fuck, and gods help anyone who was on the receiving end of either of those needs because he felt like a feral bastard, liable to rip apart an enemy or a bedfellow.
    He stormed to the steel door and banged his fists against it. He needed to get out. He needed to escape. Fuck waiting for Hartt. Fuck the female mark. He had to get to the dragon and get the hell out of this place. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t handle any more.
    The matching steel door at the other end of the room opened, jerking his gaze in that direction, and his stomach dropped as the female snow leopard was shoved into it with him.
    Clad only in a strapless white bra and panties.
    No.
    The twin urges to fight and fuck combined into one seething hunger and he roared as he launched himself in her direction, unable to claw back enough control to stop himself. The terrible urge to escape overrode them all, filling him with a black need to fulfil his mission. He could only watch himself running at her, determined to wrap his hands around her throat and choke the life from her, convinced that he would be free then.
    He would be free.
    The glass panel dropped and he slammed into it, cracking his nose on it. The taste of blood coated his tongue, worsening his hunger to fight. He shook his head and gathered his senses, and growled as he attacked the barrier that kept him from his mark.
    The female shrank back, her gold-silver eyes filling with fear as she brought her hands up to her chest and swallowed hard. Those wide doe eyes pinned on him, burning into him and wrenching him in two directions, tearing him between the hunger to kill and the terrible need to kiss her.
    Fear.
    He frowned and looked down at the barrier, and snarled as he spotted the holes in it. He could smell her. Sweet mountain air.
    His knees weakened, threatening to buckle and send him crashing to the ground as that scent curled around him, seeped into his skin and made him heat from the inside outwards. He shuddered,