Marked by an Assassin, the eighth book in New York Times best-seller Felicity
Heaton’s hot paranormal romance series, Eternal Mates, is now available in
ebook and paperback. To celebrate the release, she’s holding a FANTASTIC
GIVEAWAY at her website and sharing sneak peeks of the book.
A snow leopard shifter exiled from his pride twenty years ago, Harbin treads
the dark path of life as an assassin, driven by a hunger for vengeance,
mercilessly hunting the Archangel members who attacked his kin, murdering his
mother and sister.
When a new contract
comes in and the mark is a snow leopard shifter, he can’t resist venturing into
the mortal world on a personal mission to find out why one from a normally
peaceful species now has a price on their head. What he finds in a rundown
nightclub isn’t quite what he expects—a beautiful snow leopard female that
awakens a fierce hunger inside him.
Aya has spent seventeen
years living in London, immersed in the underbelly of the fae world, keeping
her head down and her tail out of trouble. But when trouble walks right into
her life in the form of a sinfully handsome, dangerous assassin, she is pulled
into a whirlwind of events that stir up the nightmares of her past but might
just give her a shot at putting those ghosts to rest—if she can resist the dark
allure of a male she knows is her fated mate.
Can Harbin and Aya
resist the passionate fire that blazes between them as they chase the vengeance
they both crave? Or will they surrender to their deepest desires?
Marked by an Assassin is available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo
Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iBooks stores and other retailers. Also
available in paperback. Find the links to your preferred retailer here.
Excerpt:
Screams erupted in the club and he sensed the
swarm of signatures rushing towards him, crowding him and pushing at his
control. He snarled through his short fangs, trying to warn them away, needing
the space they were consuming in their mad panic.
Harbin flicked his eyes open and they settled on a
male clad in black combat gear similar to what he wore when he was carrying out
the final phase of a mission.
Only this male was no fae or demon.
He was mortal.
Archangel.
Emotions bombarded Harbin on seeing the two dozen
strong mortal males surging through the room, firing on the fae in it with
tranquiliser guns and crossbows, or lashing out with their black batons.
He pushed from his stool, his left leg aching
under the sudden weight, and growled as he shoved the people attempting to flee
away from him, clearing a space around him.
His claws lengthened at the same time as his
fangs.
A young male demon went down hard at the edge of
the dance floor, a dart sticking out of his left shoulder.
Harbin’s blood burned, his heart labouring as he
struggled to get enough air into his lungs. He shook with a need to unleash his
snow leopard side and tear through the room, the urge stronger than it had ever
been, fuelled by the constant awareness of the weaker female in the club with
him.
His gaze sought her, locating her as she broke
free of the throng of people to his left and made a run for it. She was agile
and swift as she darted through the people, and he silently willed her to make
it unseen to the main exit where a large male he recognised as a fellow shifter
was stumbling into the club, shaking his head as he tried to rid it of the
lingering effect of whatever dart the hunters had used on him.
They should have plugged him with more than one.
The big bear roared as he tore off his t-shirt and
Harbin cursed him as all the hunters swung towards him.
Two males spotted the female.
Harbin pushed off, unable to ignore the pressing need
to protect her.
One of the hunters hit her with a dart in her
right thigh. She stumbled, a high shriek leaving her lips, but kept running,
limping towards the bear as he started to shift. The second hunter pursued her.
Harbin growled and hobbled faster, cursing himself
now. He needed to shift, his cat form being his stronger one in this situation,
but he couldn’t when his tibia was still healing. The shift would break the
weakened bone, leaving him in a worse condition than he was now and making it impossible
for him to fight.
The second male caught the female as she slowed,
the drugs taking effect, and Harbin flinched as the hunter dealt a blow across
the back of her head with his baton. She crumpled, hitting the floor in a
tangled heap.
Pain pierced Harbin’s right arm and hip, but it
felt like little more than a brief sting as memories surged in response to
seeing the female go down.
They rolled through him, ripping an agonised howl
from his throat as he stumbled forwards, blinded by the pain and the fury,
filled with a hunger to destroy every Archangel hunter he could see.
This was his fault.
He had hunted down Archangel members, all of them
too young to have had anything to do with the attack on his pride. He had
needed the kill though. He had needed the serenity of shutting down his
feelings and focusing on a mission. He hadn’t thought it would trigger an
attack on the fae community, but it couldn’t be coincidence that Archangel had
targeted the very club where he had been seen two nights in a row.
Someone had witnessed the attack and survived to
tell the tale.
Archangel had come after him for retribution and
now innocents were being dragged into a living Hell again because of him.
The male grabbed her by her arms and hauled her
into them, slinging her over his shoulder.
Harbin growled weakly and kept pushing forwards
through the emptying club.
Several of the hunters left, carrying unconscious
fae in pairs. At the exit, three were attempting to handle the bear shifter.
Five darts stuck out of his bare chest and a nervous hunter embedded a sixth
before a braver one dared to approach the slumbering brute.
A sudden sinking sensation washed through Harbin
as he realised that the hunters were leaving, taking his quarry with them. His
stomach squirmed, his instincts telling him to flee while he had the chance, to
save his skin and escape whatever nightmare awaited the poor bastards at the
hands of the Archangel hunters.
He pinned his feet to the floor and scrubbed a
hand across his blurry eyes, trying to see the female as his body battled the
effects of the drugs.
She hung limp over the shoulder of the hunter, her
head lolling around and arms swaying with each measured step he took.
It would be easy to turn away, to slink into the
shadows and wait for the tranquilisers to wear off. His body was already
purging them, too strong for the puny doses they had used on him.
He sighed.
Shook his head.
He couldn’t.
Not only because he had gotten her into this mess,
but because he didn’t know which facility Archangel would take her to and he
would lose her if he let the hunters take her now. He might never find her
again and he had promised Hartt that he would carry out his part of the
mission.
He had vowed that he would remain close to her
until Hartt and Fuery came to finish the job with him.
He had to keep that promise if he was going to
keep his reputation as one of the best assassins in the guild. He had never
lost a mark, and he wasn’t going to start now.
Not even when it meant placing himself in the
hands of the hunters he despised.
He scanned the room and spotted a lone male hunter
at the back, struggling with a large unconscious male. His gut churned, every
instinct he possessed screaming at him to run in the opposite direction. He
couldn’t. He had to get caught too.
A small part of him, a piece of him that refused
to die now, whispered that his reasons ran deeper than a need to keep tabs on
his mark and fulfilling his part of the mission. He wanted to get caught so he
could ensure that she was unharmed by Archangel. He didn’t want to let her be
alone in that terrible place.
He needed to be there too.
Harbin roared and hurled himself at the young
hunter. The male turned, wide brown eyes filled with panic, and swiftly raised
his compact crossbow. Harbin saw the flash of the dart, felt the sting as it
pierced his chest, and grunted as he stumbled a step. He pushed onwards,
lumbering towards the male, desperate to force him into firing again. He needed
the oblivion the tranquilisers offered. He would lose his mind if he had to do
this capture and transport in a semi-drugged state. His memories would destroy
what little sanity he had left.
A second hunter dropped his quarry and joined the
first, lashing out with a baton.
Harbin staggered right as the blow connected with
the left side of his head, pain ricocheting around his skull and turning the
world hazy for a moment. He tried to retain his balance, his injured leg
crumpled beneath him, and he hit the tacky club floor hard.
The two males closed in and every instinct he
possessed commanded him to shift and fight. He shut his eyes and surrendered
instead, allowing the hunters to crack their batons across his arms and head as
he curled into a ball on his side. His snow leopard side pushed for freedom,
writhing beneath his skin, wild with a need to attack and protect himself. It
took every shred of his will to keep still and take the beating, to not
retaliate and kill the males who were battering him.
He would find them and kill them, after he had fulfilled
his mission.
His strength faded as the tranquilisers began to
take hold, numbing him but not quickly enough to stop the need to escape the
hunters and their vile clutches, and the thought of waking to find himself at
the mercy of Archangel from driving him mad.
Shattered memory fragments bombarded him, filling
his mind with a broken replay of blood on snow, crimson drenching white, and
the black blur of the hunters who had attacked his kin. He saw their faces,
heard their last gasps as he choked the life from them, staring into their eyes
so he was the last thing they saw.
He saw her.
The blonde Archangel huntress mocked him with the
pretty smile that had addled his lust-fogged alcohol-impaired brain, luring him
under her spell in the small bar in the town nearest to the mountain where his
pride had lived in safety for centuries.
A peace he had shattered because he had been too
full of himself, as headstrong and hot-blooded as his father had always told
him he was. He had been too blinded by lust to see the warning signs, had been
too tempted by the sinful beauty and the thought of satisfying his carnal
hungers.
His pain dulled as he slipped into a daze, the
tranquiliser dose not enough to knock him out, leaving him at the mercy of his
memories. They ran on a constant twisted replay, tormenting him, driving him
insane with a need to hunt and kill, a hunger that he was powerless to satisfy
in his drugged state. He weakly banged his head against the hard floor, seeking
oblivion in order to escape his past, but he didn’t have the strength to knock
himself out.
He was vaguely aware of the hunters as they
dragged him from the room, and the faint smell of gasoline as they loaded him
into a truck. Lucidity came and went, giving him brief glimpses of holding
cells in a darkened space, each filled with an unconscious fae or demon, before
the past came rushing back to swallow him.
Each time it hit him, it drove him back under the
violent tide of his memories. They battered him, turning him inside out with
emotions that were still raw, his pain and fury yet to fade. He tried to growl
whenever the blonde huntress flashed across his mind, tried to change the
course of events whenever he saw her leaning in to kiss him, her emerald eyes
glittering with desire, but no sound left his lips and nothing he did could
alter the past.
The truck shifted, jostling him so he rolled
against the cold metal bars of his cell. The feel of them pressing against his
back and the thought of where he was heading combined to overpower him. Fear
closed in despite his years of training and honing his abilities as an
assassin, the emotion too strong to deny as it swept through him, swamping his
mind and flooding it with images of what might await him and the other unlucky
bastards in the truck with him when they reached the facility.
He tried to move, his instincts screaming at him
to break free, to not allow Archangel to take him into a facility where he
would be tortured and would possibly die. He hadn’t survived this long, hadn’t
borne the pain for twenty agonising years for it to end here at their hands.
He wouldn’t let them win.
He snarled and shuffled, managed to get his hands
beneath him and convince his body to obey his foggy mind, but he didn’t have
the strength to push himself off the grotty floor. His arms gave out beneath
him, his left shoulder hitting the floor hard enough to rip a pained yelp from
his lips.
A hunter near the back muttered something and
cautiously stalked forwards, heading in his direction.
He attempted to feign unconsciousness, but the
pain in his shoulder was too intense, the fresh metallic tang of blood
permeating the air telling him he had torn the wound open again. He gritted his
teeth against it, his jaw muscles flexed, and the next thing he knew was a
sharp sting in the right side of his chest as a dart impacted. Strange cold
stole through him, numbing as it crept outwards from the impact point.
Darkness claimed him.
A brief, sweet moment of oblivion.
Followed by a rude blast of cold water.
Harbin snarled and tried to back away from the
powerful jet, but a wall blocked his escape. He barked out his pain as the icy
water thundered against his injured shoulder and then coughed as it struck his
face, getting in his mouth and up his nose. He flinched away from it, curling
against the wall, but it didn’t stop his assailants. They kept up with their
torment, hosing him down where he sat on the frigid tiles of what seemed to be
a bright room.
As they ran the hose down his body, he barked
again, fire and lightning rocketing up his leg bones as the jet reached his
ankle. He growled a curse and swung his gaze towards them, narrowing his silver
eyes on them as he breathed hard, struggling against his need to leap to his
feet and rip them to shreds.
The two young male hunters lost their smiles,
their dark eyes turning wary as they backed off in unison.
Without a word, the one with the hose switched it
off and made a swift exit, followed by his companion.
Harbin panted through the pain and gritted his
teeth as he looked down at his left leg. The bastards had removed his cast,
exposing the deep bruises that marked his skin and leaving him in danger of
re-breaking his tibia if he put too much weight on it. He wouldn’t be fighting
them any time soon, that was for sure. He needed a few more days before he
could risk more than hobbling.
He huffed.
The bastards knew what they were doing. They knew
what he was.
Who he was.
Not only had they taken his cast, which he would
have easily stripped back to its base parts to get his hands on the metal rods
to use them as makeshift batons, but they had taken his clothes.
They had removed everything he might have used as
a weapon against them.
He flexed his fingers and smiled coldly as his
claws extended.
Everything except his built-in arsenal anyway.
A shadow flickered out of the corner of his eye
and he lowered his hands and looked towards the only exit in the white room.
A larger male blocked the door, his rugged face
set in grim lines that Harbin felt matched his own expression. They had sent an
assassin to deal with him, one of their finest no doubt. Only the best for him.
He bared his fangs at the male.
The bastard simply raised the dart gun in his hand
and squeezed the trigger.
Four times.
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Marked by an Assassin (open internationally).
Find all the links, a fantastic 4 chapter downloadable sample
of the book, and also how to enter the giveaway and be in with a shot of
winning a $75, $50 or $25 gift certificate at her website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/marked-by-an-assassin-paranormal-romance-novel.php
Books in
the Eternal Mates paranormal romance series:
Book 9: Possessed by a Dark Warrior – coming soon!
About Felicity Heaton:
Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today
international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books.
In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action,
intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from
dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful
angels and hot demons! If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara
Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then
you will enjoy her books too.
If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the
best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and
dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone
vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful,
passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series.
Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in
every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then
take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.
If you want to know
more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following
places:
