SoulBound: Book Two of the Ace Assassin Series Read online

  Six feet three inches of black-leather-bound muscle, long, scarlet braid, and a far too handsome—almost pretty—face. He carried a weighty, modern duffle-bag I recognized as mine, and wore a look of amused shock on his alabaster pale features.

  “Rhys, hawthorn, holly, henbane, by all that’s holy, what are you doing here scaring my staff?”

  “Orders.”

  “Oh.”

  I curled my toes down and arched my bare feet; it had frosted during the night and the ground still wore a thick carpet of it. The cold burned my soles.

  I turned to the terrified cook and sighed. Damage control. Kai came up beside me, dropped my black silk robe on my shoulders and a pair of fluffy, blue bunny slippers at my feet, then said, “I got this, mi vida.”

  Relief washed through me. ‘Thank you, love.’ I wasn’t anywhere near as good with humans as he’d become. I hadn’t been around them for centuries, not for any length of time. My stint on this side several years ago hadn’t prepared me for managing a staff, some of whom were human.

  Even if they were humans who knew about the Tylwyth Teg—and they all did—seeing obvious use of our powers still tended to freak them out. Though, upon reflection, I think seeing an armed, six-foot-tall, skinny red-head racing buck-naked through the house at dawn might disturb anyone.

  When I’d been on this side before, I’d done my photo-shoots, walked my catwalks and stuck to my hotel rooms. I hadn’t been much of a party-girl even then. Instead, I’d spent those years watching all the sci-fi and fantasy movies I could find and reading every book I could lay hands on. I’m not very much fun, I know, but I can talk books, science fiction, and fantasy ‘til the cows come home.

  I slid with gratitude into the silky caress of the robe and belted it as I watched Kai. He’d gone back to dress as soon as he’d realized the emergency wasn’t life threatening.

  He turned to the cook and started chatting her up, and I let my gaze linger. He wore pressed black jeans and a slightly damp, white t-shirt that clung distractingly to his brown skin. He hadn’t managed time to style his hair, and he still had the shoulder length tresses wrapped in one of my teal microfibre towels. He looked far too cute for such a deadly being. I turned my gaze to my brother’s face.

  Like Rhys, who didn’t look dangerous enough for what he was. No, Rhys looked prettier than he did lethal. Was that why people wouldn’t take me seriously? Fuck. I jerked my head toward the house. “Inside. I’ll have breakfast served.”

  I missed Meg like one would miss a limb as I turned to scan the faces of my staff. Malaika, the head of my computer security team, stood with her brown hands tucked neatly around her waist. Her deftly folded and pinned hijab was the same black as her uniform, and her pretty, nut-brown eyes were serious in her sharply defined face. “He’s safe, My Lady?”

  “Yes. This is my baby brother, Rhys. He’ll apparently be staying with us for some time.”

  “Baby? I was born two seconds after you.”

  “You’re still younger, brat, and that’s a biological impossibility. It must’ve been at least fifteen minutes. Come on.” My spine itched like ants crawled the length of it. The very idea of childbirth freaked me out.

  Two seconds? Phhhht. Try two days. No thanks!

  I led him to the informal lounge after asking the kitchen staff to serve breakfast in my office for the three of us. Once I’d seen Rhys temporarily settled, I went to get dressed.

  Kai joined me in the formal office while I argued with the espresso maker. I’d reached the point of wanting to shoot the damned thing when he sent, ‘Do you want help?’

  ‘I shouldn’t need it.’

  ‘It’s okay to need help, Rhi. You haven’t even been back on Earth for two months yet. Take it easy on yourself.’

  ‘I miss Meg.’

  ‘I know, querida. She’s doing well, by the way. You should be able to visit sometime this week, and she’s taking phone calls now.’

  Relief and uneasiness filled me. She’d be different. There’s no way she wouldn’t be. ‘Thank you for telling me that.’

  He came up behind me and pulled me close; wrapped his arms around my waist and squeezed. I let him hold me, resting my head back against his shoulder; relishing the feel of him, his heat, the spicy musk, sweetgrass, and leather of his scent and the damp fall of his now loosely curling hair. I turned to bury my nose in his neck. He curved his head down to rest his slightly rough cheek against mine. Bliss.

  “Get a room, you two.” Rhys let his bag drop on the floor with a considerable thump as he came through the door, his stride energetic, and a puckish smirk on his face.

  I groaned. Then kissed Kai’s throat and stepped back out of his arms. I went on tiptoe to kiss his mouth and smiled into his grin. I dropped a kiss on each turned up curve of his lips. My foolish heart ached as if it'd swelled three sizes. I just loved him so much.

  I let him go and slid past him, reluctantly taking my hands from his tight abs.

  “You know, brother-in-law of mine,” Kai said. He glanced at Rhys, then stepped up to the espresso machine, eyed it for a few moments, and then proceeded to make it work. “We had a room until you made Alicia scream like that.”

  “I didn’t know someone would be in the gardens that early, it’s barely dawn. Besides, I’m not scary.”

  I snorted as I walked over to the desk with my hands in my jeans pockets and glared at Rhys’s big, black boots braced on the edge, just like I always did. “Off.”

  He smiled saucily, stuck his tongue out at me and dropped his feet to the white, Italian marble floor. Within moments, he had the chair balanced on its back two feet. He’d taken his heavily armoured jacket off and draped it across the back of the ebony, mission style chair he lounged in. Like a cat, he could be comfortable just about anywhere.

  A knock thumped at the door, and I answered it to find Malaika carrying a tray of food. She shrugged with one shoulder at my surprised look and brushed past me. She neatly arranged three services and left, closing the door behind herself.

  “Seems you have an admirer,” I snarked at my brother.

  He pursed his lips a little sadly, watching the door close the last centimetres after my computer chief. “That or I scared her, and she had to prove to herself she wasn’t.” His leathers creaked as he dropped the chair to all four legs and reached for his plate. He shook his head just a bit. “Wouldn’t much matter if she were interested, wearing a hijab, she’s likely the marrying type and you know I can’t do that.”

  That struck me in the heart with a searing pain. Did Rhys want to marry? I looked at my brother as he deftly piled food onto plates. I’d go to war for Rhys, and if he wanted that kind of bond, I’d fight Arawn Himself to give it to my brother.

  Kai called out, “Coffee or tea, Rhys?”

  Rhys raised a russet brow at me. “Is he serious?”

  “He’ll have herbal tea, peppermint if we have it, he’s still very old-fashioned Welsh, love.”

  Kai chuckled, his gravelly bass making my skin shiver in pleasant memory. “I’ll infect you both, eventually.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. That shit is nasty,” Rhys said.

  “I would, you don’t know him like I do.” I flopped onto my black leather office chair and kicked it back. I pulled my jeans-clad legs and bare feet up into a crisscross, then accepted the massive mug of tea Kai brought over. I smiled up at him as he put a similar cup in front of Rhys, then dragged a chair to the edge of the shiny, ebony desk where the plates were laid out.

  We ate like reasonably civilized beings, and then I said, “Talk.”

  Rhys wiped his mouth and tossed the embroidered cloth napkin down. “The Dark One sent me.”

  “Duh. Like you’d come to this side carrying a bag like that, without Him kicking you out. Is that my bag? How did you get into my treehouse, anyway? Why did He send you?”

  “Patience, mi vida,” Kai said around a smile as he lifted his espresso to his mouth.

  I buried my nose in my
tea as Rhys smirked. “You sure he knows you well?” He didn’t look at Kai. Male pissing contests. Soooo much fun.

  I rolled my eyes and exercised my non-existent patience.

  What? I can do it, sometimes. If I try really hard.

  Not being able to get a rise out of me, Rhys made a disappointed moue and sighed. “We have a contract, and He wants me on this side until I’m comfortable with the twenty-first century. Or so He says.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” One of the reasons Arawn had cited as to why He sent me here in the first place was that I was the only one of His hunters who knew enough about the time period to survive in it. Not that that had been precisely true.

  My twin sister Delyth knew the modern age too. But, considering how feral she was and always had been, I could understand why Arawn had picked me over her to saddle with this duty. I, at least, probably wouldn’t cause a war as His Ambassador. I could say no such thing about Delyth.

  Rhys hadn’t been back on this side of the veil for any length of time for over three-hundred-years that I knew of. Helping him learn the ropes would be… difficult. Mayhap even entertaining.

  “Who’s the contract for?” I sipped my tea.

  “Delyth.”

  I dropped my mug.

  3

  THREE: YOU SOUND LIKE AN OWL

  Rhian

  “Delyth?” I’d wiped the hot, peppermint tea off my jeans after screeching like a cyhyraeth. “Delyth! What in all the worlds’ hells has she done that would finally make Arawn put a hit on her? He wouldn’t let me kill Delyth not even two weeks ago!” Maybe I still sounded a bit like a Welsh banshee. I shut my mouth and stood with my hands on the edge of my desk. Waiting. Impatiently.

  “Yup, Delyth has finally worn away the patience of our Lord and Master.” Rhys shook his head. The track lights gleamed off his russet hair while he refilled his plate from the trays in the centre of the desk. The freckles dusting his nose and upper cheeks sharply contrasted with his pale skin by the recessed lighting. “He’s banned her from His presence, stripped her of her lands, and she is now considered shunned in the otherworld.”

  “No way, I do not believe it.”

  “Yes, you do.” He leaned his chair back onto two legs and balanced it there, without touching the floor or desk. He crunched down on a rasher of bacon as he watched me. The scent of laverbread, bacon, coffee, peppermint, and poached eggs filled the room.

  I fumed. I did. I just didn’t trust it. I glanced up into Kai’s worried expression. ‘Are you good to listen to this, love? With your history?’

  He grimaced, and we shared the memory of the thunk of his family’s bodies falling from the gibbet. His father, mother, and baby sister. I really needed to find time to talk to him about the soulbond. Memory sharing like that wasn’t possible with a bloodbond alone. But to do that, I needed to talk to Taen, or someone like xem. Because I knew jack-shit about soulbonds.

  ‘I’m fine. Are you okay? She’s your sister.’

  ‘Uhh, let me answer that later. I need to not feel for now.’

  ‘Okay. For now.’

  He’d hold me to it, too. I’d have to figure out what I felt later. Much later. A century from now would be good, two would be better. I sat back down, pulling the damp fabric of my jeans away from skin with my fingertips. “What the fuck has been going on in the past week or so?”

  “A week here.” My brother crunched through another strip of bacon, his attention still on me. “It’s been longer there, you know how it works.”

  “Yeah. What’s going on?”

  “Arawn believes Delyth to be guilty of murder. She escaped the Llamhigyn y Dŵr, and that probably would have been enough. She should have known Arawn letting you give her that kind of punishment would likely be her very final straw. Not only did she get loose, she killed to do it, and not just one person.”

  “Like that’s anything new? We’re murderers. Sanctified murderers, Arawn uses us that way.” Honestly befuddled, I looked into my empty mug and put it back down. Kai reached across me, grabbed the cup, and went to refill it. ‘Thanks, love.’

  ‘De nada, mi vida.’

  Looking back up to catch my brother’s gaze again, I said, “Truly, how is that at all new?”

  “Unsanctioned murder. She killed someone under His direct protection."

  “Oh. Oh, shit.”

  “Mmm. It’s also not just the what, it’s the who.”

  “What?”

  Rhys grimaced and reached up to play with his braid. He dragged the elaborately plaited length across his shoulder to fiddle the ends, a habit we shared. “Delyth murdered, or caused to be murdered, the King of the Llamhigyn y Dŵr.”

  “What?”

  “Who?” Rhys rolled his eyes. “You sound like an owl, Rhi. Stop it. Just listen.” He laid out the events of the past year, as it turned out. Delyth had escaped about four months into her sentence, murdering one of Arawn’s mistresses, and the King of the Llamhigyn y Dŵr. Arawn had tasked Rhys and my cousins with finding her.

  Rhys’s mellow voice rumbled as he spoke, “We found, when we investigated her contacts, that a lot of them are using drugs that could only have come from this side.”

  My mouth dropped open. “That’s forbidden. Someone is actually foolhardy enough to buck Arawn’s decree and smuggle human drugs to Annwvyn? Who? Delyth?”

  Rhys shrugged his broad shoulders. I needed to get him some modern clothing if he’d be staying on this side; the hand stitched silk shirt he wore was the perfect shade of gold to match his eyes, but he looked like a medieval re-enactor in his every-day clothes.

  A spear of longing for Meg shafted through me, and I bit my lip. Usually, she’d take care of things like that for me. Now, she couldn’t. Maybe never would again.

  Rhys’s answer drew my attention back to the contract. “I think she certainly had a hand in it, but I’m not convinced she was the only one involved. As many people as we found in the initial investigation who are using, well. It indicates a ring of people on both sides.”

  “Which means someone like us, a made or a born, someone who can live on both sides and walk the bridges. More than one someone, most likely.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s really not good.” I rested my chin in my palm, elbow braced on the table as I played with my food. I nibbled the edge of some laverbread and it ignited my appetite.

  Rhys Spocked a brow and sipped his tea before responding, “Understatement of the year, sister mine.”

  I scratched at the underside of my forearm, and finding a lump, I pulled the cuff of my long-sleeved, purple t-shirt up to look. The blood ran from my face in a freezing rush at what I found. I tried to hide it, but Kai reached out and caught my wrist with that preternatural speed of his.

  "¡¿Qué coños es ésto?!" He ran his thumb over the rainbow glistening edges of a mark of power forming on my inner forearm. It stung. “Rhian? What the fuck?”

  I pressed my lips together tightly and glanced at Rhys for help. He held his hands up and shook his head. “Nope. Not touching that with a ten-foot pike. I shall ask the staff where they would like me to stay.”

  “Coward!” I spat after my brother.

  I turned my attention to my partner, who waited impatiently for me to explain.

  I nibbled my lip, then grimaced. “It’s a mark of power. It’ll eventually settle into something like a tattoo.” It currently had formless edges, but I knew what it would eventually look like, if what I thought turned out to be correct. Like a triskelion made up of a stylized snake, boar, and bird. The emblem of a Welsh Lady of the Beasts. I reached out to halt the way his fingers ran over the mark. “Please don’t, that hurts, in a not good way.”

  “Is this to do with Arawn?”

  “Yes. I think so, but I don’t know more than that for certain, I have to talk to Him.”

  Kai held my gaze with his. “Will you tell me more when you know?”

  I gritted my back teeth and then said, “Yes. I will.
But are you sure you want to know?”

  His gleaming topaz eyes warmed in his dark bronze face. “Better or worse, remember love? If it’s worse, we’ll face it together.”

  Such a wave of relief scalded me I grinned. I stood up and went to sit in his lap, peppermint scented jeans and all. “I’m glad of that. Thank you, love.”

  He wrapped his long arms around me and held me close. “Of course, mi espousa. Someday you’ll learn to trust me again.”

  “I will. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We’ve both screwed up. I just want us to do our best not to do it again. And be willing to fix it when we inevitably do.”

  I leaned down to capture his lips in a gentle kiss, my hands on his cheeks. ‘I can promise that.’

  ‘Good. So can I.’

  4

  FOUR: ARROGANT FUCK

  Lynn

  I sat down on the edge of my bed and pressed my trembling hands tightly between my knees. My stomach roiled nastily, and I swallowed frantically to keep my gorge down. My eyes stung, and I rocked in place. Stimming with motion. When that wasn’t enough, I bit the inside of my cheek, hard. The taste of my blood, salty-sweet and delicious, calmed me and simultaneously screwed with my head.

  My gaze fell to my battered leather journal on the desktop, next to the Khajiit stuffy Kai had gotten me, just because I wanted one. I almost always play non-human characters, and the Khajiiti from Elder Scrolls Online are utterly adorable.

  I stood and moved to the fancy desk chair Kai had gifted me with, hoping I’d use it, worried about my comfort. Then, I reached for my writing, as I often did, to stave off a meltdown. I uncorked a bottle of indigo ink, checked the nib on my dip pen, and opened my book.

  The only sound in the room with me is the scratch of my pen against fine-grained paper. I do not know why I write that down, simply, mayhap… to capture the love in my heart for how Kai indulges me, buying me only the best handmade journals for my scribblings. It, over the decades, has become something of a lover’s token between the two of us. This one is almost full, and it will, I finally must admit to myself, be my last.