Assassin's Honor

Gabriel Shepherd washed the blood off his hands in the sink, watching the red-stained water swirl down the drain. Same as always. Same hollow numbness, same practiced indifference. He was a man with nothing to live for, which made him very good at his job. He didn’t think about whose blood it was anymore. That was probably not a healthy sign, but healthy had stopped being a priority somewhere around year three.His cell phone vibrated on the counter. He dried his hands with deliberate care before answering. “Hey Mom.” He kept his voice easy, light — the voice he saved for her. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just wrapping up… I’ll be home late tomorrow. How’s Dad? Ryan?” He listened, and something in his chest loosened slightly at the sound of her voice rattling on about nothing important. “Great. See you then. Love you too.” He pocketed the phone and turned back to the mirror.He looked like hell. Hollow eyes, two days of stubble, the kind of tired that sleep didn’t fix. Twenty-eight years old and h

Honor moved through the trailer like she was defusing something.Uncle Tanner’s chair was empty, which meant he could be anywhere — passed out in the bedroom, stumbling around the kitchen, already working on his first drink of the day. An empty chair was never actually good news. She slipped into the kitchen and fed two slices of bread into the toaster, pressed the lever down, and stood very still, listening.The bellow came from the back of the trailer.“Honor! You lazy bitch! Where are my fucking keys?”She didn’t answer. She hadn’t touched his keys. He’d probably left them in the truck when he staggered in last night, the same way he left everything everywhere, and then raged at her when the world didn’t put itself back together by morning. She looked at the toaster. Looked at the back door. She knew she should go. But her stomach was a hollow, gnawing thing — dinner had ended on the floor last night when he’d shoved her into the table — and she couldn’t quite make herself leave wit

My God. I’ve found her.She was staring up at him like a wild animal caught in a trap — brown eyes wide, startled, confused — and for one suspended moment her hair fell back from her face and he finally, finally saw her.She was breathtaking. High cheekbones, eyes that tipped slightly downward at the corners giving her a look of permanent, quiet sadness, honey-colored skin. And across her cheekbone, vivid and ugly, a bruise that had no business being on her face.The rage that moved through him was instantaneous and absolute. Whoever had put that there was going to answer for it. He filed that thought away with cold precision and kept his face neutral, because he was standing in a classroom full of teenagers who were watching him with the avid attention of people who sense something happening that they don’t quite understand.She broke eye contact first. Pulled back into herself, hair falling forward, shoulders drawing in. Gone, just like that, back behind whatever wall she lived behin

Someone was watching her in her dreams.And now she felt it while she was awake too — that particular prickling at the back of the neck, the sense of being observed by something she couldn’t see. Honor scrubbed the dishes harder than necessary and told herself she was being paranoid.She hadn’t slept properly in weeks. Every time she dropped off she ended up in the same place — the forest, always the forest, moving through the trees in the dark while a voice she couldn’t locate called her forward.“You’ll find it there…”Find what? She never knew. She wandered through the dream-forest looking for something she couldn’t name, and sometimes she forgot she was looking at all, and just walked, and the trees were the same trees she knew in waking life and the air had the same smell. Then the feeling would arrive — slow and certain, like a tide coming in — that she was not alone. That something in the darkness between the trees was watching her. She never knew if she should be afraid or curi

Gabriel had been patient for weeks.He’d watched Mark Pickman shoulder Honor into lockers and slam doors on her hands and perform his casual, daily cruelties for an audience that laughed on cue. He’d watched Aaron Mortem escalate until Honor had put her fist through his nose, and then watched Mark come down on her for it, and he’d intervened and filed the appropriate paperwork and spoken to Leonard and gotten exactly nowhere. He’d been professional. Measured. Restrained.He was done being restrained.Aaron Mortem first. The broken nose had been Honor’s work, which Gabriel respected, but the words that had preceded it were his to answer for.He watched football practice from the shadow of the bleachers, arms folded, assessing. Aaron was the quarterback — decent arm, reasonable instincts, the kind of athlete who coasted on physical gifts without ever being pushed hard enough to find out if there was anything real underneath. As a wolf he was underwhelming. The supernatural DNA was there