Free Marked by an Assassin by Felicity Heaton

up, his eyes narrowing on the pale vapour as it descended into the cell from above the door.
    It seemed Archangel employed nefarious tactics to deal with naughty prisoners.
    Harbin didn’t back away from the gas as it rolled towards him like a menacing fog. He closed his eyes, kept his head tilted back, and inhaled, taking the foul tasting toxin deep into his body.
    He wanted oblivion.
    He wanted to sleep through this nightmare.
    His legs wobbled, turning to jelly beneath him, and gave out a second later, sending him crashing into a heap on the ground. Sound spiralled around him, voices blended together into nothing more than a blur of noise. Darkness encroached and he welcomed it, reached out to pull it closer as his body succumbed to the effects of the gas.
    Sweet, sweet fucking oblivion.
    He smiled as he slipped into it.
    A sharp bang rattled him from the gentle cradle of darkness, its tender arms slipping free of him as light washed back into his mind.
    He groaned and rolled onto his side, curling into a ball for a moment before stretching out, reaching his limbs as far as they could go. Every muscle lengthened and warmth burned through him, a satiated feeling that could only come from a deep and restful sleep. He kept his eyes closed and assessed his condition as he continued to stretch, unable to deny his base instincts as pleasure rolled through every inch of him. There really was nothing like a good stretch. Most days, he denied himself that unearthly pleasure, but this time he indulged it. Revelled in it.
    Gods, it felt good.
    But not quite good enough to erase his awareness of his surroundings.
    Or of his new neighbour.
    The male muttered to himself and it took Harbin a moment to regain enough of his faculties to decipher his tongue and understand what he had said.
    “What is this magic?”
    Harbin snorted, managed to convince himself to stop with the fucking stretching, and sat up. “It’s called glass, Dumbass.”
    There was a deep pause, and he wondered whether the male had heard him.
    “Are you dragon?” The words came from his left, muffled by the white wall between them, but clear enough that they could have a conversation.
    He had to be going mad if the thought of conversing with someone actually made his day look bright and sunny when in reality it was stormy and dangerous as all fuck.
    But still, the guy was a dragon, and dragon shifters were damned powerful.
    They also didn’t belong in the mortal realm, which Harbin decided the male hadn’t quite figured out yet since he seemed rather calm.
    A softer banging sound told Harbin the male was tentatively exploring his surroundings. If they were going to have a conversation, then he would have to move closer to the dragon. He lumbered onto his feet and placed a little more weight than usual on his left leg. It ached less, the throbbing barely noticeable now. The sleep caused by the gas had done him some good, helping rejuvenate his tired body. If only Archangel knew. He grinned to himself. The bastards wouldn’t have knocked him out, that was for sure. They probably wanted to keep him nice and weak, easy to manage, so he would behave himself whenever they decided to take him from his cell and prod at him.
    He ran his thumbs around the elastic waist of his black trunks. At least his good behaviour had given him back one item of his clothing. Maybe he could get the rest back if he continued to play nice. Not that nudity bothered him. Plenty of his captors had stripped him bare in order to leave him with only his built-in weaponry, and he had managed to kill them all and escape. Even the ones who had attempted to pull his claws out had met with a grisly end.
    Harbin limped to the left wall of his cell and leaned there near the glass front.
    “Nope. Not a dragon… but it helps in my line of business if you know your languages.” He had met enough dragons in Hell to know it paid to speak their tongue. Their English was often more than rough around the