Free To Mate an Assassin: The Lost Alphars Series, Book 1 by Ceri Grenelle Page A

I mean.”
    “He was insane in his final years. I wouldn’t have wished that madness upon any man or woman destined to be his mate.” He quirked his head, offering another pancake slice. “How long have you been the Incendiary?”
    “You should know,” she said, not bothering to close her mouth as she chewed.
    “Well clearly, Riddan did not trust me with this information when I was Captain. Tell me your history.”
    “Is that an order?”
    He stared at her for a moment, something shifting in his eyes, their easy conversation turning into something else. “If it needs to be.”
    Orders she could handle, the prospect of spending the rest of her long existence with one person made her panic. She fell back on her training, a place of comfort, and obeyed her Alphar. “I was born in California My first trainers took me from my mother to train to become the Incendiary. When I turned twenty-five I was put through the final trials of the process and after my success, was Turned.”
    “You are not a born Were?” he asked, halting another pancake slice’s ascent to her mouth.
    “No,” she said before leaning forward and snapping the pancake slice out of his hand with her teeth. He smirked at the action but didn’t comment. “I performed a spiritual rite led by a daemon to determine what animal would suit my nature as the Incendiary, and that was the species chosen for me.”
    “You didn’t get to pick your animal?” he asked angrily, seemingly a bit put off by this.
    “No.”
    “Were your trainers Were or human?”
    “Weres.”
    He offered another pancake slice and she took the bite, staring at the frown lines marring his roughly hewn face. She didn’t understand the feeling welling inside her heart, confusing and tugging her from the path she’d known her whole life. He was upset for her. Why did that make her chest contract?
    “Go on,” he said as she swallowed.
    “I trained for another year as a Were to become acclimated to my new strength and speed. After that I reported to the Alphar to take my oaths.”
    “Tell me how you received your missions,” he continued, spearing some fruit on the fork to offer her this time. It was odd, being fed in such an intimate way yet reciting generic facts about her life for him, like reading out of some file.
    “I am sent an information packet to a P.O. Box located near my current residence. It informs me who my target is and what crimes they committed to have me sent after them. The rest is up to me. Upon completion of a mission I send a picture of the finished product—”
    “The what?” he asked, lowering the fruit he’d been about to offer her.
    “The body,” she clarified. “I send a picture of the body to a return address, which is also a P.O. Box. The money gets wired to my account upon completion.”
    “You get paid to do this?”
    “Yes, Incendiaries need to eat as well.”
    “Have you ever not accomplished a mission?”
    She sighed, annoyed that her perfect record had been broken but acknowledging the validity of the reason for it. “Only once.”
    “What happened?”
    “It was the mission that brought me here. I couldn’t in good conscious carry it out.”
    “Wait, you’ve been carrying out missions while I’ve been Alphar?”
    “Yes. A steady line of missions, which was another reason I came. The targets have been…different than the previous targets of just a few years ago. They are softer, lacking the killer instinct I usually see in the criminals. And there have been absolutely no rogues, which is my main purpose. I was put off by the change but did not think it anything to worry about. Until Marcus.”
    “Who?” He crossed his arms, making his muscles bulge even farther. She swallowed before continuing.
    “The last target I was assigned before coming here. He was plainly innocent, even though I had been instructed to execute on sight. He was also an idiot but that did not warrant my assassinating him. Marcus was the one that told