—Click.
Freedman's boots crunched through the hard-packed snow as he walked, the cold biting at his cheeks. He found himself grinding his teeth without thinking; the sharp click of his fangs echoed in the quiet like the snap of a trap.
That involuntary motion pulled the memory forward—the arrogant face of the noble who'd hired him, the way the man had looked at him like he was something to be ordered.
"Velra? A vampire noble?" the noble had said, as if checking an item off a list.
"Yes. She's in the human realm. Assassinate her."
Simple words, delivered with the effortless cruelty of someone who never had to risk anything themselves.
The job was everything it had sounded like—and worse. Infiltrating the human world was a death sentence for most of his kind.
Parasites like him weren't made to be assassins; they were made to cling to hosts, to crawl in hidden places. Being the target of an assassination made the whole thing absurdly ironic.
