MY ASSASSIN IS MY MATE

NIA

A week.That’s how long it’s been since the night everything went wrong and somehow even more right.

Seven days since I was supposed to kill Knight Golden, and instead found myself living in his penthouse, drinking his coffee, wearing his spare shirts, and pretending the bond humming between us doesn’t exist.

Physically, I’ve healed. My ribs don’t ache, my cuts have faded, and I can hold a blade again without flinching. Emotionally? That’s another story.

The penthouse feels too large. I was built for shadows, for silence but now I can hear him everywhere. His laugh. His voice through the comms.

Fate didn’t just twist the knife. It buried it in deep and left me to deal with the bleeding.

Knight has rules now. “While you’re here, you train, you eat, and you don’t try to stab me before noon.”

I told him two of those were negotiable.

Every morning starts in his private gym—a sleek space with mirrored walls and a scent that’s purely him: cedar, steel, and wolf. I spar with drones, run drills until sweat soaks through my tank top, and pretend I don’t know he’s watching from the corner of the room.

“You move better when you’re angry,” he calls one morning.

I don’t turn. “You talk too much for someone who claims to like silence.”

He laughs. “It’s the company that inspires me.”

I throw a dagger at the wall near his head. It lands an inch from his ear.

His grin only widens.

By the end of each session, I’m more exhausted from ignoring him than from the training itself.

Afternoons are worse. That’s when we work together—two wolves picking through encrypted data on the mercenaries who attacked us. He’s sharp, annoyingly focused, and somehow always right.

When I find something, he leans in close, his scent overwhelming. My heartbeat betrays me every time.

It’s getting stronger. The bond.

I know when he’s near. I can sense his mood before he even speaks. Once, I woke up in the middle of the night gasping—because somewhere in the building, he was bleeding.

I found him in the gym, knuckles raw from punching the training bag.

“You’re not supposed to be up,” he said, breath ragged.

“You’re not supposed to bleed,” I shot back.

We stared at each other too long. I turned before my wolf could betray me further.

Since then, I’ve stopped pretending the connection isn’t there. I just refuse to acknowledge it.

This morning, he challenged me. “You’re healed enough. Time for a rematch.”

Training blades. No killing blows. But the tension? Fatal.

We circle each other on the mat. His eyes gleam with mischief; mine, with warning.

“Don’t go easy on me,” he says.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

The first clash of steel echoes through the room. It’s muscle memory, instinct, hunger. I feint, spin, strike low. He blocks, counters, grabs my wrist—too close. Our breath tangles in the space between.

“Still deadly,” he murmurs.

“Still alive,” I reply, sweeping his leg out from under him. He hits the mat with a grunt, then laughs.

The sound cracks something inside me. I can’t remember the last time someone laughed like that around me—like I wasn’t a weapon.

He looks up, golden eyes catching mine. For a heartbeat, the world narrows to that space between us.

Then his comm buzzes. The moment shatters.

He sighs, rolling to his feet. “Saved by the bell.”

“Saved from what?” I ask, voice too low.

He gives me a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “From myself.”

That night, we finally make progress.

The encrypted payments that funded my contract traced to a holding company under one of Knight’s subsidiaries. Someone inside his empire paid for my blade.

“Someone close,” he mutters, pacing the office. “Someone who knows my patterns. My weaknesses.”

I swallow hard. “They knew mine too.”

He glances at me. “You think your handler was working with them?”

I nod once. “Or for them. I was just the cleanup.”

His jaw tightens. “We’ll find them.”

I should feel relief. Instead, I feel… uncertain. Because once we do, once this is over, I’ll have no reason to stay.

He must sense it. He always does.

“You keep looking at the door,” he says quietly. “Like it’s calling you.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Maybe it’s not the only thing that’s calling.”

I hate how easily he can do that—strip down my defenses with a few words.

I can’t sleep again. Too many memories, too many questions. I end up on the balcony, the city lights bleeding into the clouds.

Knight’s already there, leaning against the railing, a glass of amber liquid in his hand.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks without looking at me.

“Never could,” I answer, joining him. The air is sharp and cold; I welcome it.

He hands me the glass. “Drink. It’ll help.”

I take a sip—burns like fire, tastes like truth.

For a while, we just stand there in silence. Then he says, “You ever wonder what we’d be if we’d met differently?”

“Alive, maybe,” I say dryly.

He chuckles. “You’re impossible.”

“You hired me to kill you. You should’ve read the fine print.”

His smile fades. “I didn’t hire you, Nia. Someone did that for both of us.”

I stare at the skyline. “Story of my life.”

He turns to me then, his expression softer than I’ve ever seen. “Tell me about it.”

And somehow, I do. About the orphanage. The handlers. The years of blood and silence. How I stopped counting my kills when the number stopped meaning anything.

When I finally stop talking, he says, “You were never meant to be a weapon.”

I laugh once, bitter. “Funny. Everyone else thought I was made for it.”

“Not everyone,” he says, stepping closer.

The bond hums again, low and steady. I can feel his heat, his heartbeat syncing with mine.

He tells me his own story—how he once lost control of his wolf, tore through a rival pack, nearly lost everything. “Power without control destroys,” he says softly. “You and I both learned that.”

We stand there, two broken creatures forged by violence, pretending we’re not finding something whole in each other.

For a second, I forget what side we were ever on.

The city lights blur below us, and I realize the truth I’ve been running from all week: I don’t want to run anymore.

A week ago, I was supposed to end his life.

Now, I can’t decide if he’s the reason I’m still breathing or the reason I can’t breathe at all.