Dawn perched on the rooftop of an inn, effortlessly balanced at its very edge. Even with wisps of black hair and the fabric of her hooded cape fluttering with the breeze, she blended into the dark canvas of the night like a black panther on the hunt.

"Our targets are in that room." Squinting, she pointed at a window on the second floor of a large house across the street. "'Tis an expensive contract, this one."

This late into the night, the streets were quiet, the only activity that of the hoot of owls and the drunken murmurs of men who meandered their way through dank alleyways and along the harbour; occasionally, some unlucky fella might fall into the piss-filled water with a loud plop, as one did just now. But all of that were too far from this inn for anyone to hear, unless they had the keen hearing of a wolf.

That was part of the reason why Cain was known to be the deadliest among the Enforcers—when he wanted to be, at least—for he could see the dark, hear from a distance, and sniff any tracks better than any other man could. The problem was that being good at something could be very different to enjoying it.

"Are you listening, Wolf?" Dawn hissed and clicked her fingers before his face. "Our instructions mentioned that after a few failed assassination attempts, our targets have increased their security and the place is practically crawling with guards. You cover me, disable them, and I'll handle our targets."

Cain had worked with Dawn enough to understand that by 'disable', what she really meant was 'kill as quickly and ruthlessly as you can'.

He nodded, only because there was no other choice.

Satisfied, Dawn checked their surroundings one more time, then stepped right off the edge to land soundlessly in an empty alleyway.

Cain followed suit, and together they crossed the street with their hoods pulled up, scaled the tall walls of the house and up onto the tiled rooftop, both sets of their footsteps quieter than the scuttle of a mouse.

As Dawn continued to stealth her merry way across the roof over to where the target room was, Cain peered over the eaves to study the layout of the courtyard below.

Despite the modest size of the courtyard, men stood guard at every corner, window and doorway. It wasn't surprising if the house's residents had dealt with previous assassination attempts, though it did mean that the interiors of the house were likely crawling with guards per Dawn's instructions, and the best way for her to slip into the room would be via the window.

Unfortunately, with the guards down in the courtyard having a direct view of the window, he needed to kill them all, create a diversion, or both.

Further down along the rooftop came a familiar whistle. To all the guards below, it would have sounded like the soft chirp of a nightingale; to Cain, it was a signal from Dawn to do his thing.

For as long as the blood debt remained unpaid, she was his mistress. So heed her command, he did.

In the same instant that Cain leapt off the rooftop, his bones and muscles stretched and twisted into the shape of a wolf of monstrous proportions. And when he landed, it was on top of a guard with his claws buried into the man's back.

Before the first cry of alarm went up, he'd already ripped out the throat of his next victim.

Within the next thirty seconds, the entire house and courtyard came alive with the screams of "Monster!", "Kill it!", "MONSTERRRRR!". With the exception of those wolf ears, none else detected the scrape of window shutters being opened on the second floor and the muted thud of Dawn's boots finding their landing.

If all went according to plan, he may not need to kill many here before they withdrew. But for now, he continued to leap from one guard to the next, tearing into flesh with teeth and claws.

Rarely did any member within the guild actually know who their targets were, and neither did they wish to know; their only mission was to kill and rake in exorbitant amounts of gold for the running of the guild, the training of new blood and the upkeep of the Den. Such was the life of being in the top guild of assassins.

The best thing he could hope for with each mission was that his victims were as mean and nasty as he was, such that a swift death was more than what they deserved.

The truth was... it was highly unlikely that every single one of the guards he slayed tonight deserved what he was doing to them: their skulls crushed, their innards spilled, their loved ones losing a father, husband or son.

Yet no other signal came from Dawn, so he continued on, until the quaint little courtyard was awash in blood and littered with strewn body parts, and more frantic men came spilling out of the house with bows and swords at the ready.

Just as he prepared to pounce forward, the air rang with the sound of an angry whistle, not unlike the same response he'd gotten from Dawn when he called for help. Only this time it was a signal that his work here was finally done.

As the first arrows came flying, he turned and leaped over the ten-feet tall fence of the building, leaving behind him distraught cries and a scene from a most gruesome nightmare.

Most assassins preferred to kill discreetly, leaving as small a trace of themselves as they could, whether that be throwing needles or metal stars from a distance, slipping a few choice drops of poison as a serving maid or prostitute in disguise, or a more traditional stab in the back.

Then there was Cain, who was... well, a wolf. The way he killed might be messy and sloppy, but there was no one who could rival his supernatural speed.

With that inhuman speed, he raced his way across the port town into the nearest patch of woods and waited by a marked tree next to a narrow river. There, he coughed and spluttered until he threw up a day's worth of meals, and even that did little to expunge him of his guilt and sins.

He'd known this was what the blood debt demanded, but he'd not been prepared for just how sickening this effortless slaughter would make him feel after three years of reserving his claws to carve wood instead of flesh; to create beauty instead of taking lives.

In two months back in the guild, he'd helped Dawn dispose of twenty targets. And with each contract fulfilled, he lost a piece of himself to a void that knew no bounds.

I love you, Cain. I've loved you for so long, Lottie had said at least thrice in the past few weeks.

Many, many years ago, it was Lottie who made him wonder what it might be like to be a boy again. Now, it was still Lottie, with the way her eyes shone with so much trust and admiration as she expressed her love for him, that reminded him of himself.

You are the best person I've ever known, Cain.

He collapsed flat on the forest floor as he kept a precarious hold on those memories. Memories that made him recall who he was as a man—something more than just an animal who hunted and killed.

Slowly, excruciatingly, his limbs and features morphed back into something that resembled the man Lottie loved.

"Gods, you're an animal. Cover yourself." Dawn strode out of the dark shrubbery and threw his ripped cloak and armour at his naked body.

He sat up languidly and pulled on the torn, bloodied clothing that Dawn must've collected from the scene of his crimes.

"What's the count now?" he asked, hoping she would say that it was at least fifty after all the men he killed tonight. Fifty would take him halfway to satisfying his blood debt. Then he could start thinking of how to run far away from the Den again, this time with Lottie in tow.

"Still twenty," Dawn said as she crossed her arms and leaned against the tree. "You did well tonight. But it didn't count."

He frowned. It was by far the most he'd killed on a single day since this blood debt. "What do you mean it didn't count?"

"I couldn't complete the contract. The targets were a woman and her young child. And you know we—"

"Do not kill children," both of them said together.

No matter the gold offered, no Enforcer was allowed to murder a child. In fact, by the rules of the guild, anyone who contracted them to kill a child became the guild's next target.

The fact that tonight's targets had suffered multiple assassination attempts had caused him to assume that they might have been dangerous dregs who had wronged many.

But a mother and child? Whoever contracted them needed to die. And this time, he would relish doing the honours.

🩸 🩸 🩸

Within the underground cells of a grand manor, Lord Stanton squealed like a pig on the chopping block of a butcher house.

"That bitch... that bitch..." he gasped as he struggled against the ropes that secured his arms and legs to a chair in the centre of the cell. "She had an affair with one of my guards—"

His words broke off into a scream as Dawn sliced off the third finger of his left hand.

One finger for every lie, she'd warned him, and that was the third.

"That's not what I heard." Dawn paced slow circles around the baron as she twirled a dagger with a jewelled hilt—a piece of loot from the lord's own bedchamber—in her fingers. "You married your wife for her dowry, then you falsely accused her of adultery so that you could get rid of her and marry another. But she was already pregnant with your son when the king ordered your divorce, so now you have a young child living with his mother's birth family, and you've been trying to kill them both."

"No, that's— Ahhhhhh," he screamed as Dawn took off yet another finger for daring to deny her allegations, leaving his left hand a mess of bloodied stumps and one little finger.

Then she stopped behind the baron and leaned in next to his ear. "Was what I said all true?" she asked in a sweet, saccharine voice.

The baron sobbed as he nodded this time, his face wet with tears and snot.

"And why would you kill your own son, might I ask?" She drew the sharp point of the dagger from the tip of the baron's ear to the lobe—a gentle reminder of yet another appendage that might fall victim to Dawn's whims.

"I want... I wanted to marry a viscount's daughter for her dowry to support my... my estate."

"No one who needs gold to support their estate"—Dawn stabbed the dagger down on his right thumb, severing it clean—"would have the means to contact the Enforcers."

By the Gods, could the baron scream.

"Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?" the baron cried hysterically. "I paid you!"

"To kill a child," she spat. "We do not kill children."

"No one told me that!"

Dawn paced a few more steps until she stood before the baron again. "Did you really need someone to tell you that you shouldn't assassinate a child? Your own child?"

"Why do you care? You're assassins! Murderers! Scum!"

"In case it's not clear enough to you, I am the one asking the questions. Not you," she finished by taking off the last finger of the baron's left hand, leaving it a fingerless stump.

"Noooooo! Noooooo! Stop! I'll pay you more!"

"Speak the truth, and I'll let you live."

The baron breathed through shuddering cries and sniffles, hyperventilating as he explained that his new intended's family did not know that he had a child with his first wife, and would refuse to marry their beloved daughter to him should they find out he had another child who could one day vie for his inheritance.

"So... in order to get a healthy sum of gold and secure a marriage with a wealthy new wife, you hired assassins to get rid of your former wife and your own child?"

The baron hung his head, his tears free flowing. "That's it. That's it, I swear."

"Hmm," she hummed, glancing over at Cain, who'd been standing stiff like a tree in one corner of the room while he observed the she-devil in her element. "What do you think, Wolf? Is that it?"

Some might say that Lord Stanton had probably learnt his lesson and should be allowed to repent, but that was not how the guild operated, and for good reason.

Cain thought back to the days of slaving away in the quarries as a child, witnessing all the other children around him suffer and die at the whims of their masters, and he struggled to find within himself a kernel of empathy for any man who could kill an innocent child, let alone his own son, all in the name of greed.

Pushing himself off the wall of the cell, Cain stalked over to the chair until he towered over the baron. Then he placed a finger on the man's chest, right where his heart beat wild and erratic.

"She agreed to let you live. I didn't." He extended a claw, digging deep into the baron's flesh and puncturing his heart. "Now, that's it," he said as blood spurted and coated his entire arm and torso.

In the last throes of Lord Stanton's life, his eyes bulged wide and he shit his breeches.

Dawn stepped up next to Cain, her nose wrinkling at the stench that permeated the air. "Well, that's no fun. I wasn't going to let him live anyway. We're murderous scum. What's a bit of fibbing? We could've taken him back for little Godzilla to experiment on," she complained. "I hope you don't finish that quickly when you're with Lottie."

The thought of Lottie and her fear of a tortured man had him quickly withdrawing his hand from the baron's corpse and leaving the cell with bile rising up his throat.

He was a monster.

A monster.

A monster Lottie would not want should she ever discover the truth of what he was and what he'd done.

A/N: Still overseas with little access to a laptop, hence another delayed update, but also the longest chapter so far in this story to provide a glimpse of what exactly Cain does whenever he leaves the Den...