His handsome face darkened.
“No. Leave.” He slammed his palms into his desk, causing the canister to topple and roll towards the edge of the dark wooden surface, and shot to his feet.
She jumped, her heart leaping into her throat, and swallowed hard as she staggered back a step.
So Fuery was here, and this male didn’t want her to see him. Why?
Was he that dangerous?
She focused on the building, on everyone in it, trying to find Fuery among the males she could scent. When she couldn’t feel him, she pressed her hands to her chest and focused on the connection they had once shared, expecting to feel something.
Nothing.
Tears lined her eyes as a voice in her heart whispered the male she longed to see again wasn’t here after all.
No.
He had to be here.
She studied the male opposite her, and caught the flicker of concern in his violet eyes, an emotion that told her that Fuery was here, somewhere in this hellish place, and the male knew him well.
Was worried about him.
“You cannot see him. I do not know what business a female has with Fuery, but I do know that it will not end well for him… so you will leave.” His tone, so dark and menacing, left little room for her to argue.
She did it anyway.
“No. I am not leaving without seeing him. I will not be told what to do… not anymore. I have spent four thousand years mourning Fuery… believing him dead.” Her strength wavered and her voice grew quiet as emotions bombarded her, feelings that had been tormenting her from the moment Bleu had told her Fuery was alive. She stared down at the desk, lost and adrift in those emotions. “I do not understand how that came to be… I should have been able to feel he was alive through our bond.”
The male went deathly still.
“Bond?” His deep voice was low, cautious.
She risked a glance at him, and found him staring at her, his eyes wide and lips parted, surprise painted across his face.
She nodded slowly. “Fuery is my fated one. My mate.”
Gods, when was the last time she had said those words?
She stared at the male before her, numb to her bones as she let them sink in, together with the fact this male clearly knew Fuery, confirming what Bleu had told her.
Her mate was alive.
Her knees trembled, feeling suddenly weak as it swept over her, and she had to lock them to stop them from giving out and sending her to the stone floor.
Gods, he was alive.
Tears burned her eyes, pain blazed in her soul, and she reached for the connection that should have existed between her and her love.
But it wasn’t there.
“Your name?” the male said, his tone hard and unyielding. A command.
“Shaia,” she breathed, and the way his eyes widened again said that he knew that name. Her name.
He paled further, swallowed hard as he glanced at the door behind her, and then set his jaw. “Leave.”
Why?
His eyes leaped between her and the door, and she detected his fear. It was buried but there, running through him and slowly growing stronger together with other feelings. Worry. Anger.
His violet gaze finally settled on her again, and his eyes danced between hers, searching them as he stood silently on the other side of the desk, gripped by whatever thoughts were running through his mind.
Thoughts about Fuery?
“Please?” she whispered and inched towards him. If he could feel her feelings as she could feel his, then he had to know that she needed to see Fuery. She needed to know her mate was alive, even if he was unwell. “I have trekked for days… I am tired and I will not believe Fuery lives until I see him with my own eyes. I need to see him.”
“No,” he bit out and rounded the desk. He didn’t stop until he was toe-to-toe with her and towering over her, his face dark as he glared down at her. “Fuery is alive. You will have to take my word for it though. He is not strong enough to see you right now. It is best you return to the elf kingdom. I will send for you when I feel Fuery might be ready.”
No. She wasn’t going to accept that as an answer.
“I told you… I will not be ordered around, not anymore. I will see Fuery. He is my mate and you cannot keep me from him.” She stood her ground when he growled at her, flashing short fangs, even though she wanted to back off a step and place herself out of harm’s way.
This male wasn’t like the ones she was used to dealing with—refined and noble, one who strictly adhered to the rules of society and the laws of their kind, unlikely to strike her or hurt her because of them.
He was a killer.
She could see it in his eyes as they narrowed, could feel it in the fierce drumming of her heart behind her breastbone and the instincts that he awakened that whispered to her, warning her to run now, while she still could.
“And I told you, I will not let you see him,” he hissed in a low voice, one that sent a cold shiver through her. He paused and regarded her with icy, clinical eyes, and then a tight smile curled his lips and a chill skated down her spine. “If you want to see him, track him with your bond.”
She frowned at him as hurt lanced her, a fiery brand that seared her soul and marked it.
His cruel smile widened. “Bound and young, no doubt… uneducated about how a connection between mates works.”
She glared at him now, but he didn’t relent or apologise. He remained cold and distant, intent on wounding her when she was already bleeding.
“If you wish to see Fuery, prove to me you understand the power of a bond.” He stepped closer to her, forcing her to tip her head back to keep her eyes locked with his, stoking the urge to flee that was rising inside her together with shame that felt as if it might swallow her. He sneered down at her. “Tell me where you went wrong with Fuery, and prove to me you will not make the same mistake again…”
His tone darkened, turned so glacial that another chill swept through her, this one freezing her soul.
“Because your mistake has cost Fuery greatly.”
She staggered back a step from that blow, blinked and stared at him as tears blurred her vision and she felt that strike cleave her heart in two and cut clean down to her soul. She didn’t understand, but some part of her knew it was the truth. His words clawed at her, shredding her insides, and she struggled for the words she wanted to say, her voice failing her as she fought to deny it.
His violet eyes brightened.
His lips flattened.
The aura of darkness he emanated grew blacker, warning her away as her senses screamed that she was in danger here. He meant to hurt her.
He did.
But with more words that lashed at her.
“Leave,” he ground out, little more than a growl as his ears flared back, the tips growing more pointed as anger swept across his features and laced his scent. “And do not come back until you can tell me all of that, because from where I am standing, it looks as if my bond with Fuery has more meaning and purpose than yours ever did.”
Shaia stumbled back another step towards the door, a shiver rushing over her arms and down her back, shock sending her mind and heart reeling, and tears spilling onto her cheeks.
The male grabbed her arm in a bruising grip before she could respond, yanked the door open and marched her along the corridor. She staggered along behind him, her ears ringing as she struggled to take in everything that had just happened and pull herself together.
When she had finally managed to gather herself, she was stood outside the guild, the doors closed in front of her, and the people passing by were staring at her, whispering things about her.
Shaia stared blankly at the arched wooden doors, the male’s words swimming around her mind, and the truth in them tearing at her heart.
Together with his anger.
He blamed her for Fuery’s condition.
She hadn’t been prepared for that, had come here believing she would
see Fuery again and somehow everything would work out and he would welcome her back into his life.
Instead, she had been kicked out.
Told to return when she knew where she had gone wrong.
Had she gone wrong somewhere?
Her stomach squirmed as she considered that question, and the undeniable answer that immediately sprang into her mind.
She had.
She had felt something through the bond, and then it had gone silent, and she had assumed Fuery was gone, taken from her too soon. She had mourned him for centuries, had thought about him constantly, yet their bond had always remained empty, a hollow space inside her that had ripped at her every day of her life.
Shaia took a hard step towards the door as the shock of being turned away so cruelly faded and anger rose to take its place, and stopped herself before she could raise a hand to bang on the wood and demand entrance.
The male was right.
She had believed Fuery dead because something had happened to their bond.
Something that the male believed should have been obvious to her.
If she had known more about bonds, and how they worked, as the male clearly did, she might have been able to find Fuery four thousand years ago.
She might have been able to stop him from becoming lost.
The male’s words echoing in her head grew more vicious, taunting her with her failings, until an ache started in her chest, and it birthed a need to find out where she had gone wrong. She hadn’t abandoned Fuery as the male clearly thought, but she had condemned him because of her lack of knowledge.
He was right about that.
But she would learn, somehow, and she would return and tell him where she had gone wrong, and assure him it would never happen again.
And he would let her see Fuery.
CHAPTER 6
Hartt was acting strange. Stranger than usual anyway.
Fuery stared at him where he sat on the other side of his huge ebony desk in his black-walled office, speaking with a male. One of their assassins. Fuery leaned against the black wall near the door, standing guard as he always did whenever Hartt met with a new client or one of their recruits, his skin-tight black armour in place, and his arms folded across his chest and the sole of his right boot pressing into the plaster behind him.
He didn’t like how closed off Hartt had been the past two days. Something was up and it nagged at him, setting him on edge. Hartt wasn’t normally so distant from him, rarely blocked him through their bond, and never passed a day without speaking to him.
That had happened yesterday.
He hadn’t spoken to Fuery from the moment he had left his quarters, feeling able to face the world again, until the time he had decided to retire. Hartt had led him to the guild’s library on the upper floor, and had left him there.
At first, Fuery had thought him too busy with meetings to speak with him.
When dinner time had rolled around, and Fuery had headed to the cafeteria in search of some fruit and vegetables to appease his appetite and keep his strength up, it had been blindingly apparent that Hartt was avoiding him.
The male had chosen to sit not in their usual place, but at a table of young recruits, and had spent his entire meal speaking with them. Fuery had watched him closely, becoming increasingly on edge as Hartt failed to smile and the sombre edge to his violet eyes didn’t lift. The second he had taken his eyes off his friend, Hartt had disappeared.
Definitely avoiding him.
Or at least he had been.
This morning, Hartt had come to his quarters and had asked him to sit in on the mornings meetings.
He hadn’t spoken a word to him since then.
Had he done something wrong?
Fuery pushed that fear aside and focused on his breathing to soothe the darkness as it tried to use his momentary weakness against him to seize hold of him.
It was likely guilt eating away at his friend, and a touch of anger by the feel of the emotions he could finally sense trickling through their blood bond.
Hartt was furious that he had sent Fuery after a female mark.
Female.
Fuery screwed his eyes shut and pushed that out of his head too, afraid that if he thought about it that it would dredge up memories he wasn’t strong enough to face right now. He was still shaken and weak from his fight against the darkness. It had been stronger this time, had swept him under swiftly when his mind had tricked him into believing he had smelled her.
Felt her.
His darker side snarled that Hartt should feel guilty, that he deserved to writhe in it for sending him after a female. The rest of him felt guilty instead, the root cause of his problem with hunting females rearing its ugly head again to torment him.
He drew down a slow breath, hoping to find some calm in it and some strength, enough to purge the darkness that was beginning to well up inside him again.
He tensed as he caught a female scent.
Aya.
The darkness was quick to seize him the moment his guard dropped, stripped from him by the smell of Harbin’s snow leopard mate as it swept through the building.
Fuery snarled and fought against it, struggling as black tendrils wrapped around his soul and burrowed into his flesh, and teased the edges of his mind. He shook his head, shoved his fingers into his shoulder-length blue-black hair and clawed it back as he ground his teeth and growled.
“No.”
He knew what came next, dreaded it but wasn’t strong enough to stop it.
An image flickered in his mind, a beautiful female drenched in crimson.
Ripped apart by his claws.
Those claws formed over his hands as his armour responded to the imagery and they cut into his scalp, sending fire streaking over his skull and filling the stifling air with the heavy scent of blood.
Blood. Female.
His female.
He tore trembling hands away from his head, cracked his eyes open and stared at them.
Blood glistened on them.
“Fuery,” Hartt whispered, and hands gently claimed his shoulders, fingertips pressing in and making Fuery aware of him where he now stood just inches from him.
The bond they shared opened to him, Hartt’s worry coming through it loud and clear, together with affection and a touch of fear.
Gods, he was too tired to fight.
He sagged in Hartt’s grip, aching for the male to take away his pain and stop his suffering, and then rallied and pushed away from his friend. It was hard to take that step back, to sever the connection between them, but he had to do it. He was tired. Soul-deep tired. In his current condition, it was too easy for him to lose his focus and allow the darkness to seize him.
If he couldn’t control it, Hartt would try to aid him.
It was bad enough that he had been responsible for one death.
He hated being responsible for another’s demise too.
“Look at me.” Warm palms framed Fuery’s face and he obeyed Hartt, opening his eyes and lifting them to meet his.
There was still hope in Hartt’s eyes.
Ridiculous hope.
Every day, Fuery slid closer to the abyss. It was only a matter of time before he fell into it. There was no redemption for him now. He was tainted beyond saving, and that was something he had lived with for a long time. Accepted.
Only his blood bond with Hartt was preventing him from slipping under the oily tide of darkness inside him. Without the bond Hartt had imposed on him, he would have been lost long ago.
That bond had saved him countless times, pulling him back from the maws of evil.
Gods, he had hated it when Hartt had forced it upon him centuries ago, because it had tied Hartt’s demise to his, tainting him too, but now he cherished it fiercely. He had done nothing to deserve it, or the depth of the affection Hartt felt for him, a friendship that meant the world to him.
One that had almost filled that black void in his heart where love had once been.
Because he thought him weak.
Unfit to help run a guild of deadly assassins.
Fuery wanted to bear fangs at the shifter, but turned to Hartt instead.
“I am fine. Stop coddling,” he growled in the elf tongue, keeping his words private between them.
Hartt sighed. “I know you hate it when I do it in front of others, but the episodes are becoming more frequent… and it is growing difficult to help you in private.”
“Stop helping me then,” Fuery snapped.
Regretted the fuck out of it when Hartt’s violet eyes widened slightly before he recovered and Fuery felt the hurt that went through him.
Hartt had sacrificed so much for his sake, and he was a bastard for not appreciating that, and speaking of letting him drop into the black abyss so casually when Hartt’s life was also on the line, tied to his.
“You guys need some alone time?” the hellcat drawled, a quirk to his mouth and twinkle in his eyes that said he had found his own words amusing as he insinuated he and Hartt were having a moment.
Fuery felt like making him eat them.
Together with his fist.
“You want to rethink that question?” Hartt snapped, and the male backed down, taking his seat again, but didn’t apologise.
Fuery didn’t like him, and he didn’t trust him.
Fane was secretive and detached, more so than Fuery had ever been. Fuery didn’t like to leave Hartt alone with him, because he recognised a feral bastard when he saw one.
Hartt flicked a glance at Fuery, looked as if he wanted to sigh, and strolled back around his desk to resume his place on the other side. He pressed two fingers to a black folder and slid it towards the hellcat male.
Unchained by a Forbidden Love Page 6
