“You want to see him?”
Those five words hit her hard, struck her dumb, and she could only stare at the male as they pinged around her head.
The complete opposite to what she had expected him to say.
He sighed when she just stared at him, her mouth gaping open and eyebrows pinned high on her forehead.
“No need to look at me like that,” he grumbled in the elf tongue. “I am starting to feel that Fuery needs to see you. He will not settle. Perhaps you can achieve that.”
He turned away from her and strode back the way he had come, heading into the corridor and disappearing from view. She hurried after him, heart picking up pace as she neared the doorway and doubling in speed again when she took her first step into the black-walled hallway. Oil lamps flickered at intervals along it, lending warmth to the dark walls, chasing over her as she sped after Hartt.
When she reached him, he slowed his strides and she fell in behind him, her steps silent on the stone tiles beneath her boots.
She followed him through the maze of corridors, tensing whenever she passed a door and sensed someone on the other side. Some were powerful, sparking her instinct to protect herself, and she moved closer to Hartt whenever it happened. He glanced at her a few times, his face an unreadable mask that gave nothing away.
When she tried to sense his emotions, she found nothing. No trace of feeling in him. She could catch his scent, could feel him near her, and could hear his heart beating steadily and slowly, but she couldn’t detect a hint of what he was feeling. He had shut her out.
Why?
Because he was worried about Fuery?
He had no reason to hide that from her, because she had seen it in him when he had returned from attempting to get her mate to settle, and had witnessed it back in the reception room when Fuery had been there, battling with himself.
She glanced at a door as they passed it. Had he closed himself off because of the occupants of the rooms around them, wanting to keep his emotions hidden from his assassins?
That made more sense to Shaia.
Hartt didn’t want them feeling his concern for Fuery, because he wanted to protect her mate. He didn’t want his assassins to know that Fuery was struggling.
Because he was a danger to them?
She knew of the darkness. All elves were warned about it from an early age. The darkness could make an elf view a friend as a foe, and there were many tales about elves who had lost themselves to the darkness and had attacked their own kin.
The cautionary tale of Prince Vail was one of them.
That male had turned on his own legion and had attacked them. He had attacked Fuery, and the two had been close at the time, more than commander and subordinate.
They had been friends.
Thinking about that battle dredged up the pain she had felt then, hurt that she had carried through the centuries and had never really faded or left her. It had remained in her heart, burned in her soul still, even though the male she had mourned was alive and she was on her way to see him.
To soothe him.
Hartt stopped outside one of the dark wooden doors, steeled himself and looked at her. “I will be just across the hall.”
She nodded, the nerves that had been swift to rise inside her when she had halted and had felt Fuery close to her abating a little as he gestured to the door behind him. She focused her senses, and her heart went out to Fuery when she felt his pain and something else.
All of the rooms at this end of the guild were empty. Unoccupied.
A precaution to protect the assassins from Fuery?
Sorrow welled up inside her as she thought about that, and imagined how her beautiful warrior felt as he passed his hours in his quarters, aware that he was alone, and aware of the reason for it. Gods, it had to tear at him.
Hartt was there, the only one brave enough to sleep within Fuery’s immediate reach, and it touched her, warmed her heart and chased some of the chill from it. She turned to him, wanting to thank him for caring deeply enough about Fuery to remain close to him when all others had distanced themselves.
He nodded before she could utter a word, turned away and opened the door to his own room. Before he could disappear on the other side, she caught the edge to his expression, the shimmer of something in his eyes that gave away his feelings at last.
He was more than worried.
He feared for his friend.
Shaia turned her head towards Fuery’s door, and resolve flowed into her heart, buoyed her courage and had her nerves settling.
She would alleviate that fear for Hartt.
She would do all in her power to ease Fuery and release him from the grip of his darkness.
She reached for the door handle and froze as Hartt’s door opened again and he poked his head around it.
“Be wary of Fuery’s mood… it can change in an instant.” His violet eyes held hers, cold and sharp, sending a shiver through her that threatened to stir her nerves again.
She nodded, and he eased his door closed, leaving her alone in the corridor.
She swallowed hard, blew out her breath to settle her nerves, and told herself that Fuery wouldn’t hurt her. She knew it in her heart. No matter how fiercely the darkness seized him, no matter how vicious it turned him, he wouldn’t hurt her.
He loved her.
She grasped the handle, twisted it and pushed the door open.
“Hartt, I need to see…” Fuery trailed off as he turned towards her, his words dying on his lips as his eyes settled on her.
She wanted to weep when she saw the violet in them.
A bare thread of it around his pupils.
She reached out to him through their bond, focusing on the connection between them, and that need to cry grew stronger, had her throat closing and tears welling, when she sensed the darkness was receding, freeing him of its vile and wretched grasp.
It continued to fade as he stared at her, a large double bed with black covers standing between them. The lamp on the small table beside the head of it on his side flickered, sending golden light shimmering across his bare chest and over the window at his back.
It struggled to warm the space that felt cold to her, sparse with only the bed and the side table in the room, more like a cell than a home.
She frowned as she looked closer at the bed and saw deep scratches on the wooden frame and headboard, long grooves that looked as if they had been made with Fuery’s claws, and matched marks on the black walls too. Were those marks the product of him losing himself to the darkness?
His shame swept through her and she dragged her gaze away from them, not wanting to upset him, and settled her eyes back on him.
They dropped to his bare chest.
His eyes fell there too and he suddenly moved, reaching for the jacket he had discarded on the bed.
“You have so many scars,” she whispered, eyes charting them all, and he froze mid-reach, leaning forwards with his hand almost on his jacket, and lifted his eyes back to her.
He blinked and swallowed, and she felt the conflict flow through him, tearing him apart, and saw in his eyes that he wasn’t sure what to say.
“I am sorry, Fuery,” she husked, her voice tight as she gazed at all the scars, and imagined all the battles he had fought and how often he must have danced close to death, stepping within its reach. “If I had known more about bonds… I should have known more… I should not have believed you gone so easily… I should have done something.”
He slowly eased forwards, wrapped his long fingers around his tunic, and equally as slowly straightened and put it on, never taking his eyes off her, not even when he buttoned it, covering his chest.
Stealing the scars from view.
When he was done, he flicked a glance at the door behind her and then back at her.
“Are you real?” he rasped.
She nodded. “I am.”
Shaia reached her hands out to him and edged around the foot of the bed, towards him. Wh
en he tensed, she slowed, moving more cautiously, her senses monitoring him and Hartt’s words ringing in her mind.
She tried to shake them away.
Fuery wouldn’t hurt her.
She slowly closed the distance between them, and her heart hitched when she was within a few feet and could feel his heat. His masculine scent of spice and earth wrapped around her, transporting her back to better days, ones where she had lazed in his arms in their secret spot on the bank of the river.
The tears she wanted to keep back rose into her eyes again.
Fuery’s black eyebrows furrowed as he saw them, and he looked as if he wanted to reach for her.
She wanted that too.
But she knew he was still fighting the memories he believed real, the ones where she no longer lived, and feared that if he touched her, she would reveal herself as nothing more than a figment of his imagination, his fingers ghosting through her.
Her poor, beautiful, warrior.
He feared touching her, but she didn’t fear touching him. She would give him the comfort he desired, and the contact he needed.
She gently placed her hands on his wrists, over the cuffs of his jacket, and carefully raised his arms, and then let her hands slip towards his. The first brush of their skin drew a sharp intake of breath from him, and his eyes darted from hers to their hands.
His were trembling.
“You are dead,” he whispered and his throat worked on a hard swallow. “I killed you.”
When his corrupted eyes leaped up to hers, she shook her head.
“No. You are just confused.” She offered him a smile, one she hoped would comfort him and reassure him that she spoke the truth. “The bond confused us both. I thought you were dead too. When you lost yourself to the darkness the first time… I felt the connection shatter… and I thought you were dead.”
He looked back down at their hands, the black slashes of his eyebrows pinned high on his forehead.
Gods, he looked so lost.
She could feel him clearer now, could pick apart the emotions that shimmered in their growing connection as it slowly restored itself, reinforced by both of them. He still feared she was a ghost, a vision sent to torment him, but he was beginning to believe she was real.
He was silent and still for long seconds that felt like an eternity, his eyes never leaving their joined hands, and then he whipped his head up and his eyebrows furrowed, a hint of fang showing between his lips as he spoke.
“You thought I had slept with another… that I would ever do that to you…” His face crumpled again and his deep voice dropped to a low whisper that carried all the pain she could feel in him. “When you are everything to me.”
Gods, that made her want to cry.
“I am sorry,” she whispered, despising herself for hurting him, but rejoicing at the same time, because it had pushed him into revealing that he still loved her, and that he had never been with another. “I saw you with that female…”
“A client. She changed her mind about a job and Hartt had me return her down payment.”
Relief blasted through her, so sweet and sharp that it stole her breath. In its wake, came another feeling, and then another. She felt like an idiot for flying into a rage and presuming the female had been a whore, and then she felt terrible for not trusting Fuery and for believing he would ever be with another female.
When he had promised to be hers and hers alone forever.
“The past few weeks have been difficult… and they have taken their toll on me.” She hated that it sounded like an excuse in her ears, and hoped he wouldn’t hold it against her. It wasn’t the first jealous outburst she’d had in their time together, and she recalled they had pleased him once, because they had revealed the depth of her love for him. She studied his eyes and his feelings, trying to see if it still pleased him now, and ached all over again as it hit her that it was her Fuery standing before her. Her beautiful Fuery. She still couldn’t believe it. “I have mourned you for forty-two centuries, and then suddenly you were alive, and you had been living your life without me.”
He dropped his gaze again and his hands tensed against hers, his shoulders going rigid. “I am sorry… I thought I had killed you. I did kill you, didn’t I? You are just a ghost… yet I can touch you.”
He lifted his left hand, hesitated, and then edged it forwards and placed it against her cheek.
That ridiculous need to weep arrowed through her again but she held it back and focused on the feel of his palm on her face. Warm. Strong. Gods, it comforted her more than he could ever know. It made the long centuries alone worth it.
She would have waited forever to feel this again.
“You are so warm,” he murmured, and the tears she had been fighting slipped onto her cheeks. His eyebrows furrowed again as he tracked one with his gaze, and then he brushed it away with the pad of his thumb, bringing more as her heart ached in response to his tenderness. “Life has been so cold without you.”
Shaia lifted her hand and placed it over his, pinning it to her cheek. “I am here now.”
“You are not going anywhere?” His eyes darted between hers.
She shook her head.
His gaze locked with hers, and his mood shifted. She could feel it changing, but she didn’t let it frighten her, stood her ground and waited for whatever emotion had gripped him to reveal itself to her.
His pupils dilated.
His eyes fell to her lips.
He murmured throatily, “I dreamed of you the other night… I dreamed of the ball.”
A blush climbed her cheeks, scalding them, and her heart missed a beat as she remembered that night and how she had wanted so much more than his kisses and that fumbled moment.
He drew down a deep breath, and growled. “You need.”
She flushed all over, startled that he could sense her rising desire, even when she knew it happened between mates. Her pulse picked up when he stepped towards her, anticipation swirling inside her, pushing her to the edge of begging him to take her into his arms and kiss her because he was right and she needed him. She needed him now. It felt as if she might die if he didn’t touch her, didn’t re-enact that night with her against the wall of his room.
He stilled, and moved back, and she wanted to growl at him.
“You do not want me.” He lowered his hand from her face, slipping it free of hers, and cold swept through her, confusion at the crest of it. She frowned at him, unsure why his mood had suddenly changed and what had given him the impression she didn’t want him, when she was burning for him. He looked away from her, towards the window to his left. “You couldn’t bring yourself to look at me.”
Her confusion mounted, clouding her mind. When had she made him feel that way?
The clouds scattered as she remembered the moment in the reception room, when she had felt the same hurt go through him.
When he had lost himself to the darkness and had been fighting it, tormented by it, and she had looked away from him.
“No, Fuery.” She shook her head and seized his hands again, refusing to let him distance himself from her when he was wrong. “I knew you would not want me to see you like that… I thought I was sparing you.”
She stepped towards him, closing the gap between them, narrowing it further this time, so his heat embraced her and he was all she knew.
She lifted her eyes to meet his, held them as they darkened again, and opened herself to him. She would never hide anything from him. She would never hold anything back. Even when confessing such things had her nerves rising, palms sweating and pulse pounding.
“I want you, Fuery… I wanted you from the moment we met and I have never stopped wanting you.”
CHAPTER 16
Those words struck Fuery as fiercely as his instincts as her mate, almost sending him to his knees on the dark stone floor. He swallowed hard and fought to hold himself together, to keep his boots planted to the tiles and resist the urges that went through him.
&nbs
p; Some of them terrifying.
Gods, he didn’t want to hurt her.
He knew he would if he surrendered to the need running rampant inside him, a startling combination of hunger and darkness, a pressing desire to claim the delicate female standing before him and stamp his mark all over her.
His fangs itched at the thought of penetrating her pale perfect flesh and mouth watered at the hazy memory of how sweet her blood tasted, and how good it had made him feel as he had drunk from her vein, pulling all of her into him. It had felt as if he had been joining their souls, mingling a part of hers with his.
He trembled, on fire with the hunger to surrender to his blacker urges and fulfil his needs.
And hers.
He balled his hands into fists as the claws of his armour formed over his fingers, and gritted his teeth as they sliced through the scales to cut deep into his flesh, filling the tense air with the sickly scent of his own blood.
He couldn’t.
He forced himself to look at her. To see her.
She was delicate. Beautiful. A rare bloom that deserved tenderness from him, and one he would likely crush if he wasn’t gentle with her.
He didn’t want to ruin her.
If he surrendered to the dark needs running through him, he would do just that.
The males of the guild feared him for a reason, and while he no longer remembered the things he did when the darkness pulled him under, when he lost himself to it, he knew from the way they avoided him and the looks they cast him that he was dangerous in that state, vicious and cruel, and revelled in the sick things he did while under the influence of the darkness.
He couldn’t count the number of people he had hurt when lost to that darkness. They were too numerous.
He couldn’t count the number he had killed.
When he lost himself, he had no awareness and therefore he couldn’t stop himself from doing terrible things.
If he lost himself when Shaia was around him, if the darkness seized him, born of his desperate need to stake a new claim on her as his fated one, he would hurt her. He was sure of it.
Unchained by a Forbidden Love Page 16
