A love that just wouldn’t die.
He lifted his head, his gaze bleak. In it, she saw a hollow sort of yearning, a festering and eternal need for the woman who had left him at the altar, who had built a life without him and now had a mate.
None of which had stopped him from loving her.
“This thing you have isn’t healthy,” she said.
His jaw clenched. “It was the only way to save him. I would gladly sacrifice my life for his… after all he did for me. He saved my life. I owe it to him.”
“That’s not what I was talking about.” She took another step back and he frowned at her, a strange sort of desperate edge entering his eyes, as if she was killing him a little more with each step further she took away from him. “You’re obsessing over Iolanthe. She left you, has her mate now, but you can’t let her go.”
“You’re wrong.” He tried to straighten, grunted and doubled over again.
She wasn’t.
“I’m not blind, Hartt. You are. You clearly still have feelings for Iolanthe, and you’ve been holding on to them for years. You don’t want to let her go, not even now she’s mated to Kyter… her true mate. That just isn’t healthy. You need to let it go.”
He had the audacity to snarl at her. “That’s not true. Mackenzie—”
He lowered his head and growled, his short claws pressing into his knees as he bit out vicious sounding words in the elf tongue.
He wasn’t going to let Iolanthe go, she could see that, so she was going to let him go instead.
“I don’t have time for this drama. I’m not interested.” She backed off another step.
This time, he didn’t growl at the distance growing between them. He just stared at her feet.
“It’s not been fun,” she said with a smile that wobbled on her lips as he lifted his head and locked gazes with her, his irises violet again. She gave him a moment, a chance. When he didn’t take it, she bit out, “Don’t call me.”
She forced herself to focus when he still said nothing, made herself teleport and leave him because it was clear he wasn’t going to try to make her stay. He had a problem with turning his back on Fuery, couldn’t bring himself to forget Iolanthe, but he didn’t seem to have any issue at all with her leaving.
She landed in another part of the city, on the outskirts where an impressive country house stood on a large parcel of land. Beneath it, in a cavern, was a fae town, but she wasn’t interested in paying it a visit. Her eyes burned again as she trudged forwards, as she sought the portal that would take her back to Hell.
Syn was going to be angry with her.
She dashed her tears away as they began to fall and hardened her heart, refusing to let Hartt break it. Anger began as a tiny flicker of heat in her veins and she stoked it, embraced it and held on to it when hurt tried to overwhelm it. She directed it at herself, but thoughts of Hartt kept crowding her mind, threatening to undo her hard work.
She cursed him.
She had broken one of her cardinal rules and look where it had gotten her. She had vowed she would never get involved with a man like this, letting him get under her skin. Starting to depend on him for her happiness.
Fool.
That was what she was without a doubt. She was a fool who had been swept up in the moment, who had believed this thing with Hartt would become something more, and now she was miserable and angry, and she hated herself for getting so caught up in him.
She had lost sight of herself.
Of her mission.
It wasn’t like her at all.
She should have been able to keep him at a distance, should never have let her walls fall away, should have been stronger and denied the feelings that had infiltrated her heart.
It was too late for should have though.
Somehow, Hartt had gotten under her skin.
He had made her feel weak, had exposed a vulnerability and she hated it. She hated him. She growled as she reached the spot where the portal was and felt the power of it wrap around her. She focused again and teleported, using the portal to connect her to Hell, her only way of reaching that realm and her home.
Gods, Syn was going to be so angry with her and she deserved it.
She had trusted Hartt and he had gone and broken her heart.
She landed hard in Hell, in a town close to the one where her guild was, and growled so loud that the people coming and going along the busy cobbled street made a fast exit, leaving her standing alone in the middle of the black stone buildings.
He hadn’t broken her heart. She didn’t love him. She didn’t!
He certainly didn’t love her.
It struck her that was what was hurting her the most.
He could never love her, because he loved the elf.
Mackenzie would never have his heart.
She huffed and teleported again, landing in her bedroom inside the guild and sinking onto the end of the double mattress.
She didn’t want his heart anyway.
And he would never have hers. Never. No matter what.
She swore it.
Chapter 18
Rain hammered down on Hartt as he stood in the middle of the alley between the redbrick buildings, feeling numb and not only from the cold. He stared at the spot where Mackenzie had been, reeling and confused, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
She had left him.
Had told him she never wanted to see him again.
An ultimatum that had the primal, darker side of him howling with rage and a fierce need to find her and pull her into his arms sweeping through him.
That need to track her down and be close to her, to hold her to him and refuse to let her go had been born in him the moment he had realised she had left Underworld without a word. Slipped out into the cold night like the assassin she was. He hadn’t noticed she was gone until he had felt bad about leaving her out of the conversation and had turned to include her.
The weight that had settled in his gut, a writhing and wretched feeling, had only grown worse when Kyter had told him she had been gone for at least five minutes. He had wanted to throttle the male for not telling him.
Had wanted to throttle himself for not noticing.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed.
But, gods, he noticed her absence now. It cut at him, clawed at his heart and his ribs, beat at his mind, until he felt like a savage animal caged within his own body, desperate and wild with a need to hunt her.
To have her back at his side.
He needed her close to him again.
He clenched his fists and denied that need, just as he had denied the need to stop her from leaving, even when he had wanted to make her stay. He had wanted that with all of his heart—the same heart she believed belonged to another.
That was the reason he had held himself back. That and the messed-up instincts or whatever it was that kept plaguing him whenever he was around her, and whenever he was away from her.
This primal need that roared at him to find her.
It was growing clearer with every passing moment, with each minute he spent in her company and every agonising second they were apart, and he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Mackenzie was right. It was time he took a good, hard look at his feelings. That was the reason he had let her go.
He couldn’t think clearly when she was around him and he needed clarity.
He needed to think things over and think hard about what she had said.