“Gods, is this my fault?” Fuery whispered, a wealth of pain and guilt in his voice.
Hartt whipped to face him, the fight forgotten. “No, Fuery.”
“It is. This is my fault. Your eyes are almost black, Hartt. This is because of my episode, isn’t it?” Hurt shone in Fuery’s violet eyes, the black that constantly edged his irises beginning to invade and vanquish that amethyst. “We must find a way to break this bond. You must wish it broken. If you could take it back—”
“Never,” Hartt spat with conviction he felt right down to his soul. “If someone gave me the choice, I would not change what I did, Fuery.”
Fuery took a step towards him, a desperate edge to his expression, one that made Hartt want to say whatever his friend needed to hear to make him believe he was speaking the truth.
Harbin suddenly slammed into Hartt on a vicious growl, knocking him back into the wall near the door that led to the wing where their bedrooms were. It had taken the shifter longer than he had anticipated to succumb to the need to finish the fight. Harbin never could stop himself once he was coiled and ready to spring at an enemy to deliver a blow, and Hartt had left him ready to pounce when Fuery had spoken.
The shifter was quick to back off and issue an apologetic look that wasn’t necessary as he scrubbed the back of his neck and then rubbed blood from his lip.
Hartt shook off the blow and pushed away from the wall, closed the distance between him and Fuery and clutched his friend’s shoulder through his black tunic jacket.
“I love you, Fuery. You are my brother. It doesn’t matter that we weren’t born into the same family. You are my brother and if I had to go through moments a thousand times worse than what I’ve experienced because of our bond, I would gladly do so to keep you with me, to keep us together.” He tightened his grip on Fuery’s shoulder as tears welled in his eyes, as the black began to lose ground against the violet. “I cannot bear the thought of losing you.”
Before Fuery could say anything, Hartt pulled him into a tight hug, held him close and whispered in his ear.
“Never think that I would want rid of you or that I could ever regret this bond we share.”
Fuery wrapped his arms around him and held him so tightly it hurt.
Hartt’s thoughts drifted to Mackenzie and regret welled inside him, swift to fill him and drag his mood down to a new low, one where he ached as he never had before, felt as if he might die if he didn’t see her again.
It struck him that he had been a fool to let her go.
He should have seized hold of her and held her close instead, should have done whatever it took to make her believe that he didn’t view her as a weak female.
And that she was wrong about his heart.
Because as he stood aching from a fight and hurting in his soul, he realised something else.
He didn’t love Iolanthe.
He had only been convincing himself that he did.
When she had left him centuries ago, he had been hurt, and he had been angry, but those two feelings had been mere shadows of the hurt and anger he felt right now. He had gotten over the pain of Iolanthe leaving him, had moved on and had pursued other females, and had lived his life without feeling a need to find her.
He wasn’t sure he could do that where Mackenzie was concerned.
He wasn’t sure he would ever get over her leaving him.
He was sure of something though.
He couldn’t function without her, was going out of his mind with worry about her already, was crazy with a need to see her again and make things right between them.
Because he couldn’t lose her.
Fuery released him and Hartt just stood there, mind racing and running through a million thoughts about Mackenzie, about how things had been left between them, and how he could possibly make her believe that she was wrong about him.
Harbin huffed as he stepped towards him and Fuery. “You want to talk about this witch now?”
“No,” Hartt snapped, the leash on his temper close to breaking as the shifter interrupted his thoughts of Mackenzie and he lost his train of thought, had to go back to the argument they’d had in that alley and replay it again to seek an answer to the question that burned brightest inside him.
Did she have feelings for him too?
“Man, what has you acting like a male who can’t find his mate?”
Hartt slowly turned his head towards Harbin. “What did you just say?”
Harbin rolled his thickly hewn shoulders beneath his torn black T-shirt. “I said, you’re acting like a male who can’t find his mate. Frantic. Angry. Scared… and desperate. Lashing out at everyone. Well, everyone except Fuery, apparently. Fine, lashing out at just me.”
Hartt wasn’t sure what to say. He just stared at the shifter as his entire world seemed to rearrange itself before his eyes, as everything he had been thinking about Mackenzie suddenly felt like a lie, a hollow fabrication.
The product of a possible bond and his instincts as a male to claim her as his mate.
He looked at Fuery, needing to hear him say that the shifter was wrong.
“Harbin has a point.” Fuery offered an apologetic look when Hartt glared at him. “You are acting like an elf who has lost sight of his ki’ara.”
Hartt couldn’t believe it, even when all the markers were there—the need to be near her, the urge to protect her, the hunger to decapitate any male who so much as looked at her, the desperate desire to please her.
Mackenzie was his fated mate.
Chapter 19
Hartt wanted answers and the only way he was going to get them was by tracking Mackenzie down and talking to her. The thought that his growing feelings for her might be the product of her being his fated female and not real weighed him down and had him pacing his bedroom.
Seeking answers he knew wouldn’t come.
Because the answer he wanted was one the universe didn’t want to give him.
For a moment, a brief and close to wonderful one, he had thought his feelings for Mackenzie had been real, but the more he analysed every moment that had happened since he had met her, the more he feared he had been blind to the truth.
Mackenzie was his ki’ara.
That was the only reason he felt something for her. That was the only reason he felt compelled to go to her right now and see her again. It wasn’t love. It was mate lust. It was an instinct, not an emotion he felt.
What if this instinct was blinding him to other things? What if his initial thought about his feelings for Iolanthe had been wrong, twisted and deformed into a lie whispered by his instincts because they wanted him to choose Mackenzie over her?
He would never choose his ki’ara over true love.
He wasn’t interested in tying himself to one female forever through an unbreakable bond just because some biological connection had pushed her onto him. He didn’t want a mate. He wanted love.
Odd for an assassin in his position of power, with his bloody and ruthless history, to want that, he knew, but want it he did. Maybe it was a hang-up from Iolanthe leaving him on the day of their ceremony, when she should have become his. He had loved her, and she had left him, and those feelings had persisted. He was sure of it. When he had seen her again in Underworld that first time after centuries apart, he had felt that same spark, that same need bloom inside him. He had been mistaken. His feelings for Iolanthe hadn’t gone anywhere.