Hartt shot him a glare. “Get a move on, Harbin, or we’re leaving you behind.”
Harbin could understand his sudden desire to leave. It wasn’t only for his own sake, it was for Fuery’s. Elves viewed the tainted as something that needed to be exterminated, a stain on their race. Hartt wasn’t even close to being tainted, but someone else in the room was and his boss had just realised the danger that male was in.
Hartt teleported and reappeared next to Fuery in the shadowy side of the room, drawing Bleu’s gaze there.
Harbin’s muscles tensed, coiling in readiness as he waited for the elf to mention how tainted Fuery was and attempt to kill him. Not on his watch. He would take the elf out of action if he tried anything.
Bleu’s violet eyes widened and the words that left his lips weren’t ones filled with anger or hatred, but ones holding a wealth of shock that seemed to deal a blow to the elf who uttered them. “Commander Fuery? I thought you were dead.”
Fuery’s expression shifted on hearing his name, turning darker than usual, and the sensation of danger he radiated increased, warning that he was on the verge of attacking.
It didn’t stop Bleu from taking a step towards him, the surprise that had been in his voice slowly painting itself across his face as he stared at Fuery.
Fuery snarled, hunger sparking in his black eyes, a dark need to spill blood. Bleu recognised him, but Fuery didn’t seem to have a clue who he was. How did the elf commander know Fuery? Harbin looked to Hartt for an answer but his boss averted his violet gaze, fixing it on Fuery, a flicker of concern in it.
“How did you survive Vail’s attack?” Bleu whispered and the elf prince turned to face the room, his hand falling away from the mortal female’s neck as he stared across the room at Fuery, his stunned expression matching Bleu’s.
Fuery remained silent, glaring at the two elves now, his fingers twitching at his sides. He wanted to attack, but he wasn’t, and that stunned Harbin. Normally Fuery attacked first and asked questions later, a policy that Harbin had difficulty with since it usually meant they were trying to question a corpse. Why wasn’t he attacking now, when Harbin could see he was desperate to lash out?
Did he know Bleu?
“What happened to you?” Bleu ventured another step towards him.
This time, Fuery reacted, but not as Harbin had expected. Rather than attacking, he backed away a step and threw a panicked look at Hartt, his black eyes gaining a wild edge as he shook his head, causing the longer strands of his blue-black hair to brush his neck. Hartt closed the small gap between them and placed his hand on Fuery’s shoulder, and Harbin could only stare as the touch calmed him and he drew down a deep shuddering breath.
“The elf is tainted,” the prince said and Bleu looked back at him. “The male you knew no longer exists, Bleu.”
Bleu looked as if he didn’t want to believe that, and it only left Harbin with more questions. Had they been close once, before whatever attack Bleu had mentioned? Vail. The name was familiar. Harbin racked his brain, trying to place it, and frowned when it came to him. Vail was the mad elf prince who had turned on his people. Hartt had told him about the male once, but he had made Vail sound more like a legend told to scare young elves than a real person.
The elf commander took another step towards Fuery.
Fuery responded by pulling his black blade from the air and snarling at him. Hartt shifted in front of Fuery, partially shielding him with his body and placing his hand over the one Fuery held his blade in, stopping him from attacking.
“Do you not recognise whose company you are in?” Bleu snapped and Fuery’s dark gaze danced to the elf leader and back again. “Do you not recognise your prince?”
Fuery narrowed his black eyes on Bleu and growled words in the elf tongue. Harbin didn’t know the language, but he caught a name.
Vail.
Bleu’s expression twisted into darkness, long white daggers flashing between his lips as he snarled, “Your prince is standing in this very room, not roaming Hell bent on bloodshed and destruction. That wretched male is not your prince.”
“Watch your tongue, Bleu!” the prince snapped, and it seemed Fuery wasn’t the only one who still felt affection for a male that was apparently mad and evil, driven to kill all who stood in his path.
Bleu lowered his head, his unruly hair falling down to brush his forehead, and pressed his right hand to the black scales covering his chest. “My apologies, my prince.”
Loke groaned and shifted, and Harbin’s gaze leaped to him. The big dragon shifter stole all of the attention away from Fuery, but only held Harbin’s for a few seconds, as long as it took for him to sense that he was stronger now. Safe.
He looked back at Fuery, focusing on him as Hartt worked to calm him. He had never realised before today just how much affection Hartt held for the tainted elf, but he could see it now as the male stroked his shoulder and hand and spoke to him in a low voice, slowly coaxing him back from the brink.
Was Hartt the only reason Fuery wasn’t roaming Hell like the prince he admired, wreaking havoc and leaving a trail of blood in his wake?
Fuery lowered his hand and his shoulders sagged, his lips parting as his breath left him and the tension seemed to wash from his limbs. His black blade disappeared and Hartt glanced down to where it had been and then back at his face, saying something in the elf tongue that Harbin wished he could understand. He had always wondered about Fuery, but now he had more questions and now he needed to hear the answers to them. He wanted to know what had happened to push Fuery so close to the brink and propel him into life as an assassin.
“Harbin?” Hartt caught hold of Fuery’s wrist. The elf lowered his eyes to it, the black slashes of his eyebrows rising as he stared at Hartt’s hand, a distant look on his face. He blinked slowly and Harbin had the impression that he wasn’t quite with them.
Hartt had told him once that sometimes Fuery lost the fight against the darkness, but that he always came back. Harbin could see now that his boss had been putting things too simply, skimming over some of the facts.
The darkness had swallowed Fuery, but it had been Hartt that had drawn him back to the light, and now Fuery looked lost and confused, as if he couldn’t recall what had happened during the time he had been consumed by the darkness that lived inside him.
The worry shining in Hartt’s violet eyes warned the calm wouldn’t last, that Fuery would remember everything that had happened, and that was the reason his boss was suddenly so desperate to leave.
“I might be a while. Go on without me. I need to finish my mission and then I’ll meet you,” Harbin said, and nodded when Hartt looked relieved.
Hartt tossed one last look towards Bleu where he now stood beside his sister with Kyter at his side. Silvery light chased over him and Fuery and then he was gone. Bleu muttered something in the elf tongue, his gaze sliding towards Harbin, filled with a dark desire that Harbin recognised because he had felt that same hunger running in his blood countless times.
Bleu wanted to force him to leave too.
He wanted to attack him.
The prince responded, his tone equally black and threatening.
Harbin stepped forwards but Cavanaugh suddenly blocked his path. He looked up at his brother, expecting to find him protecting his friends.
He wasn’t.
He stood with his bare back to Harbin and growled at the two elves, baring huge canines.
He was protecting him.
A wave of tingles raced over his skin, shooting down his spine, and he wasn’t sure how to process everything that had happened in the last thirty minutes. He had come to this place expecting to find a bitter, angry male who wanted nothing to do with him. He hadn’t expected to find a male who was unchanged by their years apart, still quick to defend him despite his failings.
Still protecting him.
Still loving him after everything he had done.
“Enough. No more fighting.” Kyter scrubbed a hand down his face an
d then over his wild sandy hair, his expression filled with weariness.
The elf female sidled closer to him and caressed his arm. He turned a frown on her but it melted away, softening as he lifted his hand and stroked her cheek. Her smile caused his eyes to darken, hunger surfacing in them, desire that had the female snow leopard dancing back into Harbin’s mind.
His gaze strayed back to the exit as need flooded him again, a deep ache to find her.
He stared at the doors as the night called to him, his primal instincts urging him to seek her and see that she was safe. He needed to protect her. He needed her. She was vital to him, a piece of him that he had been missing his entire life, and with her he knew that he would be complete. A ridiculous notion, one he wanted to dismiss but found he couldn’t. She was more than just another female. She was beautiful. No. She was breathtaking. She was power and vulnerability, grace and deadliness, and a whole range of entrancing impossibilities rolled into one incredible female.
He took a step towards the doors, driven to hunt her.
He would find her.
She would be his.
CHAPTER 11
Cavanaugh snagged Harbin’s arm and he heard his brother talking, but couldn’t make out the words as he was dragged across the low-lit main room of the nightclub, his eyes constantly fixed on the doors and his heart pounding with a need to find the female.
It was only when they passed through a door and it slammed shut, stealing the exit from view, that the urge shattered. Harbin looked around the bright white expansive back room of the club, slowly coming back to the world as the need to hunt faded.
Cavanaugh stared at him, a keen edge to his silver eyes, one that unsettled Harbin.
He would rather his brother exploded with anger and raged about the things he had done, and how he had disappeared for two decades, than face what he felt with a certain sense of impending doom was about to happen.
Conflict he could handle. Discussing the obvious reason behind why his focus kept slipping and drifting towards a specific location, he couldn’t. He preferred to hold his personal business close to his chest, and his feelings even closer, beyond view of anyone, especially now they were coming back to life, roused by the female snow leopard.
He had expected meeting his brother again to cause the rising tide of his emotions to overwhelm him, bursting the barrier he had built around them. What he hadn’t anticipated was the calm he felt in Cavanaugh’s presence, a soothing sensation that eased him and seemed to ground him, instead of pushing him over the brink.
Rather than being swallowed in a dark flood of emotions, he floated on calm waters, drifting in the light.
Harbin glanced back towards the door, his thoughts returning to the female snow leopard.
She had the same effect on him, and he wasn’t sure how to process that.
Even when he had been in the grip of the darkness that lived inside of him back in the Archangel facility, one look into her eyes, even the briefest of glances, had poured light into his soul and soothed him, giving him back control.
Cavanaugh took a step towards him, stealing his focus away from the female, and he caught the look in his brother’s silver eyes, one that warned he was on the verge of bringing up something that Harbin couldn’t bring himself to speak about, because that would mean acknowledging it.
That would make it real, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that, because it would cause a war to erupt inside him, a battle between the darkness born of his past and his vendetta, and the part of him that secretly strived towards the light.
A familiar smell sent relief coursing through him but it lasted only as long as it took the pretty snow leopard female to descend the staircase against the far wall of the white room.
Eloise rubbed her mussed chestnut hair, her golden-brown eyes hazy with sleep as she carefully took each step. “What was all the noise about?”
She reached the bottom step, yawned and tripped, her bare toes snagging in her loose baby blue pyjama bottoms and sending her tumbling forwards.
Cavanaugh was across the room in a heartbeat, catching her in his arms and drawing her close to his bare chest. She curled into him for a second before lifting her head and welcoming the soft press of Cavanaugh’s lips against hers.
Harbin looked down at his bare feet and turned his cheek to them, trying to shut them out as the war he had feared erupted inside of him, flooding his mind with images of the female snow leopard who had betrayed him. The torrent swept him along, one moment flashing a replay of her as she spoke the words that had cut him to his soul, telling him that she had betrayed him, and the next making him relive the moment when he had kissed her.
She had tasted so sweet.
Had felt so fucking good in his arms.
He needed to know about her, and that was the real reason he had come to see Cavanaugh. He had wrapped it up in another cause in order to make it easier on himself, pretending he had come to Underworld purely to give his friends a safe place to rest and recuperate, because the darker part of himself still wanted to lash out whenever he thought about the female in any way other than as a mark.
A mission.
She had him twisted in knots, and he hated it. He had become accustomed to the darkness inside him, the emotionless state he had embraced in order to survive, in order to keep his past locked away and stop it from destroying him. Now she had awakened the light, had unleashed his emotions from their cage, and he was no longer sure how to proceed. That darker side wanted to destroy her instead now, hungered to take her and the Archangel huntress down.
He wanted to protect himself.
He couldn’t handle what she had done to him. Luring him. Trapping him. Betraying him. He tunnelled his fingers through his silver hair and pulled it back, tugging so hard that it hurt. Gods, why couldn’t he hate her as he hated the Archangel huntress?
Why did he feel as if he was walking towards his doom and he couldn’t change his course, couldn’t avert the disaster looming ahead of him, one that would annihilate him?
If he let her sneak into the heart he defended so vigilantly, she would have the power to destroy him.
Fuck, the part of him that wouldn’t shut the hell up said that she had already done it. She had broken through that barrier. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t control the craving he had for her or his need of her. Not even the terrible thing she had done was enough to make him hate her.
He wanted to hate her.
He wanted to shield himself from the pain he could feel coming and it was safer to hate her than to love her and have her take that and break him with it by throwing it back in his face.
Cavanaugh’s steady gaze on him was joined by Eloise’s, and he fought to pull himself out of the mire of his thoughts and regain his focus.
He needed to know about the female he had encountered, but that didn’t mean he was going to let his guard down around her. He couldn’t deny his need to know who she was, or the one that drove him to find her and set things straight with her so she would know the truth about Archangel and would be safe, but he could deny the urges running rampant through him and protect his heart.
Harbin lifted his head and looked at his brother, grimacing as he caught Cavanaugh petting Eloise again with a stupid sappy look on his face.
If anyone would know the members of their pride, Cavanaugh was that male. He had cared enough about his kin to take the time to know everyone, to understand the smallest things about them, all so he could converse with them on a daily basis. Cavanaugh had been born to be a leader of their pride, a male worthy of the role of alpha.
A male worthy of the mate he now held gently in his arms, whispering tender things to her that Harbin wished he couldn’t hear, because they only stirred the primal need that had taken root within him, making him want to hunt the female he had left behind at Archangel.
He needed to find her, but first he had to understand more about her.
He needed to know who she was.<
br />
“Cavanaugh…” He waited for his brother to finally release his mate before sucking down a deep breath and pushing the words out. “I have to talk to you about someone.”
“Someone?” Cavanaugh frowned and shifted to face him, and Eloise remained on the step beside him. Her hand slipped into his and Harbin glanced at them, feeling a sharp pang in his chest as he watched his brother’s larger hand curling around hers, holding it tightly.
Gods.
Even something as stupid as that made him ache to see the female again. What the hell was wrong with him?
The voice that had been constantly whispering in his mind since first setting eyes on her murmured that he knew what was wrong with him, he was just afraid to acknowledge it.
He shut it out. The female was a mark, by her own choice, and had orchestrated a plan to capture him and put him into Archangel’s hands. She wanted revenge and that made her dangerous. He had escaped, thwarting whatever plan she’d had for him, but he doubted he had seen the last of her. He needed to know more about her if he was going to convince her that she didn’t want his head on the chopping block. She wanted Archangel’s.
“A mark,” he started.
Apparently that word didn’t sit well with his brother because Cavanaugh’s eyes darkened rapidly.
Maybe his brother hadn’t believed the elves when they had called him and his friends assassins, or maybe he had thought only Hartt and Fuery operated in that line of business. It would be just like his brother to try to see some good in him and refuse to believe he was capable of spending his days killing others for profit.
“She’s a mark… but she placed the contract on herself. Archangel captured her twenty years ago,” he stumbled when Cavanaugh’s expression shifted, pain flooding his handsome face as his silver eyes brightened, and shook off his own hurt in order to continue. “They harmed her and others, and then they fed her lies and she believes them. She thinks I sold her out.”
He waited for either Cavanaugh or Eloise to say that he had in a way, but both of them remained silent as they looked at each other and then back at him.
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