need to fight a persistent itch that made him restless, tempted him to surrender to it to satisfy it.
Fuery released his wrist and palmed his cheeks, keeping his eyes locked on him. The connection grew stronger, and he could almost feel Fuery willing the darkness to leave him, attempting to steal a sliver of it from him to spare him and allow him to regain control over it.
Hartt stepped back and severed the connection, shutting it down so his friend couldn’t steal this darkness from him. It was too dangerous for Fuery to do such a thing. It could easily push him over the edge. He would never forgive himself if Fuery lost himself to the darkness because he hadn’t been able to control his instincts and Fuery had tried to help.
“Perhaps you should get some air?” Grave finished checking on Asher and levelled a black look on Hartt, one that made it clear that he wasn’t making a suggestion.
He was issuing an order.
“I can come—”
Hartt shook his head, cutting Fuery off. “Remain here. Continue the meeting.”
He held his friend’s gaze, hoping Fuery would see what he couldn’t say in front of all these people—keep watch over Mackenzie. He trusted Fuery to keep her safe and keep other males away from her.
With one last look at Mackenzie, Hartt forced himself to leave the room, each step that took him further away from her a struggle. He fought the need to return to her, trudged down the corridor to the grand staircase and followed it downwards. As the distance between them grew, the need to pivot on his heel and hurry back to her, to teleport to her side again, became almost crushing, a weight inside him that felt as if it would kill him.
The vampire was right though. He needed space and air, time to cool off and wrangle his unruly feelings back under control.
He strode through an arched corridor that connected the interior courtyard of the main building of the bastion to an open space that was half training arena and half garden. He headed to his right, towards the wall that enclosed the garden, separating it from the more functional part of the large space.
Beyond an archway cut into the creamy yellow wall, he spied bushes in a series of curved raised beds that had been created using low sandstone walls only a foot high. A gravel path snaked through the garden, drawing his gaze deeper into it. There was even a dark green tree or two. When he spotted flowers, tiny colourful blooms that looked so out of place in the bleak black lands of this part of Hell, his pace quickened.
The need to feel a connection to nature, even one he knew would be weak given his location, had him wanting to sprint to reach those flowers.
Nature hadn’t rejected him in Rosalind’s garden when the darkness had been too much for him, and gods, he hoped she didn’t reject him now when he needed her more than ever. He pushed the squeaky black wrought-iron gate open and didn’t bother to close it behind him, made a beeline for the sparse patch of flowers someone was trying to grow beneath a gnarled dark tree.
The moment he reached them, he sank to his knees before them and pressed his palms to the rich brown dirt between the bright green stems and delicate leaves.
His eyes slipped shut as the connection opened, weak but there, a comfort he badly needed. He sagged forwards and breathed, focusing on each one, on the bond he shared with nature and how it felt as if she was reaching for him, trying to deepen the connection. Or maybe that was just him reaching for her.
The need to fight that had been raging inside him slowly abated as he sank into the connection, as he sat in perfect stillness, feeling only that bond between him and nature. Warmth spread through him, slowly at first, but it gradually built to ease the chill of fear from his blood and erase his worries.
He shifted his hands, hovered them around the bloom of the flower, and breathed in the subtle fragrance of it that struggled to reach him through the thicker scents of the town.
The flower smelled strangely of vanilla.
And sandalwood.
He opened his eyes and looked to his left, back in the direction of the gate.
Mackenzie stood there, and her beauty hit him hard, roused a thousand needs and desires that he was immediately a slave to as