1. Chapter 1

1

“ W e need to talk.”

Rebecca Bloodshadow stared at the russet-haired elf sitting on the edge of the folding banquet table inside one of Shade’s holding rooms, her mind racing with all the possibilities of what she could and should say in response.

No shit, they had to talk.

She couldn’t agree with him more, but she couldn’t let anyone else know that right now.

Maxwell Hannigan stood just behind her with his arms folded as he scowled at their elven intruder. The blackhorn Rick, the security team’s second in command, hovered behind Maxwell, his eyes wide. A dozen other Shade operatives still lay scattered across the floor of the holding room after their silent intruder had incapacitated them all at once and in record time.

As far as everyone else in this holding room was concerned, this was their first encounter.

No one could know anything existed between Rebecca and this elf sitting on the table and grinning like a lunatic.

Because Rowan Blackmoon should never have been able to find Rebecca at all. Definitely not here inside Shade’s well-protected headquarters compound in Chicago.

It felt like forever that they just stared at each other, her and Rowan, while Rebecca’s insides battled against each other between relief, bubbling anger, and solidifying, all-encompassing dread.

So far, their captured intruder making a joke of all Shade’s security measures had revealed only that he wanted to speak to “the elf” and nothing more.

If Rebecca let him talk about anything of substance for any amount of time, she would be right back under Maxwell’s scrutiny first and foremost.

As Shade’s new leader, Rebecca couldn’t afford that.

She couldn’t afford it as Rebecca Bloodshadow, either.

Rowan knew far too much, including where to find her, and that was information she certainly hadn’t given him herself.

She took another step toward him, ignoring the constant groans and grunts and coughs of the laid-out operatives Rowan had dispatched without breaking a sweat, all by himself, and held his gaze as she spread her arms. “So talk.”

She would give him one chance to open his mouth, and if what came out included anything she didn’t like, she would shut him down immediately.

Anything he might say could give her away at any second—could ruin everything here for her and reveal all her fervently kept secrets. All without Rowan ever even knowing how much of her safety and identity he risked just by being here.

Knowing Rowan, though, even if he did know which secrets she was hiding and why, he’d probably blow them all open anyway just for fun.

The elf man tilted his head, his beautiful, dangerous grin still fixed on her, and laughed again.

The sound of it filled Rebecca with an unexpected nostalgia and a simultaneous shiver of expectation skittering along her spine.

“Well,” he began, “I was hoping for something a little more comfortable, but if this is the best you can offer…”

A low, menacing growl interceded before Maxwell stepped up to stand at Rebecca’s side, his silver eyes flashing with ominous warning—the expression he wore almost constantly but especially when he didn’t trust someone.

Lately, he’d aimed his warnings exclusively at Rebecca. The fact that she was no longer the target of his suspicion made the heavy knot in her gut tighten even further.

“You intruded on private property,” Maxwell snarled. “You’re trespassing. You’ve incapacitated a dozen of our operatives, and you want a more private conversation? You’re out of your element, elf.”

Rowan’s hazel eyes barely flickered in Maxwell’s direction, the intensity of his grin fading briefly before it reappeared with full force. “Out of my element, huh? You think? And here I was, assuming I’d get a private meeting with her .”

He gestured toward Rebecca, and a sudden urge to throw herself at him, wrap her hands around his neck, and throttle the Blackmoon scion for interfering in her personal affairs—again—almost took control.

She forced herself beneath a mask of calm and composure. For the first time, she was grateful for Maxwell’s habit of cutting into her conversations that had nothing to do with him.

“You’ll address the Roth-Da’al with the proper respect, elf,” the shifter snarled. “And you’ll have your private audience only once I’ve gotten everything out of you first. Rick, bring me the Needle.”

“Sir.” Rick nodded, but whether he left to retrieve said interrogation tool or stood there waiting for more, Rebecca had no idea.

She was more focused on Maxwell’s growing hostility as he surged forward toward their newest prisoner.

No way in all five Blue Hells would she let him interrogate this particular elf.

“Hold on, Hannigan,” she muttered, reaching out to set a hand on his shoulder.

He stopped beneath her touch, then she stepped forward again to place herself between her Head of Security and the devious elf man grinning at her from the center of the room.

“Oh, yes,” Rowan taunted, wiggling his eyebrows. “I imagine the lady would like to speak for herself, given the circumstances. Personally, I think—”

“What you think has no bearing on my decision at the moment,” Rebecca snapped, staring him down as she took another step forward and released Maxwell’s shoulder. She couldn’t help but notice how rigid he’d suddenly become beneath her touch, but she didn’t dare look away from Rowan to check on the shifter. “And I will decide whether your thoughts belong here at all.”

Specifically, whether Rowan felt like blowing her cover and revealing the truth to all the wrong people at the wrong time.

“Oh, come on.” Rowan’s grin sharpened as he turned it onto her again and tilted his head even further this time. “Don’t act like you have no idea what this is about. You had to have known this was coming sooner or later. I’ve been—”

“That’s irrelevant,” she snapped. “And you have a lot to answer for, including why you broke into our headquarters and why you seem to think this is all so hilarious.”

“You must be joking.” He glanced quickly back and forth between her and Maxwell. “Tell me you’re joking.”

Rebecca pointed at him and summoned her sternest, most commanding expression because that was all the silent message she could afford to give him. “Don’t move.”

While the elf man snickered at her warning, Rebecca turned around, marched back toward the open door of the holding room, and gestured for Maxwell to join her.

He growled again at their elven intruder and took his sweet time joining her at the door. Fortunately, Maxwell’s frustration didn’t affect his willingness to follow orders, even if he didn’t agree with them.

Once it felt like they had a sufficient level of privacy—though she was sure Rowan could hear everything anyway—Rebecca made her move in the only way she could think to make it.

“I’ll take it from here,” she told Maxwell with a nod.

Rick gaped at her.

Maxwell’s scowl darkened. “That’s not a good idea.”

“I think that’s for me to decide.”

“It’s not your job to interrogate every low-level criminal trying to make a name for himself—”

“Trust me, Hannigan.” Rebecca nodded. “There are plenty of things I do on a daily basis that go above and beyond the call of duty, all right? I’m gonna take this one.”

“You don’t have to deal with this. Especially when he just wiped out every operative assigned to guard him in this room.”

Rick grimaced, as if he expected immediate blowback and disciplinary action for something he hadn’t been here to prevent in the first place.

Rebecca held her frustration in check. Barely.

Why couldn’t the shifter just relent? For whatever reason, he still had to fight her every step of the way, and that only made everything that much harder.

She should have expected this.

“Clearly, setting anyone else on this guy, whoever he is, hasn’t been very effective so far,” she said firmly, keeping her voice low. “I’d like to try a different route.”

Maxwell’s frown deepened, and he shifted his weight in a halting lurch, as if he wanted to step toward her but thought better of it. “It’s not safe for you.”

She would have laughed at that if she wasn’t so surprised to hear him arguing for her safety, given the circumstances.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but the prisoner’s an elf. I’m the only other elf here. Which means I’m the only one he won’t hurt.”

“How can you be sure of that?” he growled.

“It’s…an elf thing.” Rebecca mentally kicked herself for such a stupid answer, but she couldn’t start backtracking now.

That would only alert Maxwell to something else incredibly fishy going on here, and she was trying to get him to leave her and Rowan alone, not to suspect even more foul play from her . That would force him to stay by her side, no matter what she did or said.

When his long silence stretched even longer, Rebecca pulled her gaze away from the holding room and looked up into the shifter’s glowing silver eyes.

Maxwell lowered his voice through another growl and leaned toward her. “That’s hardly an effective baseline for establishing a plan of action, Knox.”

“Well it’s the only baseline we’ve got.”

His eyes flashed again with silver light as he stared her down.

All the rage and obligation and uncertainty that existed just below the surface of Maxwell Hannigan’s stony exterior was already bubbling up, about to boil over at any second now.

Rebecca could feel it.

She’d been feeling more and more pieces of the shifter’s internal struggle lately, all of it with steadily increasing intensity and frequency.

The fact that all that churning conflict inside him called to her like flame called to a moth made this thing between them that much more confusing and distracting. Not to mention downright dangerous under the wrong circumstances.

These were definitely the wrong circumstances.

She shoved it all aside and focused on the cold, hard facts.

She couldn’t let Maxwell interrogate Rowan, and she couldn’t let Rowan ruin everything she’d built for herself with Shade.

She had to get serious, and she had to make her Head of Security believe it too.

With a sigh, Rebecca lowered her voice. “Listen—”

“Rick,” he interrupted with a jerk of his head toward the open door. “Go get the—”

“No, Rick.” Rebecca nodded at the blackhorn, who looked both terrified and confused when he realized his superiors were yet again at odds with each other and their commands. “You’re not going anywhere. Leave the Needle where it is.”

She returned her gaze to Maxwell’s flashing silver eyes above a darkening scowl and added, “You and Rick are going to help the wounded out of here. Get them cleaned up. See that whoever needs extra attention gets to the infirmary. Then give me five minutes with the prisoner.”

The knuckles of his right hand popped and crunched when he flexed it into a fist and snarled, “Of all the reckless—”

“Reckless?” she interrupted, stepping toward him and lifting her chin. “Sure. You’re probably right. But it’s also an order, and I expect you to get it done. Then I’ll have my five minutes with the prisoner. That’s all I need.”

Another low growl rose from Maxwell’s throat, and his entire body stiffened like he was about to spring at her and take out all his aggression on the wrong elf.

But he held himself together like she knew he would.

Maxwell Hannigan was a shifter who valued duty and protocol and the chain of command above everything else, as he had since the day they’d met.

“Fine,” he snapped. “But for the record, I think this is the wrong call.”

“I have no problem with that going on the record,” she told him. “Just as long as this gets done.”

She stood back and waited against the wall with her arms folded while Maxwell whistled to the other members of his security team waiting outside. Then they got to work dragging out the dozen Shade operatives their elven prisoner had immobilized in a matter of minutes—all on his own and while no one else was watching.

Rebecca didn’t protest when Maxwell ordered two other operatives to level their augmented assault rifles at the elf man’s face while the others helped their fallen comrades back up to their feet and out of the holding room. One by one they emerged, limping into the hall, groaning, wiping blood off minor cuts and abrasions.

Everyone glowered at the russet-haired elf still sitting on the table.

Rowan watched the whole thing like it was a contrived act he’d come specifically to see for himself—after paying a pretty penny for it, too.

Part of Rebecca wanted to laugh at his constant carelessness, the way she used to laugh at it so very long ago.

The other half of her wanted to smack that self-serving smirk right off his face.

Once all the injured operatives were out of the holding room and the security team regrouped in the hall, Maxwell stepped out and grabbed the door handle to pull it shut behind him while he glowered at Rebecca.

“Five minutes,” he said tersely before shooting another warning glare at their prisoner.

Then he pulled the door shut behind him.

The locking mechanism engaged with a heavy thunk and a metallic click, followed by a flash of red light on the security panel beside the door.

Finally, Rebecca was alone with him.

She only had five minutes to get across the most important information without letting any potentially deadly details slip through the cracks of her carefully conceived identity in this world.

Here with Shade, she was Rebecca Knox, the task force’s only elven member and newly elected commander.

That was not the version of her Rowan Blackmoon had known once upon a time—or the version of her he clearly assumed he still knew.

In the next five minutes, she had to figure out how to be both versions of herself without blowing her cover entirely and destroying everything she’d built in this city and with this task force.

She should have asked for more than five minutes.

Rowan’s dark, simpering chuckle he delivered through his nose as he stared at her, unblinking, made that clear.

“Roth-Da’al, huh?” He said. “Well look at that. Someone’s coming up in the world.”

“Now you know who I am,” she replied, her mind racing to come up with a viable way out of this precarious situation within the laughably short timeline she’d given herself. “But I want to make this clear from the start. We’re not here to talk about me .”

She could only hope he understood what she was trying to say, and now it felt like she was trying to be three different people at once instead of the usual one—or sometimes two, by necessity.

“Well.” Rowan’s hazel eyes bored into hers, and time felt like it slowed to an eternally stretching second.

Rebecca’s mind worked overtime and at top speed.

She was still being watched. Of course she was. They were both being watched via the holding room’s security cameras, which were always on and always recording to capture unanticipated situations just like this one.

And she knew Maxwell was watching.

She could feel the shifter’s gaze on her almost as viscerally as if he’d never left the room. This wasn’t something her Head of Security would leave up to chance, only to rewatch it all on the recording later.

She had to be more careful with this not-so-private conversation than she’d been with anything else since joining Shade. If Rowan were to let anything slip in this room while he thought the two of them were alone, Rebecca’s entire cover would be blown wide open.

The consequences of that were vast and varied, including Shade turning completely upside down should its members discover who and what she really was. Rebecca would lose her position as Shade’s commander mere days after she’d been voted in to assume the position.

And Shade didn’t just fire their commanders.

No, losing this job meant losing her head.