14. Chapter 14

14

T he more they gazed at each other across the office, the more Rebecca was sure Maxwell was pleading with her for something. For help. For healing. For something to break the agony of his solitude the way it might break hers.

But how could she possibly give it to him when she had no idea what consequences would arise as a result?

He took a deep breath and let it all out again in a heavy exhale. “I think we need to—”

A swift, sturdy knock rose from the open office doorway, and Maxwell clamped his mouth shut.

Rebecca’s stomach clenched. This was the first real conversation she and Maxwell had ever had without having started it as an argument first. The inability to continue now was as uncomfortable as an inability to sneeze.

And she had no idea who stood on the other side of the door.

Like Rowan, for instance.

When she caught Maxwell’s eye again, though, all it took was a brief nod from her before the shifter was on his feet, pivoting toward the door with a growl already growing at the base of his throat.

The growl built in volume until he violently twisted the doorknob and jerked open the door with a snarl. “I said no interruptions.”

“I know, I know,” Rick blustered in the hallway before shooting a quick look over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, boss, but he just won’t listen—”

Rowan shouldered his way past the blackhorn standing in the doorway, still oblivious to the importance of following the rules.

He slipped into the office, avoiding Maxwell altogether, and made his slow, casual line across the room toward Rebecca’s desk. “Oh wow . This is definitely not what I’d expected. Love what you’ve done with the place, though.”

Rick’s orange-red eyes widened in shocked despair as he watched the elf man roaming around the commander’s office as if it were his instead.

Rebecca remained seated behind her desk, watching the drama unfold, giving nothing away.

This was exactly what she’d been trying to avoid, and here it was, happening anyway.

Great.

“You have to tell me where you drew your inspiration from,” Rowan continued as he first passed her desk, then crossed toward the far side of the office toward that awful green leather armchair centered in front of the windows overlooking the common room.

Rebecca forced to stare straight ahead, as if this juvenile behavior had no effect on her ability to contain herself as Shade’s leader. On the inside, her growing anger cranked up the heat and threatened to boil over.

“No inspiration at all,” she replied blandly. “It was like this when I took the job.”

“Huh.” Rowan appeared in her line of sight again on the other side of her desk. He stopped in front of it and partially lifted one leg to half-sit on the corner of the desk, his other boot planted on the floor. “Well then. Now that I’m here, we might as well—”

“That’s not how this works,” Maxwell said with another growl as he headed toward them. “You wait for the Thon-Da’al to call you. You wait for your assignments. Or you make a fucking appointment. That’s how this works.”

Rowan’s hardy, careless laughter echoed around the office as he rocked backward on the corner of Rebecca’s desk. “Listen to this guy. He knows all about how this works.”

“You should listen to him,” she said, fixing Rowan with a deadpan stare, pleased by the flatness of her own voice.

She had to get him out of here.

“Boy…” When his laughter died down, Rowan slapped a hand down on his thigh and leaned toward her. “Listen. This is really cute and all, but now that you’re up here instead of everywhere else in this dump, why don’t I just make an appointment? For right now.”

The nerve of this guy.

She might have forgiven some other idiot for acting like this if he’d just come in off the streets and had nowhere to go. But she knew Rowan. He was doing this to amuse himself, and he still didn’t take her or her dedication to this task force seriously.

He thought she was kidding.

“That’s not possible,” she told him.

He looked her up and down and added a playfully pouting frown into the mix. “Oh, come on. You don’t look that busy.”

“That’s not for you to decide. Hannigan?” Rebecca gestured toward the open door and finally looked away from the elf sitting on her desk. “Please escort our newest member back to the areas of this compound that are available for him to explore on his own time.”

Rowan snorted. “Isn’t that a little rude?”

“No ruder than you barging in where you weren’t invited,” she snapped, then nodded toward the shifter again.

Maxwell’s eyes widened. He looked impressed by her decision to hand the situation to him so he could deal with it as he saw fit. Or maybe he was surprised to see her finally acting like a leader, even if it was with their newest member and another elf.

Either way, she couldn’t have been more grateful for the fact that her Head of Security took her seriously. At least for now.

With a firm nod, Maxwell stepped forward and crossed the office to stop on the other side of Rowan and hover over the elf. “You heard her. I can escort you, or we could go the more challenging route. Either way, you’re leaving this room.”

Chuckling through a fake grimace of nervousness, Rowan lifted both hands in concession.

It looked like he was ready to give in, but Rebecca’s instincts went into overdrive and put the rest of her on high alert.

Rowan wouldn’t concede anything. He wouldn’t give up, just like that. He had no intention of backing down. She knew him too well for that.

What would she have to do to get him out of here?

But then he laughed again, slid his thigh off the edge of her desk, and turned toward Maxwell. “All right. Message received loud and clear. See? I’m going.”

He backed away from the desk, keeping his gaze on Rebecca and his hands lifted in front of him as he slipped toward the open door.

In the hallway, Rick still stood outside the office, gaping at the entire scenario.

With every step, Rowan’s laughter trickled out of his open mouth. Even after he’d exited the office and walked back down the hall, even after Rick had pulled the door shut again with another apology, the Blackmoon Elf’s laughter echoed toward Rebecca’s office.

For minutes more after that, his laughter bounced around within the walls of her mind as well, filling her with an expectant certainty she appreciated only for its capacity to prepare her for what came next.

Rowan had given up and given in. This time.

But he wasn’t finished with her. Not by a long shot.

The next time he found her alone, without Maxwell to act as her buffer against him, nothing else would stop him from getting from Rebecca what he’d come here to get from her.

She didn’t intend to give it to him, but now she couldn’t help wondering what she might have to do to ensure she never was alone after this.

If she made that request of Maxwell, would he agree to help her? Or would he think his new commander had started walking in Aldous’s footsteps now and was truly starting to lose her mind?

Most frustrating of all was the realization that she still couldn’t predict how the shifter would react to anything, including her.

J ust like Rebecca had known he would, Rowan drew her attention at the worst times and in the most inconvenient places.

He happened to be sitting in the common room later that day, engaged in animated conversation with other Shade members at one of the tables.

The second Rebecca heard his dark, dangerous laugh and realized he was there, she abandoned her desire for a cup of coffee from Bor’s refreshments table and avoided Rowan’s gaze until she was well down another intersecting hallway.

Later that evening, Rebecca stopped by the secondary armory on the compound’s ground floor. Tonight, the operatives assigned to inspect and clean overflow weaponry included the majority of her regular mission team—the magicals with whom she’d spent the most time in the field under Aldous’s leadership.

The sight of Leonard and Nyx sitting at one small table in front of the locked weapons cages, Titus and Diego working together at another, and three other operatives all concentrating on their work together in the same room brought an easy, gentle smile to her face.

Felt just like old times.

Until a bumbling clatter of steel firearm components and toppled springs rose to her immediate left, followed by an exasperated sigh.

Rebecca turned that way to investigate the problem and realized too late what it was—Rowan, sitting alone, attempting to dismantle and clean the weapon assigned to him.

She should have known. Since the day he’d arrived, Rowan had been the only problem.

No one had told her Rowan would be in the secondary armory.

Rebecca’s neck flushed as she fought the urge to spin on her heels and storm back into the hall. Once she conquered that response, her next challenge was to avoid clenching her hand into a fist and socking him in the mouth with it just to keep him from talking.

Either of those top reactions would have been a major problem. Rowan wasn’t alone in the armory. The other magicals assigned to weapons maintenance and repairs today had already noticed Rebecca’s entrance. They would definitely notice if she disappeared without a word or attacked their newest member seemingly unprovoked.

Still, it took an impressive amount of her willpower to stand there and maintain her composure, especially without looking at the Blackmoon Elf sitting at the table closest to the armory door.

“Geez…” Struggling to gather all the weapons components he’d scattered across the table into a semblance of a neat pile, Rowan clearly had no idea what he was doing. He scooped the pieces into a pile, then slid them back across the table toward himself as a mound of disconnected parts.

“This is just too much,” he grumbled. “All this? It’s just so much work. Completely unnecessary.”

Another wayward part fell from his hand to clatter onto the table. This time, he looked straight up at Rebecca. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier to ditch all this and go with straight magic? You know, the kind we were all born with ? I’m pretty sure that was for a reason.”

Rebecca wanted nothing more than to keep ignoring him, but it was no longer an option. There wasn’t enough activity in the secondary armory to justify not having heard him, and the members of her old team were already sneaking her not-so-covert looks to see how she handled Rowan’s firearm inefficiencies.

The poorly concealed volley of light chuckles and snickering from the other tables only confirmed how closely she was being watched. Continuing to ignore Rowan now wouldn’t be a very good look for Shade’s Commander.

So she bit the bullet and turned to look down at him and his chaotic, messy station. Compared to the other tables, it looked like a child had been sitting here, playing unsupervised with weapons components.

“A lot of magicals here don’t have their own inherent magic,” Rebecca replied with a raised eyebrow. “Defensive or offensive. Or they’re still working on their own proficiency levels.”

“But not everyone,” Rowan grumbled.

“There’s always someone in the field bigger and stronger and more dangerous than you. Even if these firearms are a last resort, it’s always a good idea to have access to a weapon you can rely on.”

“A weapon you can rely on…” When he looked slowly up at her again, he’d adopted a knowing grin that made her want to slap the back of his head. “Funny how you say that like it’s such a casual thing. Just common knowledge. You of all people would know exactly how valuable a reliable weapon is in the field.”

Rebecca narrowed her eyes at him and didn’t respond.

She knew what he was referring to with this little game. He was talking about her , the weapon she had been born and trained and molded to become.

She just wasn’t reliable anymore. Not the way her trainers or handlers had expected her to be.

Rowan was making fun of her again, only now, he skirted around the topics that were way too dangerous to discuss in the open like this, surrounded by fellow Shade members all focusing on their assignments.

Rebecca plastered a tight smile onto her lips and replied, “I’ve had my fair share of experience, yes.”

“Man. It is so good to see you, Kilda’ari . Even here. Thriving like this. You know, I have to say, I definitely didn’t expect to see you acting as the head of anything.”

“There was a time when I wouldn’t have,” she muttered. “But time changes a lot of things.”

She scanned the secondary armory and the tables of operatives disassembling and cleaning and reassembling their weapons, pouring all her focus into deliberately not looking down at the Blackmoon Elf gazing up at her.

But when Rowan chuckled again, the last of her resolve melted away, as if suddenly warmed by the sound of his laughter. Only now, hearing it in person, did she realize how much she’d missed that sound.

Rebecca broke her own rule and looked down at him just to see what he would do next.

Rowan’s face lit up as he smiled at her—a smile meant just for her—and leaned toward her in his seat. Somehow, he made sitting in a chair beside her to address his new commander look as casual as every other interaction.

As if he had no idea she now commanded this entire task force and wouldn’t have thought any differently of her even if someone had told him.

But he knew, all right. He just didn’t care about the rules in this world, even while visiting Earth for himself.

The look he gave her made her want to be comfortable around him again. To be with the Rowan Blackmoon she used to know instead of this faded shell of what she remembered—a shell with a personal agenda, the details of which she could only guess.

She didn’t want the details, and this wasn’t the Rowan Blackmoon she used to know.

It couldn’t be, not when she was no longer the same Rebecca Bloodshadow who had left him behind so many centuries ago.

“You’re not wrong,” he told her, a conspiratorial lilt to his words. “Time does change a lot. Then again, in some ways, time doesn’t change a thing.”

Then he winked.

No. Absolutely not.

Rebecca would not have any kind of meaningful conversation with him. Not here in the secondary armory, not in front of any other Shade members, not alone, not ever.

With one look and a few short, vague replies, she’d given Rowan far too much room to weasel her into the kinds of complex traps he created with his words, and she wouldn’t let herself fall for it anymore.

“Careful, Blackmoon,” she told him, trying to sound as terse and disconnected as she possibly could. “That borders on highly inappropriate behavior toward your commander.”

“Huh.” He blinked at her several times before his knowing smirk returned. Then he held her gaze with a ferocity she’d all but forgotten. “Another thing I never thought I’d hear you say.”

This wasn’t working. She was trying to shut him down, to get him to stop talking, but even the smallest interaction with him just kept drawing her closer, deeper into his trap. The more she actively tried to avoid it through any method but explicitly ignoring him, the faster she’d play right into his hands.

She remembered that much about him too.

Forget a private conversation. Rebecca had to keep her mouth shut, or she’d find herself entrapped by her own words before she knew it, and she couldn’t very well run away from herself .

With a snort, she nodded at the partially disassembled firearm laid out in front of him on the table and murmured, “Just clean your weapon.”

The sudden softness in Rowan’s eyes felt like he was begging her to stay. Like he knew he pushed too hard and too far sometimes and would have apologized for it if they hadn’t been surrounded by an audience.

It was a look that almost made Rebecca regret having avoided him even for this long.

“Sure, I can clean my weapon,” he replied, then patted the seat of the chair beside him. “If you come sit with me.”

Just like that, the guilt Rebecca wasn’t used to feeling disappeared.

Centuries apart, and he was still the same old Rowan she remembered. Most of him, anyway. She hadn’t had a chance to see all of him yet, but now that he’d officially sworn in as a Shade operative, she would have plenty of time to figure it out.

As if he could read her mind, Rowan broke into another grin and wiggled his eyebrows before patting the empty chair again.

Scoffing, she tucked a lock of hair behind one ear and searched her mind for viable escape routes. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips without her permission as she studied him.

She’d let him get away with way too much back in the day, and that had obviously come back to bite her now.

“You’ll always be a pain in my ass, won’t you?” she muttered.

He shifted in his seat to face her more directly and shrugged. “It’s very likely.”

Maybe she would have sat with him. Maybe she was on the verge of giving in to his requests. They might have even built a remedial bridge between them again, if they’d had the chance.

But the door to the secondary armory burst open, and Maxwell barged into the room, his silver eyes wide and bordering on the edge of panic. “Thon-Da’al!”

The second Rebecca met his gaze, her smile disappeared, replaced by an instant sinking freeze in her belly before it dropped all the way to the floor.

She knew Maxwell Hannigan well enough by now to know he was about to inform her of another emergency.

And with Rowan sitting at the table to her left, she couldn’t think of anything else that might have made her Head of Security look this concerned about what happened next.

Rebecca absently wiped her palms along the legs of her jeans as she watched Maxwell heading toward her. Only then did she realize how clammy her hands had become at the sound of the shifter’s voice.

Since when did her hands get clammy when someone called for her?

The first answer that popped into her head was that the overpowering urgency coursing through her from head to toe wasn’t actually hers . That it belonged to someone else. To Maxwell…

That was insane. Rebecca didn’t feel other people’s thoughts and emotions. Not like this.

She didn’t get clammy palms for seemingly no reason, either.

While Maxwell stalked toward her, holding her in his silver gaze like a snare clutching a startled rabbit, a snort on her left ripped Rebecca’s thoughts back into her physical reality.

“By the Blood,” Rowan murmured as he watched the shifter approach, gaping like this was a violent car crash on the interstate. “Does this guy ever stop?”.

“Shut up.” Rebecca tore her gaze away from her incoming Head of Security to point at the disassembled weapon on the table in front of Rowan. “Just finish cleaning this, put it back together, and don’t get in the way.”

Then she took off to meet Maxwell in the middle. The urgency behind his eyes convinced her that whatever he was about to tell her, it was better discussed away from everyone else. Especially Rowan.

Behind her, more disassembled weapon pieces clattered across the table before Rowan grunted in disgust. “I can’t even touch this stuff.”

When Rebecca and Maxwell finally converged by the door, his heavy breathing concerned her even more than his urgent shouts for the Thon-Da’al.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“New intel,” he said, his voice low and subdued while those silver eyes cast a wary, flickering glance around the room.

“About?”

Maxwell’s nose twitched before he grimaced. “About a…pre-existing problem I need to brief you on.”

Her mind instantly returned to their impromptu infiltration of Harkennr’s base, and she wiped her palms on the legs of her jeans again. “The prison?”

His expression went momentarily blank before he dropped his gaze and cleared his throat. “No.”

Was this what sheepishness looked like on her Head of security?

“Then what is it?” Rebecca prompted, then waited longer than usual for him to look up at her again.

“Actually, it’s Eduardo,” he said. “One of his teams.”

Eduardo and his griybreki. Rebecca hadn’t thought about the slimy wannabe crime lord for what felt like forever. Not since she and her team had gone up against him in the abandoned apartment building over a week ago.

Frowning, Rebecca folded her arms and wondered if she could pull more information out of the shifter by staring at him intensely enough. “I haven’t heard anything else about Eduardo since that last mission went belly up.”

“I know.”

“So why is that suddenly an issue now?”

Sighing heavily through his nose, Maxwell scanned the secondary armory again, which had fallen silent at his arrival.

At the pause, Diego forced a fake cough at his table, then got back to work on his weapon.

“Hey.” Nyx pointed at Leonard sitting across from her. “Hand me that gun brush.”

“Yep. Here.”

Then the room filled with the clink and clack of weapon components being disassembled and cleaned and reassembled while the operatives pretended not to have noticed a thing.

Still frowning, Maxwell settled a hand on the small of Rebecca’s back to guide her toward the door. “Let’s talk outside.”

Under any other circumstances, she would have pulled away and glared at him for touching her. His hand on her felt charged with high-voltage electricity, sending a beckoning warmth flooding through her core and right up into her face.

But she let him guide her toward the open door anyway before they stopped in the hall. Now was not the time to freak out about energetic sensations.

Or maybe it was.

Something about the tingling jolt had changed, and something told her it was imperative to figure out what it meant.