17. Chapter 17

17

“ O ur priority objective is to intercept this shipment of weapons before it leaves the Port of Chicago tonight. We’ve confirmed a scheduled departure on an unregistered freighter at one hundred hours. Most likely, that’s how they’ll try to get the shipment off their hands.”

While Maxwell briefed their assembled team for their upcoming mission, Rebecca scanned the faces of every Shade operative standing with them inside the main armory at the rear of the compound’s underground parking garage.

This was the only team on the task force with any experience against Eduardo and his griybreki, which made them perfectly suited for this follow-up op. Though tonight, they would already go in with a much higher likelihood of success.

Simply because Aldous wouldn’t be with them. On this mission or any other.

Despite their striking failure against Eduardo’s forces the last time, no one in this briefing looked remotely hesitant to engage in this mission or concerned about a repeat failure.

In fact, Rebecca realized, they all seemed surprisingly excited by the prospect of getting out and doing something, finally putting their experience and knowledge to use for an opportunity to succeed where they’d previously failed.

She liked to think this team was just as ready to do things the right way as Rebecca was herself—the way Shade had been founded to operate from the start, Aldous’s reign of errors notwithstanding.

The energy that used to fill mission briefings with Aldous at the helm was vastly different from what Rebecca saw in the rest of her small team now. A swell of pride buoyed her at the thought.

Not pride in herself but in these other magicals standing here, ready and willing to do what was necessary to ensure scumbags like Eduardo didn’t get such dangerous weapons into the hands of all the wrong kinds of people.

To ensure the innocents in Chicago and beyond, magical and human, would never know how close they might have come to being caught in the crosshairs of greedy criminal assholes trying to make something of themselves in this world.

A world like Earth, which hadn’t been created for magic at all but which had, over centuries of connection and travel between this human world and the birthplace of magic no human would ever get to see, still withstood the constant flux within its growing magical communities.

She was proud of them. For the first time in a long time, she was proud to be a part of this task force.

Maybe she could do some real good here, in this world, with these magicals on her side and her on theirs.

It was a new sensation, something she hadn’t come remotely close to experiencing in Xahar’áhsh, trapped within her old life there and the Bloodshadow Court’s domain. Their plans for her, their insistence that her destiny was one thing and one thing only, over which she had no say whatsoever and never would.

Rebecca was a pawn in that world, but in this one?

In this one, she could do so much more. Maybe, after enough time and dedication, she might end up doing just that.

“That’s why we’re moving in now,” Maxwell finished. “We hit the docks before they do and intercept the shipment, plus whatever else Eduardo’s trying to get out on the water. Any questions?”

Rebecca blinked, and she was back in the here and now, part of the present moment, ready to field whatever questions came her way.

At first, the team was silent. Then Leonard cleared his throat and hesitantly raised his hand.

Rebecca snorted. “This isn’t a classroom, Leonard. Just ask.”

“Right.” Trying to hold back a smile, the mage nodded and folded his arms, his leather trench coat creaking as it creased at the elbows. “So that’s our plan, yeah? Just roll in, intercept the shipment, roll out.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if anything was ever that cut and dry?” she replied with a smirk.

The rest of the team sniggered before Rebecca added, “We’re always looking for minimal casualties. You know that. But yeah, as far as this mission is concerned, that’s the plan.”

“All right, then.” Leonard nodded, then raised an eyebrow as he scanned the faces all around him. “Just one more question.”

“Make it fast,” Maxwell said.

“What’s Plan B?”

The armory fell silent as the rest of the team stared at him in disbelief. Then the moment was punctured by Titus’s booming laugh, his torso shaking beneath the force of it and the deep bass vibrating through Rebecca’s chest.

She couldn’t help but laugh with him before the rest of the team relaxed into their terrible inside joke. “Well, we already know we’re really fucking good at carrying out Plan B. So if shit hits the fan, we get out of there. All of us.

“This time, I have a feeling we won’t have any extra obstacles popping up for us to deal with on the fly, if that’s the case. Honestly, it sounds to me like Plan A’s been combed over and well thought out on this one.”

The team shared another laugh, which helped break some of the tension inherent in Shade’s first mission without Aldous’s destructive oversight in longer than most of the task force could remember.

The nervousness was to be expected, all things considered. This was new territory for everyone without Aldous, without the threat of death or dismemberment hanging over their heads because their commander had put it there for no reason.

But at least this team was still smiling.

At least they still remembered how to smile.

She looked up at Maxwell standing beside her and found the shifter smiling too. It was small and understated and still such an unexpected reaction, Rebecca almost laughed again when his silver eyes met hers.

It looked like Maxwell Hannigan could take a joke, after all. On incredibly rare occasions.

“Anything else?” she asked again, ready to get moving while the team armed with advanced magitek weaponry had already loaded most of their gear into the waiting vehicle.

“Yeah.” Titus’s voice ricocheted like thunder between the concrete walls, floor, and ceiling. “Just got one question, actually. What’s the new guy doing here?”

She thought it was another joke until Titus nodded toward the center of the garage and Rebecca turned to search in that direction.

She should have known “the new guy” was Rowan.

Shit. She should have prepared for this. Why hadn’t it even occurred to her?

The Blackmoon Elf strolled casually across the parking garage the way he’d been strolling everywhere else for the last several days, gazing around in curiosity and smirking to himself.

Like he knew all the secrets of the universe and had just stopped by for a little fun.

Dammit, he was not supposed to be here.

More than that, Rebecca had just gotten rid of Maxwell as her one constant shadow at every waking moment. Now she had to keep dealing with Rowan’s shit too?

No, his being here was not part of her plan, which she wanted to shout loud and clear for the entire team. Especially to Maxwell when his tiny smile disappeared beneath a scowl sent directly her way.

But he had no reason to think Rowan’s arrival was her fault, so she didn’t need to try to apologize for it.

After sharing a quick glance with Maxwell and hoping he understood it as her silent promise to handle the situation, Rebecca stepped out of the armory to meet Rowan halfway. Though there was no use pretending even that much distance would conceal their conversation.

Even a whisper could sound like a gusting windstorm down here if it echoed off the right surfaces.

It was a small win when she stopped in front of Rowan, folded her arms, and he paused as well instead of blowing right on past.

“Didn’t I leave you upstairs to keep cleaning weapons?” she asked.

His smile glinted at her in the garage’s low overhead lighting as he shrugged. “Yep. But I realized it’s just not for me. I’m all thumbs with that stuff, you know? But hey, don’t worry. I got Archie to pick up the slack for me. Poor guy just couldn’t teach me how to do it the right way, but lucky for all of us…I’m free now.”

Rebecca hadn’t heard so much as an approaching footstep from behind, but she absolutely felt a growing shock of electrically pulsing energy growing stronger, sending both a shiver and a flush of heat up her back and into her face seconds before Maxwell stopped at her side with a low growl and a hiss.

She didn’t have to look at him to know it was all meant for Rowan.

“What do you think you’re doing down here?”

Rowan’s gaze flashed toward the shifter. When his grin widened, Rebecca wondered how much longer these two could play at trying to one-up each other before something terrible happened.

“Well, you did say there would be a briefing in the armory, didn’t you? Granted, it was a little difficult to find my way down here. This place is incredibly complicated to navigate, but I’m learning my way around.”

“No one gave you orders to sit in on this briefing,” Maxwell snapped.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that kind of a thing. Everybody just seems so…open here.” Rowan inhaled deeply through his nose, as if taking in the scent of budding wildflowers on a fresh breeze, then turned toward Rebecca and pointed at her. “I came for her , actually. I was hoping I might get in a word or two with you before you leave.”

How much more of a pain in her ass could he possibly be?

Rebecca already knew the answer to that, and it was quite a bit more than what he’d demonstrated already. She preferred to keep that from happening for as long as possible.

“I told you,” Maxwell started again, “you don’t get to make requests.”

“Will a word or two keep you from stalking me through headquarters?” Rebecca blurted, fixing Rowan with a deadpan stare.

Beside their vehicle in the garage, a few members of her small team snickered but didn’t stop loading the rest of their things into the back.

She could feel Maxwell’s scowl on the side of her face now, but she wouldn’t acknowledge it. She didn’t have to.

Rowan chuckled and spread his arms. “Maybe, yeah. Depends on how the first few words go.”

Rolling her eyes, Rebecca motioned for the rest of the team to keep loading up before lowering her voice at Maxwell. “This won’t be long.”

He said nothing, but she felt his gaze on her still as she stepped a few feet away for the illusion of privacy so she and Rowan could get through these first few words of his before she shut him down and moved on.

When she stopped and turned toward him, he opened his mouth to start speaking, but she didn’t give him the chance.

“Listen, Blackmoon,” she said, ignoring the way his smile twitched whenever she called him by his last name in front of everyone else. So far, that had been every single time she’d addressed him. “This is our job. You’re part of Shade now. It’s your job, too.

“So when I say I’m busy or there’s other stuff going on, you’re just gonna have to accept the fact that a private conversation on your time isn’t my top priority. Whatever it is you think we need to talk about, you need to table it for later, specifically when I say so. Right now, this task force has a lot bigger issues on our hands. Got it?”

The whole time she delivered her curt little speech, barely restraining the full force of her frustration, that tingling warmth washing over her like a blanket and pulling her away from her focus grew stronger and stronger by the second, splitting her concentration.

It didn’t matter anymore how she knew. She just knew Maxwell had been slowly making his way toward her while she spoke, as if he were preparing for Rowan to attack her or try something dangerous and reckless no one in their right mind would have ever attempted.

She forced herself to keep pretending she couldn’t feel anything and didn’t know exactly where he was in the room at any time.

The fact that Rowan didn’t immediately offer some mocking rebuttal founded on pure nonsense immediately concerned her.

Rebecca watched him study her face, though, and couldn’t help but feel like he was finally seeing her for the first time. More than when she’d stumbled in on him in the holding room the night he’d infiltrated the compound. More than during The Striving or any other time she’d felt him watching her anywhere else.

Rowan’s entire demeanor changed just like that. His smile disappeared. His brightly glistening eyes—usually so full of energy and laughter, including at the most inappropriate times—dimmed and narrowed.

He dipped his head toward her, frowning now at whatever new discovery he’d just made and clearly didn’t like.

“Holy shit,” he murmured. “You’re actually serious about all this, aren’t you?”

Took him long enough.

She would have loved to lay into him for having thought she’d been screwing around this whole time, but they weren’t alone. Fortunately, that was what she’d wanted.

“Everyone here,” she told him, “everyone who passed through The Striving and swore their oath, is serious about Shade and about what we do. You’re right. You are one of us, and I expect you to start acting like it.”

With nothing else to say and no reason to give him any more airtime, she spun smartly around, already knowing she would find Maxwell there behind her.

For someone who had snuck up on her, he looked incredibly surprised to be addressed next.

“Are we ready to move out?” she asked.

His mouth popped open. He shot Rowan another warning look, then cleared his throat. “We’re ready. Just say the word—”

“Well then, here’s the word. Let’s get out of here.” Rebecca moved past him, just wanting to get into their vehicle as soon as possible so they could all focus on the mission instead of all this useless extra…whatever was going on here.

She didn’t get very far before Rowan’s bitterness made a glorious comeback behind her.

“ That’s right. You go do your oh-so-important work, Thon-Da’al. Being leader of a task force like Shade, huh? I get it. You’re busy. Way too busy for me. But don’t worry. You go take care of whatever silly little threat you need to take care of to save the world, or whatever this is. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Rebecca’s hold on her self-control burst open like a leaky pipe. She couldn’t contain herself any longer.

She whirled around to face him. “The fuck you will.”

Maxwell stepped toward Rowan, already lifting a hand in preparation to physically waylay the elf—or carry him away in restraints if necessary.

When Rebecca lifted a hand to stop him, her Head of Security looked more confused than ever. He froze, waiting for her next order, and didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

Rowan scoffed. “What happened? Finally had enough of me?”

“Hardly,” she said. “You’re coming with us.”

Seeing Rowan’s jaw drop as all the little turning gears in his devious mind ground to a halt, rendering him genuinely speechless, was more satisfying than she could have possibly imagined.

Then he puffed out a wheezing breath all at once and croaked, “I’m what ?”

Maxwell turned toward her with almost the same expression. “He is?”

Well that was easy. She’d found the way to stun them both into shutting up. Excellent.

Rebecca pointed at Rowan as she addressed the shifter, fighting back her own grin at this sudden shift between all three of them. “He wasn’t wrong. He passed The Striving, and he swore his oath, just like the rest of us. We’ve been going over all that ad nauseam, so if he wants in so badly, we might as well give him a chance to be useful. If he can’t do that? I don’t know. Bor’s been complaining about needing an assistant.”

Rowan dropped his hands to his sides and groaned.

With a snort, Maxwell gestured toward the elf man and shook his head. “See? He doesn’t even appreciate the offer you’ve made him. This is—”

“No, let me make this clear,” she interrupted, giving each of them a good full two seconds of squirming discomfort under her scathing glare. “This isn’t an offer. This is a direct order. Blackmoon’s joining us on this mission, and we all just have to suck it up and deal. Now move.”

Neither of them leapt into action the way she’d hoped. Instead, they stood there gaping at her like two mind-swept idiots, which only grated on her nerves that much more until Rowan finally broke through with a bitter laugh he aimed at the shifter this time.

“So is this one of those ‘get in line by order of rank hierarchy’, or…”

Maxwell snarled and rolled his silver eyes before he took off toward the vehicle.

Rebecca had never seen him respond quite like that before, and she wasn’t sure it did him any favors. He did refrain from saying anything else, though, as he reached the vehicle, where the rest of the team had already taken their seats among their gear and weapons.

Rowan grunted before taking off after the shifter and fortunately kept his mouth shut too.

He’d probably meant to make it sound like another apathetic chuckle, but this one had stuck in his throat, and the intended effect was a genuine failure.

Rolling out a tightening kink in her neck, Rebecca took a deep breath and brought up the rear, watching Maxwell slip behind the wheel of the van.

One of the rear doors was already open and waiting for Rowan, who stopped in front of it and peered around inside. “Where do I sit?”

As she headed for the front passenger-side door, Rebecca caught a glimpse of Leonard in the back, patting a small space beside him on the carpeted floor.

“All right, Blackmoon,” he said. “Come on back. I’m sure we can squeeze you in somewhere between, well, um…”

“You can sit on my lap.” Titus’s growling rumble of a voice filled the parking garage, his natural speaking voice as loud as anyone else’s raised shouts.

The rest of the team burst out laughing..

Even Rowan seemed amused as he shrugged before climbing into the back. “What better way to get to know my new team, right?”

“Oh please,” Rebecca murmured, closing her eyes when she reached the front passenger-side door. She steadied herself with another deep breath, then figured she didn’t have to decide what to do about the Blackmoon Elf right now, or even before they completed this mission.

Then she opened the door, climbed inside, and plopped down into the seat right next to Maxwell, who had automatically taken his role as their driver because he always drove.

She didn’t mean to slam the door shut and automatically turned toward the shifter, expecting a forthcoming remark from him about doors and destroying their vehicles before the warranty was up.

This time, he didn’t even seem to have noticed.

Because he focused on the rearview mirror, glaring into it at the reflection of Rowan, settling into whatever available space he could find among the rest of the team.

So she silently strapped on her seatbelt just for fun, and when she felt Maxwell turning to look at her, she didn’t wait for him to talk. “I don’t wanna hear it. Just drive.”

He kept staring at the side of her face even while he started the engine, but he didn’t argue. After one more exasperated glance in the rearview mirror at whatever Rowan was up to in the back, Maxwell finally got them moving and drove the whole team out of Shade’s underground parking garage to head toward their target location at the Port of Chicago.

At first, Rebecca had expected things to get easier after she’d called them both out for being so petty with each other. After only a few minutes on the road, however, she couldn’t help thinking of everything that was now at stake for this team and for all of Shade.

So much had already shifted within the task force since their last real mission. Before Rowan had shown up and gotten himself locked away in that holding room. She might have even been excited about this new op tonight.

After this team’s last skirmish with Eduardo and his griybreki soldiers, this was an excellent opportunity to clean up the epic mess Aldous had left behind.

But the farther they drove from Shade headquarters, the more the heavy, crippling grip of the knot in Rebecca’s gut tightened, and she couldn’t let it go.

She would have been excited, yes. She would have looked forward to something like this. But now Rowan was here, and his presence tainted everything.

If he kept acting like a damn child while they were on mission, he was more likely to throw the whole team off their game. Even worse, he couldn’t possibly know already how much that would make him like Aldous than he truly was.

Rowan was a good person. A great elf. An invaluable soldier. Rebecca knew all of this. But no one else did. So far, Rowan hadn’t lifted a finger to get to know the private task force he’d agreed to join in his attempts to get to her.

He had no idea how easy it would be for these operatives laughing with him in the back of their vehicle to turn on him the second they realized his apathy was just as dangerous to them as Aldous’s reckless insanity.

He had to stop making an ass of himself.

If the Blackmoon Elf made the wrong move without recognizing its potential for triggering a lot of dormant rage and resentment Shade hadn’t even begun to process after removing Aldous from command, Rebecca didn’t know if she could protect him from Maxwell or anyone else.

Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month—she didn’t know how long, but she did know it would happen. There would come a time when Rowan miss-stepped, or said the wrong thing one too many times, or got in the wrong magical’s face under the perfect combination of catastrophic variables.

Then the task force would turn against him, because he didn’t take any of this seriously. And when that time came, what bothered her more than anything else right now was that Rebecca didn’t know who she would choose to support or protect in that inevitable scenario.

Her best friend from an entire lifetime ago, or this task force she was never supposed to have been in charge of in the first place.

The task force that had become, in many ways, far more of a family than the one she’d left behind in the old world.

Fuck. She didn’t want to choose, but the more she turned it over in her mind, the more she convinced herself that toeing the line between both of these loyalties—between both versions of herself, past and present—would not remain an option for much longer.

Neither would maintaining the safety and anonymity she’d hoped to continue fostering here with Shade.

If it did come to that, and she had to choose Rowan or Shade—including Maxwell—that decision would change everything.

There were dozens of lives on the line, and they were all in her hands now. Meaning, if she chose wrong, she wouldn’t last very long at all, and she’d end up taking everyone else down with her.

How the hell was she supposed to do the right thing when the right thing had never done anything for her before?