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22. Chapter 22

22

R ebecca’s ears rang, drowning out all other noise along the docks as she watched the impending catastrophe play out.

Everything moved as if in slow motion, this time, including her. She was powerless to stop the inevitable.

Her only option was to watch in mute horror as Maxwell and Rowan converged on each other inside the transport trailer. Despite knowing far more about what Rowan was capable of, a fresh wave of horror gripped her.

The horror that if Maxwell’s wolf closed those powerful jaws around Rowan’s throat, even if it wasn’t on purpose, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from ripping the elf’s head right off his shoulders.

“Hannigan!” His name burst from her lips before she realized what she was doing, but by then, she’d already taken off toward the back of the eighteen-wheeler. She couldn’t have stopped herself, even when she grew acutely aware of the rest of her team standing motionless on the docks and watching in dumbstruck confusion.

As soon as she reached the trailer, Rebecca vaulted herself up through the open door and landed with a clang of her boots on the trailer floor. At first glance, it seemed she was already too late.

Rowan lay on his back, inches away from the corpse of the enormous griybreki he’d brought down all on his own. This time, though, he was the one who’d been tackled.

Maxwell loomed over the Blackmoon Elf, both massive forepaws pressing most of his weight onto Rowan’s chest and pinning him down. The gray wolf snarled furiously, his hind paws scrabbling across the floor for purchase.

Rowan was still alive only because he’d caught Maxwell by the jaws with one hand to hold the crushing power of the wolf’s fangs at bay. It wouldn’t last forever, though, which was why his other hand fumbled desperately toward his belt and the dagger hanging there at his hip.

Before Rebecca could intervene, Rowan drew his dagger, grunting at the effort of holding off the hulking beast intent on killing him while Maxwell’s terrifying growl echoed between the trailer’s narrow walls.

The second that dagger was free of its sheath and in Rowan’s hand, a violet light erupted beside him, and Nyx appeared in a flash of purple sparks and the overwhelming scent of vinegar.

The katari gazed at the elf and the shifter locked in their little struggle, then whipped out her hand to snatch the dagger right out of Rowan’s grasp.

“ What ?” he shouted.

One more violet flash, and Nyx traveled in half a second from stooping at the elf’s side to sitting on top of the stacked weapons crates at the back of the trailer, well beyond his reach.

Maxwell’s hind paws clicked and scratched against the trailer floor, and Rebecca acted on instinct.

She launched an orb of crackling red magic at the wolf’s bristly hide. The burst collided with his flank and knocked him off balance.

With a yelp of surprise, he didn’t stick around to go after his prey again. Instead, he turned with a snarl, leapt past Rebecca, and landed with a clicking skid across the asphalt before darting out of view and disappearing altogether.

She hadn’t thought that one through all the way to the end.

Maxwell would hold this against her for a long time, she was certain. But he’d left the trailer now, which meant she stared down at Rowan lying on his back, his eyes wide as he processed what had just happened.

In an instant, his shock disappeared beneath another gleaming grin he flashed up at her. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” she snapped. “Get up.”

Shrugging off her anger, Rowan pushed himself off his back, then rose to his feet and sighed. “Why is everyone around here so touchy?”

When he briefly caught her gaze again, she recognized the short-lived glimpse of hurt in his eyes—something she hadn’t seen in centuries but remembered all too well. There was nothing she could say to him to alleviate that hurt. Not here in front of everyone.

He’d been in the wrong. So had Maxwell.

Rebecca turned toward the mouth of the trailer, looking for the shifter while Rowan centered his attention on Nyx still sitting atop the stack of weapons crates behind him.

“That’s a nifty little trick,” he said.

The katari snorted and flipped his dagger in her hand. “It has its uses, yeah.”

After hopping off the back of the truck, Rebecca found the scattered pile of clothes Maxwell had left behind during his shift and headed off to collect them. She also needed a moment to think about how she wanted to handle the fighting between these two. If she even wanted to handle it at all.

It seemed nothing she did would get Maxwell and Rowan to play nice, even putting them on the same team for a mission that had been a success tonight. What else did she have to fall back on when neither of them would do what she said and quit going at each other’s throats for longer than five minutes when she needed them to?

As she finished collecting the last of Maxwell’s abandoned clothing, she realized she also felt guilty for having stepped in the way she did. For blasting the giant wolf just to get him off of Rowan.

In reality, she’d done it for both their sakes. Nyx had disarmed Rowan in the blink of an eye, and Rebecca had seized the moment to even the odds. She couldn’t have very well left it alone when one of them was weaponless and the other had been minutes away from chomping down on his opponent’s throat.

She hadn’t seriously hurt him. She knew that much. It wasn’t the first time she’d hit Maxwell with a blast or two of her crimson battle magic. That little squabble in the past had brought them to a whole new understanding of how important it was to at least try to trust each other, especially if they wanted Shade to succeed after all its recent changes.

It was something they had to work on together.

So why did she still feel so guilty about using a little magic to keep him from ripping Rowan’s head off?

As much as she didn’t want to watch her old friend get ripped apart after his hubris and poorly timed interventions, she didn’t want Maxwell to get hurt, either.

It made no sense, but she couldn’t help feeling like her battle magic had still wounded the shifter more than Rowan’s blade ever could—not physically, but in other ways. Even if she’d done it to keep them both safe from each other.

She was still battling through that thought process when she returned to the fourth truck parked haphazardly at the very edge of the docks, nearly off the pier. She wouldn’t have known where to look for Maxwell to return his shift-abandoned clothes if she hadn’t heard the wolf’s claws clicking across the asphalt on the other side of the semi.

Then she stopped, listening for the right moment, feeling like she might scare him away again even though she’d been around his wolf before on plenty of previous missions. Not to mention most recently, the night he’d crashed her private investigation of the Old Joliet Prison.

As far as Maxwell knew, he didn’t have any reason to fear her, and she didn’t intend on correcting him about that anytime soon.

The sound of him sniffing across the ground reached her, then the other side of the transport trailer illuminated with another blinding flash of silver light that cast Maxwell’s shadow long across the ground.

Rebecca hadn’t specifically been snooping, but she couldn’t help noticing the change in that shadow as it morphed seamlessly from four-legged with snout and tail to two-legged and standing upright. Then the silver light of his shift winked out again.

She should probably still say something and alert him to her presence, but before she decided on the right way to do that, Maxwell’s next snarl broke through her thoughts. It was followed by a startling clang against the side of the trailer that made the whole thing wobble back and forth.

Great. Now he was punching transport trailers.

He’d better get it out of his system now, because Rebecca decided she didn’t want to keep waiting. What had happened back there between him and Rowan still needed to be discussed, if only for her to remind the shifter of Rowan’s official acceptance into Shade and that they couldn’t afford to lose one of their own.

Especially not for something as stupid as an internal squabble over clashing character defects.

By the time she rounded the rear corner of the truck, Maxwell was already trying to work it out on his own, half-shouting, half-snarling incoherent expressions of his anger.

Rebecca thought those included a few choice expletives, but she couldn’t be sure.

He seemed oblivious to her approach when she stepped around to his side, though she gave him a moment longer to notice her arrival.

He just kept snarling to himself, pacing back and forth in irritation, as naked as the last time she’d caught him shifting out of his wolf form.

She cleared her throat, but that didn’t make a lick of difference. So she stopped beside the wall of the trailer, turned slightly away from him, and said, “Hannigan.”

“ What ?” he snarled, spinning toward her.

From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of his furious scowl and wide silver eyes. It took the rest of her concentration to actively not look at the rest of him standing entirely nude in front of her.

“I thought you might want these,” she said and extended his collected clothes toward him in one hand.

He didn’t immediately respond, which made her wonder if she’d made the wrong call trying to help him out in this one small way.

But then his bare feet padded toward her, and he snatched his clothes out of her hand all at once before stepping away again.

She listened to him dress, punctuated by his endless snarling, and the only real surprise hit her when he let out another growl that ended in a massive sigh, paused, then muttered, “Thanks.”

“Yep.” After that, it seemed he lost any urgency in putting on the rest of his clothes.

Or maybe it was just her imagination.

Maybe she just wanted him to take his time, because now she couldn’t stop herself from stealing quick glances at him as he moved. It was all she could do not to stare.

The low exterior lights around the docks illuminated far more of him than she’d seen the last time she’d waited for him to put some clothes on—back when he’d borrowed an outfit from someone else’s clothesline in a trailer park.

The sight only confirmed she hadn’t imagined the chiseled lines of his chest and abs in the darkness that night. She certainly wasn’t imagining it now. Tonight, though, her gaze caught on a new detail she hadn’t noticed before.

A dark patch of skin on Maxwell’s chest at the top of his right pectoral muscle. Vaguely circular and slightly darker than the rest of his skin.

The docks didn’t offer enough light to see any other details clearly, but she tried to hide a smile at the thought.

She wouldn’t have pegged Maxwell Hannigan as the type to splurge on tattoos, but something told her asking him about it point-blank wouldn’t benefit him or his current mood.

Then she turned away, as if his privacy were suddenly necessary, and left him behind the trailer until he finished.

When Maxwell stormed out from behind the vehicle, he was fully dressed in his own clothes, his face, hair, and bare forearms still smeared with dirt and dust and debris from their recent battle.

He looked like he was about to snarl and spout off obscenities to himself again. The way he stormed around, huffing and clenching his fists, he might not have even noticed she was there, but he hadn’t settled down, either.

It didn’t even occur to her that being talked down to by the elf he used to suspect of all the wrong things, who had recently become his superior, might not have been what he needed.

“Hey,” she called as she headed toward him. “We won this one tonight, in case you’ve forgotten. We took them down, Max. We had everything we needed.”

That didn’t even sound right. Was that supposed to calm him down?

She wasn’t sure, but she expected him to at least offer more of a reply than what she got.

“Sure.” That was all he said before he stomped away from her without so much as a look.

Like he blamed her for what had happened and just didn’t want to confirm it for her.

She watched him walk away and puffed out a sigh. They were back on that train now, were they?

A week ago—hell, even a few days ago—Rebecca would have left it at that, secure knowing that the shifter’s problems were his own and not her responsibility.

Her opinion hadn’t changed since. The difference, however, was that now Rebecca felt capable of improving his mood even slightly, and that made it feel less like an obligation as his superior and more like something she wanted to do.

She wanted to help him.

It took all the way until she’d caught up with him to realize how odd that sudden change of heart truly was. By then, Maxwell had already noticed her approach behind him. If she turned away now, that would only make things far more awkward.

“Hold on a second,” she said.

He stopped in his tracks, his back and shoulders growing rigid as he stared straight ahead and said nothing. But at least she’d gotten his attention.

“Listen,” she began, “we had no idea Eduardo was packing something like that laser gun in there too with everything else. I honestly thought he was out of the really heinous weapons after I blew the last one to bits the other night.”

“Obviously not,” he grumbled, still refusing to turn around and look at her.

“Well the point is we still got him.”

“Sure.”

Blue Hells. What else could he possibly want her to say right now?

What else could she say?

She didn’t get to test it before he stalked away from her, clearly on his own mission, and headed toward the open rear of the same transport trailer where the rest of their team had gathered.

By the time Rebecca realized what he was doing, Maxwell had already marched through the gathered operatives and right up into Rowan’s face.

She thought he might even attempt to walk straight through the elf, but Maxwell stopped inches from Rowan and let out another feral growl as he leaned closer. “If I ever see you sitting around on your ass like that on a mission, I swear to whatever you believe in, I will end you .”

The rest of the team felt deadly silent.

Nyx sucked in a sharp breath, held it, and took two large steps backward.

Rebecca watched yet another standoff between them, on high-alert and ready to insert her new authority as commander if another fight broke out.

Rowan didn’t seem remotely put out by the shifter’s threat, nor did he pull away from Maxwell or try to regain his own personal space. In fact, it looked like he rather enjoyed receiving the shifter’s threats up close and personal like this.

Even covered in griybreki blood and brain splatter and other random debris from the battle, the Blackmoon Elf held himself as if he had dressed for a special occasion, ready to meet any hands-off and diplomatic challenge head-on.

That wasn’t this.

Rowan stared back at Maxwell, then nodded once. “That’s fair. You know what? How about I accept your gratitude in return, and we call it even?”

Oh for fuck’s sake. Why couldn’t he just let this go?

Maxwell scoffed, his constant scowl unchanged. “What the hell would I thank you for?”

“Oh, you need me to spell it out for you? I’m talking about saving your life, first of all, and for bringing down that giant freak of nature before he blew you to bits. You’re welcome.”

Maxwell’s entire demeanor darkened and narrowed in as he leaned farther toward Rowan. Snarling again with a glint in his silver eyes that looked a lot like a thirst for revenge.

Or for plain old violence. Or maybe even an attempt to save face after the Blackmoon Elf had one-upped him in the ‘bringing down the biggest enemy target’ department.

Rebecca took a small step forward, ready for the moment they tried to tear into each other again so she could intervene and put them in their place. Again.

But then Maxwell froze, darted a quick glance toward the rest of the team, and seemed to realize everyone was watching. And, most importantly, that the entire team was already listening to every word exchanged.

A shock of something Rebecca didn’t recognize and couldn’t quite name jolted through her when those silver eyes turned onto her next and she watched the instant change take over in her Head of Security.

Another growl escaped him, but this time, he spun away from Rowan, dismissing the elf entirely, and—though it wasn’t necessary—raised his voice for everyone to hear. “Somebody get the van. Try to find the keys to one of these trucks. We’re taking the cargo with us.”

It was a fair call and made perfect sense, but the other operatives were too disoriented by his sudden change of mood to switch gears as quickly as Maxwell had. Which meant they all gawked back at him, their expressions ripe with surprise and dumbstruck confusion.

Was Rebecca really the only one who had seen both sides to their Head of Security?

When no one responded or moved, she stepped forward and added, “You heard him. Let’s move.”

That got the others jumping into action again. The team scattered. Nyx popped in and out around the docks in search of a set of keys they could use to commandeer one of the remaining transport vehicles. Then the others got to work on the cleanup.

For the most part, that entailed rounding up the griybreki corpses scattered all over the docks to dispose of them to leave behind the least amount of inexplicable evidence. Mainly for humans.

Rowan was the only one who stood back to watch for the first few minutes before he approached Leonard and Diego hauling a griybreki corpse between them. “Anything I can do to help?”

They stopped to acknowledge him, the griybreki swinging carelessly by its limbs in their grasps. Leonard snorted. “Damn, Blackmoon. You’re something else, aren’t you?”

Rowan grinned. “Is that a compliment?”

Leonard looked all around the docks, then shrugged. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Look at all this,” Diego said, nodding toward the bodies lying everywhere. “I thought it was insane to have just the one elf, but now we’ve got two. And who knew you guys were so useful in a battle like this?”

“Right?” Leonard chuckled, and they continued their hobbling walk with the griybreki corpse dangling between them. “This whole time, I thought elves were just into a bunch of tree-hugging hippie shit and loved spells in the woods or whatever.”

Diego snorted and shook his head.

Rowan turned slowly around to watch them as they passed, then chuckled. “That certainly is an image.”

Then he took off across the docks to find for himself the best way to pitch in.

Apparently, that was all it took to diffuse the tension left over by unresolved issues between Maxwell and Rowan. And after, Leonard, Diego, Titus, and Nyx needed nothing else from Shade’s newest elf beyond the fact that he was already here.

Rebecca listened to the ensuing conversations as the team worked, amused to find the majority of them centered around Rowan’s acrobatic abilities and the way he’d taken out the giant griybreki with a laser gun when no one else could.

Rowan soaked up the attention, just like she’d known he would. His last-minute move to bring down the operator of the magical laser hadn’t stemmed from a genuine desire to ensure the team’s safety. Not in the same way Rebecca would have done such a thing. Or even Maxwell, if he’d succeeded in his attempts.

Knowing this, however, made cut Rebecca’s amusement short beneath her quickly growing exasperation.

Rowan Blackmoon didn’t do anything for purely selfless reasons. He’d joined Shade because he wanted something from Rebecca, which she had so far refused to give him. So he’d turned his focus to her team instead. Not because he was genuinely interested in them as individuals but because he wanted something from them too now.

Most likely to ingratiate himself with them so he could use these magicals later to get what he really wanted from Rebecca.

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