26. Chapter 26

26

T he few seconds of expectant silence seemed to stretch on in an agonizing eternity. Rebecca stared unblinkingly at Rowan, and the Blackmoon Elf smirked back at her.

She’d been so distracted by keeping him at arm’s length and away from any possible private conversation, she’d let herself walk right into his next trap.

Clearly, he’d intended to set it off in public this whole time.

“I’m so glad you asked.” Rowan’s grin intensified before he finally broke away from her gaze to address the rest of the room.

Rebecca felt sick.

He was about to make a Rowan Blackmoon speech. She could feel it in the air. Every bit of power was now in his hands. He had the whole room’s attention. He could say whatever he wanted, and everyone would listen.

He could accuse her of any manner of things, or explain who he was and how he knew Shade’s Thon-Da’al, or expose her for who and what she was.

Rebecca had no viable way to stop him.

Everyone loved Shade’s newest member. Charming. Skilled in the field. Personable to everyone.

He was about to ruin everything for her, wasn’t he?

“Don’t keep us waiting!” Hank shouted through more laughter.

“Nothing you haven’t heard before,” Rowan called back, turning in a slow circle as he addressed the entire task force.

He’d just stolen Rebecca’s announcement time right out from under her, and no one even thought twice about it.

“We earned those weapons,” Rowan said. “We should keep them. And you know what? Yeah, I guess I am turning this into another toast to the Thon-Da’al.”

He thrust his drink in the air and spun around to face Rebecca again. “For leading such an elegant mission and acquiring top-of-the-line new assets for the rest of us. Honestly, I’m really looking forward to training with those things in the future. To the Thon-Da’al!”

“To the Thon-Da’al!”

The response echoed around the room before everyone with a drink in their hand finished the toast with a drink to Rebecca. And to Rowan’s toast. And to the new black-market magitek weapons they’d acquired by intercepting Eduardo’s latest shipment.

Rebecca couldn’t let her guard down yet. Rowan was planning something else just around the corner. He had to be. No way would he finish with a simple toast like that and nothing more.

It wasn’t Rowan’s voice reaching her next, though. It was everyone else shouting out at her all at once.

Rowan seemed the only one among them who had nothing left to say.

“Yo, Knox, is that true?”

“For real? We’re gonna keep those weapons for training?”

“It’s about damn time! I was wondering when we’d update the damn armory.”

“Finally catching up with the twenty-first century, huh? Hell yes!”

And just like that, Rowan had Rebecca backed into another corner. He’d put the words in her mouth. He’d distracted the entire task force with something of his own design. And he’d forced Rebecca to play along if she didn’t want to lose her credibility or give herself away.

No, she hadn’t actually said they were going to keep the weapons, or that she had any special plans to employ them in new training exercises. But now she didn’t have a choice.

Plus, she couldn’t deny that keeping the weapons as part of Shade’s new armament stores was a good idea. She just hadn’t thought about it yet. Now, the decision had been made for her.

All she wanted was to storm through the crowd and strangle Rowan for manipulating her like this. They both knew what he was doing. But acting on the urge, no matter how strong, would only make it worse.

So she sucked it up and raised a hand to signal for everyone to quiet down.

“That’s right,” she said with a firm nod, her voice flat with tension and making her sound abnormally tired. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do. Those new weapons are ours now. It’s about time we started working with updated tech. Have a good night.”

She didn’t give anyone another chance to wrangle her into further conversation she didn’t want.

Rebecca had to get out.

An uproarious cheer broke out behind her as she stormed down the hall. Fortunately, no one seemed to think her abrupt departure signaled something amiss. She’d played off Rowan’s manipulation so perfectly, the whole thing had seemed like her idea.

Which she knew was exactly what he had intended.

She hadn’t made it very far down the hall before a newly rising flare of tingling warmth rippled across her back and up over her shoulders.

A second later, Maxwell was once again walking beside her, easily matching her quickening pace, his head dipped low in thought.

Okay, so no one but Maxwell thought her immediate departure odd.

Then he finally found his voice, which came out sounding oddly like a growling whine. “You told the elf your plans for those weapons. But not me?”

That was what he took issue with, of all things?

Rebecca wanted to correct him. She certainly had not taken Rowan into her confidence. At the same time, she just didn’t have the energy to let herself get sucked into even more of her Head of Security’s dramatic misconceptions.

If she kept this up much longer, she’d lose what remained of her composure, and she couldn’t predict how she would react or what she might let slip in her frustration.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she murmured, shaking her head but refusing to look at him.

She’d heard the surprise and hurt in his question and didn’t want to see it reflected to her in those silver eyes too.

The nausea she’d felt when realizing Rowan had walked her right into his well-laid trap not only remained, but now it had only grown stronger. Especially now that Maxwell assumed she’d given the elf preferential treatment.

None of this was supposed to happen.

Now all she could think about was how much she wished Rowan had never shown up here. That she hadn’t contacted or been forced to think about this elf man from her past, who had nothing to do with her present beyond the imminent threat he posed to it.

Tonight, though, she couldn’t do a thing about it.

“If I’ve given you reason to think you can’t trust me…” Maxwell began.

“No, that’s not it.” She stopped to look directly up at him. “Look, that’s not what happened. I didn’t have a private conversation with Blackmoon about the weapons. I must have just been thinking out loud somewhere, and he picked up on it. He shouldn’t have shared it with everyone else anyway, but I’ll deal with that later. Right now, I just… I need to call it a night.”

Then she nodded, hoping she had somewhat reassured him.

Maxwell studied her face, then returned the nod, and that was that.

Rebecca turned to keep walking, thinking only of sprawling across her mattress and drifting off to sleep as quickly as possible. Then the echo of footsteps behind her in the hall drew her back to the here and now.

Maxwell was still following her.

“I’m just going to my room, Max,” she called over her shoulder. “Don’t need an escort.”

“It’s for your protection,” he said. “Standard protocol.”

“Then maybe we need to update protocol. I don’t need constant supervision or the red-carpet treatment. I’m not Aldous. What I do need is to be left alone when I want to be left alone and for everyone to just leave it at that.”

His snort made her stop and spin around to see just what the hell he thought was so funny.

Maxwell smirked at her, unaffected by her growing frustration, and replied without missing a beat. “If that were the case, no one would ever see you.”

Did the shifter just make a joke?

She might have laughed if she hadn’t been so completely exhausted, though a tiny smile appeared for a moment before she rolled her eyes. “Good night, Hannigan.”

Then she left him and hurried toward the compound’s residential wing and the privacy of her own room.

A few more seconds lapsed this time before the echo of his footsteps following her continued.

Had she not made herself perfectly clear?

Wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt, Rebecca kept walking as if she hadn’t noticed a thing. Maybe he was going somewhere else and just happened to take this route.

But no, she’d told him she didn’t need guarding just to go back to her room, but standard protocol dictated she had it anyway. And that was what Maxwell had prioritized.

The realization frustrated her to no end, and at the same time, Rebecca couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that he hadn’t listened to her words. Probably because she hadn’t given him an official order to leave her alone.

It felt like a sign of someone she could count on, if she ever let herself count on anyone. Someone she could trust to be dependable when it came to the rules and the foundation of what did and did not need to be accomplished and strictly adhered to.

A certain level of stability undoubtedly went hand in hand with a Head of Security who didn’t balk at her comments, who would continue doing his job unless she specifically ordered him to do something else.

Even if she ordered it, though, Maxwell would probably continue to follow standard protocol, assuming he disagreed with her orders.

Rebecca had, after all, promised to let him do his job, the same way he’d promised to trust her. Or at least try , to the best of his ability.

She wasn’t trying to hide anything from him now, though. So what was the harm in letting him do what he thought was necessary within the parameters of his job description?

After all, it had only been a few days since they’d made that deal to give each other a little more credit and a little more slack.

Maxwell followed her all the way to the intersection with the hallway directly into the residential wing, but before turning that way to head to her room, Rebecca stopped.

She wasn’t sure why, because she didn’t immediately turn around to face him.

Instead, she stood there at the branching hallway, more focused on the tingling warmth of energy and the magnetic pull intensifying now with every step Maxwell still took toward her.

The sensation she’d been trying to ignore for nearly a week now finally grew too strong, and she spun around to confront him about it one more time.

Suddenly, it seemed like letting this dark pull of need and longing with her into her room for the night was a terrible idea.

“Is there a problem?” he asked before stopping only a foot away.

Far too close and somehow not close enough.

“This is too much,” she said and had to clear her throat. She’d meant every word, but the way her body leaned toward him all on its own made it feel like a lie. “This following me down the halls everywhere I go. It’s not—”

“It’s a security detail.”

“I know what it is, Max. You and I have already covered plenty of times that I’m not Aldous and that I don’t plan on doing things the way he did. That there need to be changes around here. And this is one of those changes. But it doesn’t really seem like you’re even willing to work with me on that, and I need this , specifically, to change.”

His eyes widened a little before his expression softened and he let out a sigh. “I’m not trying to pry. I won’t get in your business. I don’t need to know what you’re doing when you get where you’re going. That has changed, because we agreed that it would. But I will make sure you get where you’re going in one piece before I leave you alone. Anything could happen.”

“In here?” she asked, spreading her arms and sweeping her gaze around the hallway. “What’s going to happen inside these walls? We’ve already gotten rid of the biggest threat.”

The shifter raised an eyebrow. “Your private room is severely underprotected.”

“I disagree. It was secure enough when it became my room six months ago, and it’s secure enough now. Anything more than that inevitably sets me apart from the rest of this task force. Which is another thing Aldous did that I have no intention of repeating.”

“Maybe you should.”

She would have snapped at him for presuming to tell her what to do, but his particular statement caught her off guard. The words at the tip of her tongue fled from her mind instead before she shut her mouth with a soft click. “Maybe I should what? Set myself apart from everyone else? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you might benefit from one or two more degrees of separation.”

“This is me asking for more specifics, Max.”

He held her in his gaze as his eyebrows drew into an even deeper frown.

He didn’t want to tell her specifics.

Why?

She was fully prepared to order it out of him, but he pulled it together to give her an answer.

“The elf,” he growled.

Rebecca couldn’t help but scoff. “Blackmoon?”

Maxwell’s features darkened even further with a flash of silver light behind his eyes. “I don’t trust him.”

“You don’t trust me , either. What else is new?”

The shifter either didn’t have a response or thought it was wiser to keep it to himself. Which was for the best.

Rebecca was tired and overwhelmed and annoyed with Rowan still. That didn’t make her the best conversationalist or the most level-headed.

Her rational mind understood this, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from reacting. Because now Maxwell was getting on her nerves again too.

“So you don’t deny it,” she continued. “You don’t trust me, either. And why is that? I’ve been wondering lately why you’d find it so hard to trust either of us, and the only thing I can come up with is that you’ve got some specific issue with elves in general.”

“I have a specific issue with that elf. Because he wants something. You know it. I know it. There’s a reason he’s here. I don’t know what that reason is, and he hasn’t been forthcoming about it or anything else. But I don’t think his interests align with ours. Or, more specifically, with yours.”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure what to think of that. It sounded like Maxwell was trying to be on her side through this. To support her, even.

He was choosing her over something else—or someone else, in this case—a specific threat to her and Shade. At the moment, that happened to be Rowan Blackmoon.

She was so surprised by this change in him and his concern for her that she couldn’t find anything to say.

Instead, Rebecca felt herself filled with an overwhelming compulsion to open up to the shifter right here and spill her guts to him in the hallway. To tell him everything about her and her past, about who she was, what she had done to become this version of herself, and why.

She wanted him to know the truth. In a strange way, sharing with him that truth, unrestricted by her necessary secrets, felt like the perfect way to thank him for being on her side. For being willing to try to trust her.

No, it felt like the only way.