30. Chapter 30

30

R ebecca woke with a start, gasping as her eyes flew open in the darkness of her room. Her gaze settled on the alarm clock on top of her standing dresser, its bright green numbers flashing at her.

She was in her private room at the Shade headquarters, in Chicago, Illinois, on Earth. She was Rebecca Knox, Commander of Shade.

She was here now and nothing else.

Even after the mental inventory of her present identity and all the facts that came with it, she couldn’t shake the images from her dream. The memories that had now been dredged up from her subconscious to plague her in the night.

The kind of dreams she hadn’t had in decades. The kind of dreams she’d thought had left her entirely.

She hadn’t thought of her old life in Xahar’áhsh with such startling clarity like that in longer than she could remember. Those agonizing nights of Theodil’s lessons. Her friendship with Rowan. Everything she’d endured, all in the name of the Bloodshadow Court and her destiny as the Bloodshadow Heir, for whom her own people had been waiting for countless centuries or more.

Not thinking about her old life wasn’t a mistake. She’d trained her mind away from these memories on purpose, and now they were flooding back in during the night, while she was asleep and off-guard.

While she had no awareness to defend against them and hold them at bay.

She’d held the memories back to protect herself, and now, all her efforts were being undone.

All because of Rowan, she was certain.

His presence here had unlocked those buried memories and brought them to the forefront of her mind. Even worse was that she still had no more information about who else knew she was here or who else might find her.

It was incredibly dangerous.

Rebecca couldn’t afford to live in the past. That was the whole point of being on Earth. But now, as Commander of Shade, with a tense truce with Maxwell, with Harkennr just on the other side of town and Azyyt Ra’al’s presence in Chicago…

No, she could not let these pieces of her old life slip back into her new one. There was too much at stake.

What Rebecca needed was a refresh, something to get her head back on straight and recenter her focus. Then she could refortify her mind against the past and how vividly these memories had tried to rework the truth of events.

Then she could push it all back down and stop having these damn dreams.

Because, for a split second when she’d woken, she’d yearned for that past in ways that made absolutely no sense.

Giving into a momentary lapse in confidence, or wishing for different outcomes, or entertaining nostalgia would only serve as more distractions from the here and now. Most importantly, from ensuring she and Shade remained protected and autonomous.

She could only do that when no one knew who she was or that she was here.

No one but Rowan, anyway.

Clenching her eyes shut, Rebecca shook her head, whipped the covers off her body, and climbed out of bed to get dressed.

First and foremost, she needed to move to get her blood pumping. To wake up and live in this life and remember why she’d chosen it. Why she’d left everything else behind.

Besides, there were still plenty of decisions to be made and plans to tackle. Shade had to prepare for possible retaliation from Eduardo, and her conscience wouldn’t let her sit back and do nothing about those trafficked magicals inside Harkennr’s base at the Joliet Prison.

Her days of sleeping in late were over.

She was so busy going over today’s mental checklist that she didn’t hear anything in the hall outside her bedroom. She didn’t feel any energetic shifts or pick up on changes in the air. She simply jerked open the door and barged right through at the top speed of someone preoccupied by their imminent purpose.

Her face smashed right into a solid wall of flannel first, then the muscle beneath, the scent of moonlight and sandalwood overwhelming her.

A low growl rumbled around her, its power vibrating against her face until she reeled back. Her heart raced, her pulse roared in her ears, and the heavy, curdling certainty that she’d just made a horrible mistake surged through her body until she felt like she was going to be sick.

What had she done?

Then she realized it was Maxwell standing outside her door, and an unfamiliar, overpowering relief washed over her.

She’d just dreamt one of her worst memories from her old life…and one of her best with Rowan.

Immediately after a night like that, she was so much happier to see Maxwell Hannigan standing in front of her door this morning. Even when he looked like someone who’d just received terrible news.

What was wrong with her?

As soon as Rebecca recognized this out-of-place happiness to see him, the tingling warmth of the shifter’s presence washed over her, pulling her mind back to the present. Her irritation flared up instead.

With everything else Shade had going on right now, he thought the best use of his time was to stand immediately outside her door like this, without announcing himself? Without so much as a knock?

She stepped back enough to scowl up at him and pulled the door shut behind her. “What are you doing, Max?”

The deep concern in the shifter’s eyes put her on edge as he looked her up and down. “You look awful.”

And who made him the judge of outward appearances first thing in the morning?

“Thank you so much,” she quipped and finished shutting her bedroom door behind her as she stepped into the hall. “That’s exactly what I was going for.”

She sent a flashing bolt of yellow light at the doorknob, shutting everything up tight with a simple locking spell, then spun toward him again and folded her arms. “What do you want?”

He frowned. “I was waiting for you. Coffee escort.”

She snorted and brushed past him to head down the hall. Her shoulder glanced against his, not aggressively but enough to elicit another strange jolt of electrifying energy flaring between them.

The pit of her stomach clenched. Her shoulders seemed to relax and tense at the same time. She pushed herself to keep moving down the hall when what her body wanted was to turn around and draw closer to him again.

Like she’d hoped it would, the urge faded with the increasing distance she put between them with every step. “I told you you didn’t have to do this. No more escorts.”

“You certainly did,” Maxwell agreed, his voice rising behind her before his footsteps did the same. “And here I am.”

He was following her again. Even if she hadn’t heard his footsteps, she would have felt it anyway.

So he’d just decided on his own to ignore everything she’d told him that wasn’t an order, huh? Some mutually beneficial agreement. It had lasted all of…what? Three days?

“Sounds like someone needs to revisit the definition of agreement,” she snapped, refusing to look at him or slow down on her march toward the common room. “Because I thought we had one.”

“I thought you might—”

“No, Max.” Rebecca stopped short and whirled to face him, her pulse still pounding half an hour after she’d woken from that dream and her fists clenched at her sides as she tried to keep them from trembling. “You didn’t think. That’s the problem here.

“I told you I didn’t need or want any more escorts through headquarters, and you didn’t think I meant it. Do I need to make this an official order with paperwork and everything? Or do I need to start looking for a new Head of Security?”

His eyes widened slightly before he took two more steps toward her. Now he loomed over her in the hallway, eyes flashing, the scent of moonlit grass and sandalwood and the tingling rush of his body warmth radiating toward her making her clench her fists even tighter.

“Are you threatening me?” he growled.

Well that wasn’t hard to get him all riled up.

“No,” she snapped, “but I do think you need to re-examine your working definition of threat and question. I’m just trying to be prepared, because the guy who’s supposed to be my right-hand Head of Security still doesn’t think he has to pay attention if it’s not a direct order.”

They stared at each other in a silent battle of wills—or at least that was how it felt.

Maybe she was misreading this whole thing.

She hadn’t meant to snap at him, but she couldn’t help herself.

It was that damn dream bringing her very real, very unpleasant memories back to the forefront. It was messing with her head, putting her in a fouler mood than normal first thing in the morning. And Maxwell was the one catching the brunt of it, because he was the one who still thought he knew best regarding unnecessary bodyguard duty day in and day out.

She didn’t want to be pissed at him. She didn’t want to be affected by these old, long-buried memories resurfacing beyond her control.

She didn’t want to explain herself, least of all to Maxwell. He wouldn’t have understood anyway, and telling him the bare bones of one secret would only lead to him interrogating her about all the rest.

Those memories in her dream had stained her. They’d left behind some kind of residue in her mind and on her body. Some sticky, lingering thing that couldn’t be washed away with a simple shower.

After another moment of silent tension between them, Rebecca seriously considered ordering Maxwell to stay put and count to a hundred so she could get to the common room on her own. But then he inhaled deeply through his nose, as if taking in a scent he particularly enjoyed, and leaned closer.

His silver eyes brimmed with concern again as he studied her face. “What’s really going on?”

Great.

If Rebecca’s dreamscape had left this otherworldly residue on her the way she felt it had, it wouldn’t have surprised her if this shifter picked up on it. Smelling her discomfort and her deeply hidden secrets as easily as he’d claimed he could smell a lie.

And he wanted her to just tell him all about it.

“Nothing’s going on ,” she muttered and started to turn away from him. “It’s just too early for this. I need space in the morning.”

Before she could walk away, that tingling warmth of his presence surged around her again when Maxwell stepped closer. She didn’t have to face him to feel him still towering over her from behind.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Nothing happened. I told you, it’s too—”

“Something happened between last night and now. You’re going to tell me what’s wrong with you.”

She could have sworn she heard him sniffing the air behind her, which made her that much more certain he could smell whatever residual energy or magic or emotion still lingering in and on and around her after her journey to the past in her sleep.

Damn her dreams.

“The only thing I’m telling you,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even, “is to stop talking until I’ve started my day. Better yet, back up and give me some space to breathe, all right? I can’t do my job if you’re suffocating me.”

She took off down the hallway again, leaving no opportunity for the shifter to respond.

Damn, she was in a foul mood this morning.

She blamed Rowan, wholly and completely. This was all because of him.

All because he’d found her here on Earth, in the waking world, and now he’d found her in her dreams again, where the vault of her stored memories had been broken into and looted for whatever it was worth.

It wasn’t worth more than frustration and a bad attitude, neither of which would do her any favors right now.

What Rebecca needed was to get started with her day, focus on the present, and let her dreams and memories sink back down again where they belonged.

This was her life now. No amount of reliving the past, awake or asleep, could change that.

Maxwell respected her aggravated request after that, but only halfway. He didn’t ask more questions. He didn’t try to talk to her at all. But, once again, he picked up his preferred position for following his commander around the compound and stuck to it, trailing after Rebecca by three feet and just to her left.

How long was he going to keep this up?

Something told her it would be much longer than she cared for, despite their tentative truce. She was sure some part of him enjoyed pissing her off by doing his job, just not to her specifications.

After she turned the last corner into another hallway, the common room now in sight, Maxwell clearly couldn’t contain himself any longer.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

The genuine concern in his voice, tinged with a note of apprehension she hadn’t yet heard in him, made her stop.

Was he genuinely worried about her? That didn’t make sense. She hadn’t given him a reason to worry since the night he’d followed her to the Old Joliet Prison. And just last night, he was congratulating her for proving him wrong.

So what was this?

She glanced at him over her shoulder, but that didn’t tell her what concerned him. If he was asking on a more personal level because he felt something for her , specifically, no matter what position she held within Shade’s ranks…

She still couldn’t read that in him, either. She couldn’t tell.

Right now, she wasn’t in the right headspace to filter her reactions so they appropriately matched the context. So, everything just came flying out of her mouth like crackling sparks.

“If you wanna spend more time with me, Maxie,” she quipped as she picked up her pace down the hall, “you could just say so. It’s not my job to read your mind.”

His footsteps stopped briefly, as if she’d caught him off guard.

Good. They were evening the score a little.

It didn’t last long before he caught up with her again and now walked at her side instead of his usual three feet behind her during an escort. “We’ve been alone this whole time, though.”

Had he just attempted a joke? Or was he naturally this clueless all the time?

“This morning, yeah,” she said. “And you still haven’t asked me about the weather or what my plans are after work.”

He let out a choked-sounding snort, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him frowning again beside her. “Are those things you want me to ask first thing in the morning?”

Rebecca scoffed. “Well, they’re better conversation-starters than ‘You look awful,’ and ‘Tell me what’s wrong with you.’”

He must have been as clueless as he seemed. Rebecca honestly couldn’t imagine the shifter engaging in any form of small talk. Not that he was too awkward or incapable of it but because he seemed like the kind of guy who grew easily bored with any conversation that didn’t include duties within Shade, protocol, missions, and how much he suspected Rebecca of something he didn’t like.

Or maybe this was his version of trying to tease her?

That thought was too overwhelming—the idea that Maxwell Hannigan even knew how to make jokes without directly referencing his darker suspicions of anyone. She couldn’t think about that.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Then they reached the end of the hall where it fed into the common room, and Rebecca stopped to consider her options.

Almost the entire task force was already here this morning. Odd.

Maxwell stopped beside her with a snort, though she didn’t know if it was in amusement or the result of something else he found to be an utter disappointment.

She didn’t want to look at him to find out, either, because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to look away again.

“I’ll be sure to work on my icebreakers, then,” he muttered.

Wait, was he still joking?

Rebecca couldn’t help it any longer. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye, and yes, that looked a lot like a little smirk on the shifter’s lips as he stared straight ahead.

Would wonders never cease?

Then his amusement disappeared as a shadow passed in front of them.

Rebecca caught the tail end of an operative walking past them in the entryway.

“Morning,” Maxwell murmured, his usual alert tension restored.

Clearly, the shifter wasn’t comfortable enough to make jokes with the boss in public, where anyone could see. But when he thought they were alone…

At least their odd moment was over now, and Rebecca could stop thinking about how much she’d liked the look of that tiny smile on her Head of Security.

But this was still all professionalism, wasn’t it?

“Great,” she said, trying to break the silence. “There better be coffee left.”

“Is that your excuse for being so prickly first thing in the morning?”

She almost snapped back with something terse and off-putting until she realized his smirk had returned. This time, he was looking at her.

“What do you mean?” She mimicked his poorly concealed amusement. “I’m always this prickly.”

Then she forced herself to enter the crowded common room, because the mystery of not knowing what Maxwell was up to held too great of a pull. If that was the shifter’s best version of flirting, he had no idea what he was doing.

Then again, if it was his idea of loosening up around his commander because fighting had gotten him nowhere, she wasn’t sure she appreciated him getting that comfortable.

Or maybe she really was too prickly and overthinking things way too much. She just hadn’t had her coffee yet.

Then she made the mistake of looking across the room to see Rowan among the rest of the task force.