4. Chapter 4

4

R ebecca’s pulse thundered in her ears, her gaze drifting—against her will—to the shifter’s lips. This conversation could not continue.

“We’re not talking about me right now,” she said, surprised by the levelness of her own voice. “And I’m not the one being questioned or put under the microscope. I’ve already been there. I’ve already paid my dues. The elf in that holding room will perform The Striving, and we will hold to the results of it, because that’s how Shade does things.”

Maxwell's oppressive presence overwhelmed her, his energy growing heavier and more cloying until she felt like she was suffocating.

If she were suffocating, she wouldn’t have secretly wanted the sensation to continue.

“I don’t like it,” Maxwell muttered.

“Good.” She couldn’t look away from those glowing silver eyes right in front of her and hated how breathless she sounded.

Clearing her throat, she turned slightly away from him. “Now we’re getting down to the root of your problem. You don’t have to like it, Hannigan. The Roth-Da’al’s already made her decision.”

Pulling rank on him like that, reminding him of her position and who was in charge, hadn’t been part of her plan. It wasn’t something she generally enjoyed doing, but the words had spilled out of her all the same.

Probably because she didn’t think she could keep it together much longer while they squared off like this in the hallway, pulled together by some unseen force while each of them fought viciously against their own impulses to hold it at bay.

For Rebecca, losing control meant either turning her anger and frustration against the shifter and hurting him, or giving in completely to that deeper, darker pull his presence evoked over her entire body.

It was impossible to tell which would rise victorious.

She couldn’t even tell if those two things were entirely separate, but it didn’t matter.

Her final words had done what they were supposed to do.

“Fine.” The word came out of him like a curse—or like pulling a stubborn piece of shrapnel out of his flesh.

The second it left his lips, though, the growing tension between them lightened.

Not all the way but enough for Rebecca to feel like she could breathe again.

Enough for her to be fairly sure the shifter had regained his senses too.

He knew she was right. The way he looked at her now told her he’d remembered the same thing she did.

They’d made each other an agreement earlier tonight, on their way back from the Old Joliet Prison before any of the chaos inside Shade headquarters had caught up with them. Before any news of an elven prisoner held in the stockade had reached them.

Maxwell Hannigan had agreed to give her a chance as Shade’s commander and as someone he could try to trust—someone whose orders he could try to follow—because that was how things worked. Rebecca had agreed to let him do his job.

The two were not mutually exclusive. They had to work together if they were to improve the state of this task force with any lasting efficacy.

This was one of those moments where Maxwell needed to try.

When he finally tore his gaze away from her face, sighing heavily through his nose and shaking his head, the relief washing through her was an unexpected bonus.

She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to spell it out for him again so soon, to remind him of the temporary truce they’d entered, albeit more or less on a trial basis.

If they were each going to do their jobs, the shifter had to get off his high horse and give her enough space to do her best first, at the very least, before he blamed her for failing.

Apparently, this was what that looked like.

“But I won’t make any special accommodations for him,” Maxwell warned.

Well, this was a start. The shifter was relenting and deferring to her leadership. For now. Rebecca could work with that.

“I’d be severely disappointed if you did,” she replied.

He glanced up at her again with something she could have sworn bordered on a hint of embarrassment.

But then their little spat in the hallway came to an abrupt end when the same door to the security room Maxwell had exited opened again with a soft squeal of its hinges, and they were no longer alone.

“Oh. Um…” Rick froze in the hallway, looking quickly back and forth between Rebecca and Maxwell before he grimaced.

It was an unusual expression to see on the blackhorn. With his mottled red-and-black flesh and the barely visible nubs of spiked horns protruding from his bald head, that grimace looked more like its own kind of snarl. Rebecca was sure it would have driven off anyone else who didn’t know Rick as well as she did.

And she didn’t know him nearly as well as Maxwell did. Being Shade’s commander was changing that in record time.

“Should I…just go back and wait?” Rick asked, his hairless eyebrows drawing together in discomfort.

“No,” Rebecca told him with a nod. “We’re finished out here.”

“Oh, okay.” He gave Maxwell one more questioning look, but the Head of Security snorted and folded his arms.

At least he wasn’t openly defying her in front of their shared subordinates.

“Now that you’re here, though, Rick,” she said, “I’d like an update on everything else that’s happened tonight before Hannigan and I returned to the compound. And not the abridged version.”

“Right. Sure.” The blackhorn’s eyelids fluttered. He scrunched up his face, as if it physically pained him to remember the last several hours, then lowered the overly stuffed clipboard in his hand to abandon whatever task had called him from the security room. “Well, our system got flagged. Incoming intel tripped the alarm, and we just…weren’t around to hold it off until we confirmed it.”

“Intel about something big brewing in the streets,” she prompted. “That’s what I was told.”

“Yeah, well, we thought it was. We’ve been keeping a finger on the pulse of things through the city. Always have been. Turns out tonight was more like a…false alarm, really.”

Beside her, Maxwell let out another heavy sigh that made Rick grimace again.

“Really?” Rebecca asked, ignoring the shifter. “What exactly constitutes a false alarm around here?”

“Just chatter over the systems. Speculation. Rumors, basically.” Rick plucked at the collar of his shirt and swallowed. “I’m not really sure how it got out to the rest of the compound. There just wasn’t anyone manning intel at the time to interrupt the alarms. We were…distracted. By the…unexpected visitor.”

The blackhorn’s gaze darted toward the only currently occupied holding room, where Rowan Blackmoon waited safe and secure behind its door. For now.

“Looks like the rumors got out of control,” he added. “Spread a little farther and faster than they would’ve if we’d been more focused on briefing everyone first. It wasn’t supposed to blow up like that. As of right now, there’s nothing out there right now. Not that needs our attention, anyway. But we’re keeping an eye on it.”

“Good.” Rebecca nodded, then took off in the opposite direction so she could finally get out of the stockade’s hallway and go somewhere else.

Anywhere else at this point would be preferable.

“Let me know if the team picks up anything that is worth our time,” she added, turning back to point at Rick as she reached the final door at the end of the hall. “Oh, and go ahead and make another announcement while you’re at it. We hold The Striving tomorrow at twenty-two hundred hours. That should give everybody something else to focus on.”

Rick’s face lit up like she’d just given him the perfect gift. His rare grin exposed yellowing fangs before he seemed to remember Maxwell was still watching him. Then the smile disappeared. “Twenty-two hundred. You got it, boss.”

Rebecca hauled open the door and stepped into the next narrow hallway separating the stockade from the primary armory at the rear of Shade’s underground parking garage. She’d just given her first official orders to the entire task force, and it still didn’t quite feel real.

What did feel real was that she’d finally kept everyone else busy while she took some time for herself to decompress. It had already been one hell of a night, even before coming home to find Rowan in Shade’s custody.

But when the sound of the door clicking shut behind her never came, Rebecca’s short-lived relief disappeared again.

Maxwell’s quickening footsteps echoed behind her.

Did he not know when to give up?

She fought off the urge to turn around and shove him back through the door before racing across the garage just to get away from him.

“Are you sure this is the route you wanna take?” he grumbled, gaining on her from behind.

She didn’t stop or slow down. Not even when he caught up with her enough that the sensation of his presence left a tingling ripple across her back and the tops of her shoulders.

It felt like he was breathing down her neck.

“I’ve already made up my mind.” Rebecca glued her gaze to the bottom of the stairwell out of the garage, refusing to give him more of her attention than a brusque response. “It’s happening. Until then, I want two guards stationed on that holding room until The Striving tomorrow night. Armed, obviously.”

“Already done.”

That made her stop, which gave Maxwell the opportunity to catch up with her so all she had to do was turn her head to meet his gaze.

Dammit, why did she let herself react? She was trying not to look at him.

Three seconds of staring at him brought a smirk twitching across her lips.

He’d already stationed guards on Rowan. Well at least her Head of Security knew how to do his job without having to involve her in every little detail.

“Good.” With nothing better to say, it still felt wildly insufficient.

Maxwell’s frown deepened, his brow flickering in a way that made him look abnormally confused before he decided to speak his mind again. “Can you really make this a true test for him? Because if it’s going to prove his worth in any way that matters, it has to be difficult.”

“It will be.” Without thinking, Rebecca set a hand on his shoulder, meaning it only as a reassuring gesture because he looked so damn concerned now that he’d gotten over questioning her decision.

The tingling rush of energy flaring between them at the contact almost felt like a physical burn—like setting her hand down on a hot stove only to realize that stove’s heat didn’t actually burn her but beckoned her closer.

Calling for more. Pleading with her to keep her hand right there and never remove it, so she might learn exactly what else was possible when all she’d previously thought of that stove was how badly it could hurt her if misused. How dangerous it was…

The sensation made her freeze, and while she consciously tried not to look at her hand on his shoulder, she suddenly lost the ability to tell whether she’d succeeded.

But when she met Maxwell’s gaze, she found his silver eyes wide and glistening as they settled on her face. She thought she heard him suck in a quick, sharp breath before holding it.

He had to feel this too, right?

What else would have possibly made him stop in his tracks? What else would have made him gaze at her like this—in surprise, confusion, and an unwilling anticipation of whatever came next?

Rebecca had no idea what came next, but this thing she felt between them couldn’t just be in her mind.

Maxwell was the one to move first.

His step back was small but still forced her hand to slip off his shoulder. The second it did, their little moment was over.

When he cleared his throat, she already knew he was trying to get right back to business.

“It has to be difficult enough that if he’s not worthy and we can’t trust him, we’ll know instantly. Because he’ll fail.” Maxwell dipped his head toward her, his frown deepening like he still didn’t know whether she fully understood what was at stake for the entire task force if The Striving didn’t produce the intended results.

Rebecca returned the nod. “I’m counting on it.”

Then she took off again to make her way across the rest of the armory, then across the parking garage toward the enclosed staircase leading up to the compound’s ground-floor level.

This time, Maxwell’s footsteps didn’t follow her.

That realization filled her with both relief and a surprising disappointment, which didn’t even make sense. But she didn’t have time to dwell on what her reactions to or feelings toward the shifter meant right now.

No, she had less than twenty-four hours to focus on making The Striving impossible for Rowan to complete successfully. Only then would she have a viable excuse to throw him out, with an entire privatized task force at her command to back her up.

She couldn’t let herself consider the possibility that she might be wrong or that she might not find the best way to deter Rowan from passing the strenuous test Shade would put him through tomorrow night.

Rebecca’s focus narrowed to a single goal—get Rowan Blackmoon out, before he made a single move to shatter her cover and bring everything she’d built here crumbling down around her. His presence threatened not only her position but the safety of everyone within these walls.

She had twenty-four hours to make sure he failed.