46. Chapter 46

46

T he chaotic shouting and running around and all the bustling activity inside the compound only grew louder as Rebecca and Maxwell made their way across the front lobby and toward the center of headquarters.

The commotion wasn’t nearly as out of control as during Hector’s homunculus attack, but the unraveling energy was just as palpable.

Rebecca tried twice to pick up the pace and pass Maxwell in the hallway to get a better beat on what the hell was happening, but every time she sped up, so did he, staying in front of her at all times until she finally gave up.

The madness only intensified the farther they walked through the compound, and no one seemed to notice either of them. The shouts echoed across every room and down every hallway from all directions. Magicals jogged back and forth, hauling armfuls of supplies, a lot of which seemed to be weapons and munitions.

Plus, a disproportionate number of these magicals were on their phones, asking questions, gathering information, shouting updates across the room.

“Knox!” Diego thrust a hand in the air to catch her attention, then jogged toward her, veering around pockets of gathered Shade members to get to her, his crimson eyes wide.

Over the course of all their missions together, she hadn’t seen him look this thrown off, even when Aldous managed to screw everything up, every time. Even more off-putting was the fact that he seemed to have lost his baseball cap somewhere in the confusion.

“Thank fuck you’re here,” he said when he finally reached them. “Listen, we’re moving as fast as we can, but we’re still waiting on a few more—”

Another group of magicals surged down the hall, cutting him off as they shouted at each other to hurry up.

“Who’s got the plans?”

“They’re still working on logistics. ”

“Well get them to hurry the fuck up!”

“Diego, what the hell’s going on?” Rebecca asked.

The Cruorcian stared after the passing group, clearly distracted by all the frenetic energy crackling through the air. “Yeah, I’m not exactly clear on that part. Then again, I don’t think anyone’s really… Wait.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, then at Maxwell, and looked quickly back and forth between them. “Where have you two been this whole time?”

Rebecca felt Maxwell’s glowing gaze on the side of her face and forced herself not to look at him despite the rising flush in her cheeks.

They hadn’t done anything that would have made her flush in the first place. Not even close. But now it felt like they were being called out for sneaking away together for reasons that had nothing to do with what had actually happened.

Then Maxwell cleared his throat and scowled, which definitely didn’t help eradicate suspicion.

“We got held up,” she added quickly, fighting off the urge to elbow the shifter in the ribs or stomp on his foot. “What happened?”

“Just word on the street,” Diego replied urgently before his attention got distracted by more commotion heading toward them. “For now. We don’t have a set pulse on any of it yet, but—Hey! Johnson! What do you think you’re doing with that? No one told you too—dammit. Listen, Knox, I’m supposed to be handling inventory in the…just…you know what? You two can handle everything else. That’s why you’re here.”

With a nod, he surged past them, clapping a hand down on Rebecca’s shoulder in the process and hardly seeming to notice when Maxwell let out a warning growl in response.

“Diego!” Rebecca shouted, spinning around to call after him. “Hey, don’t just… Great. And he’s gone.”

“This isn’t right,” Maxwell muttered, scanning the commotion with a deepening frown.

“Really?” Rebecca snorted and looked him up and down. “You just picked up on that?”

Without a reply, he shouldered past her to head down the hall, muscling his way through groups of rushing Shade members hardly giving him a moment’s notice.

Rolling her eyes, Rebecca took off after him. “You wanna fill me in on what you’re doing?”

“Security will already have a handle on the pulse of things here,” he grumbled without looking at her or slowing through the bombardment of voices, bodies, supplies, weapons, and generally confusion turning Shade headquarters into a total mess.

“And you know that because…”

“Because that’s my team’s job.”

Right. When no one else knew what the hell was happening around them, Maxwell’s security team made it their business to figure it out.

It sounded believable, but it didn’t explain why none of his team had bothered to reach out to him with so much as a simple phone call while he’d been out all night spying on his commander and sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.

But she stuck with him anyway, because when Maxwell found out what had thrown Shade into such disarray, she wanted to be right there with him to hear it all for herself.

They reached the top of the stairs down to the garage and had to wait for half a dozen operatives to finish racing up past them for the ground floor, each of them heavily armed with munitions and several different types of augmented magitek assault weapons.

Every magical passing them exhibited the same level of surprise and relief when they realized they were passing their commander on the stairs, but no one stopped for a conversation.

Apparently, whoever was running the show in Rebecca and Maxwell’s absence had made it clear this unidentified emergency was urgent enough to keep everyone too busy taking preparatory action to actually talk about it.

Once they headed down to the garage together, though, the even louder conversations and shouted commands echoed up the enclosed stairwell, barked orders, shouts correcting the actions of others.

Was the big surprise down here, then?

Maxwell scowled at everyone and everything, which wasn’t all that out of the ordinary, but it just didn’t have the same effect tonight.

“Jeeze,” Rebecca muttered as she pivoted to avoid being run over by Archie as the mohawked ogre carried two enormous, heavy-looking crates of supplies toward the stairwell. “The way everybody’s running around like this, you’d think we’re getting attacked all over again.”

“Not here,” Maxwell murmured, his silver eyes flashing as he seemed to intently study the bustling movement in every direction all at once. “This is something much bigger.”

“Bigger than being attacked from the inside by one of our own? How do you figure that? ”

Another low growl rumbled at the base of his throat before the sound dropped like it was sinking into his gut. “Because I haven’t been notified of it yet.”

“Hannigan!”

They both turned toward the rear of the garage before Rick appeared from within the chaos of scurrying bodies.

Maxwell took off toward the blackhorn Rebecca could only assume he’d left in charge of the security team in his absence.

She raced off after him, not liking the wide-eyed look of concern on the face of a well-trained operative like Rick.

“Update,” Maxwell snapped when they converged at the back of the garage. “Now.”

Rick’s eyes widened when he saw Rebecca right behind Shade’s Head of Security, then he nodded at her and muttered, “Roth-Da’al.”

She returned the nod. “Please tell me you know what’s going on right now.”

Maxwell shot her a dirty look at that, but Rick didn’t seem to notice.

“Rising activity in the streets,” the blackhorn reported, sounding a little breathless. “Might need an immediate response, so everyone’s been…preparing.”

“What kind of rising activity?” Maxwell asked.

“That’s…” Rick scanned the bustling garage around the, with an urgent weariness, then nodded toward the very back of the garage and the armory’s open gates. “It’s a little complicated. Probably best to brief you…somewhere else. Follow me.”

That didn’t sound good.

Rebecca and Maxwell stayed on Rick’s heels as they crossed the garage, weaving in and out of more groups of magicals arming themselves, shouting instructions, occasionally nodding or even saluting the pair of them along the way.

“The whole force is mobilizing,” Maxwell grumbled. “But I’m wondering why no one can actually report directly.”

“Well, that’s more of a coincidence, sir,” Rick said over his shoulder. “Honestly, I think it’s better that everybody has something else to focus on. It’ll keep them busy until we have a better handle on what to do next. More precise orders.”

He nodded ahead of them again, as if this something else existed separately from the growing excitement and urgency filling the compound.

“As in there’s a different problem that’s got nothing to do with this… movement on the streets?” Rebecca asked.

Rick paused at the entrance to the armory gates and turned around to look her in the eye. But then he dropped his gaze to the floor before he replied. “That’s something best left up to you to decide, Roth-Da’al. But now that you’re here, I recommend you see it for yourself first.”

Instead of stepping into the open armory, Rick veered sharply to the right toward the reinforced steel door marking the entrance to another part of the facility with a convenient location beside the armory.

Convenient for any operatives stationed down here on guard duty, but Rick clearly wasn’t taking them to the armory.

This door led to Shade’s in-house holding area—their version of a stockade.

The blackhorn led them through the heavy door, which clanged shut behind them with a metallic echo before Rebecca just couldn’t keep it to herself anymore.

“Okay, let’s just get it all out there, Rick.” She stopped in the narrow, dimly lit hallway and spread her arms. “I’m gonna need more information than just ‘follow me’ before I actually follow you. What are we looking at, here?”

She felt Maxwell’s gaze on her again and might have thought he was surprised by her handling of the situation—maybe even impressed by it. She didn’t want to look at him to confirm whether the feeling of his looks matched what they actually meant.

With a sigh, Rick peered around her to reassure himself they were alone in the hallway, then cleared his throat. “There’s been a breach.”

“Again?” Rebecca asked. “What happened?”

“What happened to the security alarms?” Maxwell added. “The wards? Our active defenses?”

Rick shook his head. “They, uh…they were somehow circumnavigated.”

“Then how do we even know it’s a breach?” Rebecca asked.

“We know, Roth-Da’al.”

That response definitely didn’t leave room for asking more questions about the security team’s individualized protocol for something like this, so she went with a different tactic. “Fine. How many of them are there?”

“Just one.”

Seriously? One intruder was the cause of all this trouble brewing inside the compound?

This was starting to feel way too much like Hector’s attack.

“Okay…” Rebecca almost glanced at Maxwell but stopped in lieu of trying to get more answers before they saw for themselves . “And this one assailant made it through every layer of our security without setting off a single alert?”

“More or less. ”

Even more concerning was how guilty the blackhorn looked when he said it.

When Rebecca shot Maxwell a perturbed look, she found him studying her with the same level of annoyance she’d felt since they entered the building.

If this new assailant had managed to sneak through Shade’s defenses and multiple layers of both magical and technological security without the slightest hint of detection, it sounded an awful lot like a repeat of Hector’s attack on headquarters.

Maxwell’s narrowing eyes made her suspect he’d thought very much the same thing.

“Now would be the time for that report,” Maxwell grumbled before jerking his chin up toward the end of the hall.

Rick nodded curtly, then spun around to continue through the facilities. “We’re sure it’s just the one. Double-checked every entrance. Scanned every level of the compound. Haven’t yet pinpointed how or where he got in, but he’s working alone. We apprehended him maybe fifteen minutes after intel got a tip about some pre-battle campaign out in Englewood. But it’s weird…”

“Weird how?” Rebecca asked.

“It’s almost like he wanted to get caught. But now he won’t give us any more information.”

“But you did already get something out of him, right?”

Rick stopped in front of the next door to punch in the security code on the adjacent wall panel to unlock it, then pumped down on the door handle and paused. When he looked back at Shade’s Head of Security and new commander, his cheeks darkened, and his attempt to hold back a grimace fell flat.

“Just the one thing,” he said. “It’s all the guy will say, no matter what we try.”

“Which is?” Rebecca prompted.

“That he’s looking for the elf.”

“Huh.” For the first time since they’d entered, Maxwell finally turned to look at her head-on, as if she’d only just arrived beside him in this hallway back to the holding rooms.

Rebecca ignored the tingling weight of his stare brushing over her face.

She was too distracted by her dropping stomach and the sudden lurch through her entire body that left a gaping black hole in the center of her gut.

Someone was looking for the elf .

Anyone who knew the slightest bit about Shade’s inner workings understood there was only one elf among their ranks. Anyone who was looking specifically for Shade’s one elf probably had a good idea who that elf was.

Which meant they’d probably come looking for her on purpose .

The only thing that made this harrowing discovery marginally bearable was the fact that this new intruder hadn’t specifically asked for Shade’s commander by name. Just for the elf.

That might have been a good sign, but it did nothing to alleviate the growing sense of dread gnawing at her insides.

Someone had found her. After all this time. In a few minutes, she’d find out exactly who it was. Only then would she know how to best handle the situation.

Assuming it wasn’t another assassination attempt.

“Take us to him.”

Maxwell’s voice pulled Rebecca out of her frozen disbelief, then Rick finally opened the last door to lead them into the bowels of the stockade.

Then the shifter turned toward Rebecca with a raised eyebrow.

She still refused to let herself look at him, especially when she could feel the smugness curling his lips even over that constant tingling pull still tugging at her core in his Maxwell’s presence.

That should have disappeared when she’d finally healed herself, right?

Through a self-satisfied chuckle, Maxwell delivered his next terribly timed comment, which he had to have known would only annoy her that much more. “I knew you were up to something.”

She shot him a quick glance but couldn’t let herself linger on it before she marched forward after Rick. “Shut up.”

The farther the blackhorn led her and Maxwell down the rows of doors leading into empty rooms, locked with high-tech security and magical wards for everyone’s protection, the more Rebecca began to fear the worst.

Specifically that someone from the Bloodshadow Court had been sent here to retrieve her. Or maybe this was one of her clan’s age-old enemies prematurely congratulating themselves on having discovered the Bloodshadow Heir’s whereabouts before anyone else.

Whoever it was infiltrating Shade to ask solely for “the elf”, she couldn’t afford to let them talk once she reached the holding room. Not with the security unit present, and especially not in front of Maxwell.

She had to be prepared, ready to cut off dangerous conversations before they began. If necessary, she had to be ready to dismiss Maxwell’s security team and order the Head of Security to leave her alone with this anonymous intruder. He’d put up a hell of a fight, but it was the safest option for everyone.

Rebecca couldn’t let herself be discovered by either outsiders or the rest of Shade’s task force .

As the very real possibility loomed every closer while she and Maxwell followed Rick down the next hallway, she also realized she couldn’t let anyone harm Shade the way both Hector and Aldous had attempted to harm them.

This wasn’t just about her and her secrets anymore. This was about all of them. Rebecca was in far too deep now to allow what had now become her home to fall into ruin all because she wanted to protect herself first.

Whether she liked it or not, she was responsible for all of them now, and her conscience wouldn’t let her compromise the lives now under her protection.

The second she recognized the unexpected change in her priorities, Rick stopped at the final door on the right to punch in another security code on the panel along the wall.

“He’s been heavily guarded since we apprehended him,” the blackhorn added as the security panel’s light flashed green and he reached for the door handle. “He might look harmless, but I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“You made the right call,” Maxwell said with a nod.

Rebecca merely stared at the door about to open into the next threat facing them all.

Harmless- looking didn’t mean a damn thing.

Anyone who could break past Shade’s defenses like this was incredibly dangerous, whether they looked it or not. The fact that this intruder already knew to ask for “the elf” meant he’d allowed himself to be caught and detained inside this room, and that made him even more dangerous still.

Finally, Rick pushed down on the door handle and swung the door inward to reveal the holding cell and Shade’s newly captured intruder turned prisoner waiting for them on the other side.

As soon as the door opened, Rebecca recognized exactly which holding room this was—the very same in which she herself had been held just over six months ago, when she’d first arrived at Shade’s door.

A week she’d spent in this room while the rest of the task force decided what to do with her, specifically whether or not to offer her the opportunity to enter The Striving and attempt to pass Shade’s initiation process.

The disconcerting strength of nostalgia washing over her at the memory brought with it a momentary gratitude for the way thing’s had been run inside this headquarters compound even before she’d been forced into power here. Rick and the rest of Maxwell’s security team had developed effective protocol for this very reason.

Maxwell had put it perfectly; they’d certainly made the right call with this particular intruder .

But when the door fully opened and Rebecca got a clear view inside that holding room, any optimism that might have smoothed over her lingering doubts disappeared.

The fairly large room boasted a comfortable capacity to hold a dozen people with a sufficient level of personal space. The only objects kept inside at all times consisted of four old metal chairs around a long folding banquet table and a single bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling.

Nothing else about the scene in front of her, however, hinted at well-executed protocol.

First came the groans and choking coughs spilling through the open door—several of them coming from several different individuals. After that, Rebecca didn’t want to believe what she was seeing, though it was all laid out in front of her in black and white, impossible to deny.

A dozen bodies—Maxwell’s security team and a handful of other operatives to aid in apprehending and securing their quarry in this holding room—now lay scattered across the floor, limbs splayed in every direction. Some lay face down on the concrete, others doubled over themselves in pain. One guy had landed on his ass in the corner, his back propped against the wall and his chin drooping all the way down to his chest, knocked completely unconscious.

Propped against each front-facing leg of the folding table sat two other security personnel, both of them gagged and bound with the ropes the operatives had most likely attempted to use in binding their intruder.

And in the center of it all, sitting casually on the edge of the table and swinging his legs back and forth beneath it, was their prisoner.

Long russet hair pulled into a loose ponytail at the back of his head, falling in just such a way to hide the telltale points at the tips of his Elven ears. Slender fingers drumming along the edge of the table. Hazel eyes flashing with amusement.

He sat there without a care in the world, not even a little winded by the team of operatives who’d attempted to subdue him in the holding room—and clearly failed. He didn’t even look surprised to see the door open and three more Shade members entering the room.

But when his gaze landed on Rebecca, the prisoner broke into a wide grin.

It was a grin she knew so well. A grin that lit up the face she’d recognized the second she’d laid eyes on him at the center of so much subdued chaos filling his makeshift cell.

A grin that first filled Rebecca with so much relief, she almost let it out in a massive sigh before it curdled and hardened into blinding, white-hot rage.

Of all the cursed allies or enemies that could have been sent to track her down, this was the one who’d managed to find her first ?

“Holy shit,” the elf exclaimed with a surprised chuckle. He stopped swinging his legs, tilted his head, and now centered his hazel gaze unflinchingly on Rebecca’s face. “It really is you.”

Dammit all to hell and curse every ancestor of her entire bloodline!

Rebecca had done so much and come so far. She’d put as much time and distance between herself and her past as physically possible. She’d been through hell and back, before, during, and after her time as Shade’s commander. No more than an hour ago, she’d even relented to a truce with Maxwell Hannigan, who’d finally decided to give her a chance.

A chance to let her prove to him that trying to trust her would be worth it in the end.

And now this ?

This elf man from the life she’d tried to leave behind her forever—his hazel eyes glinting in the low light of the single light bulb swinging back and forth overhead as his ceaseless grin flashed even wider—had finally found her.

And he was about to ruin everything.

No more hiding behind an entire organization she’d used to cover up her identity and all her secrets. Rebecca was at the very top of it all now. Which meant every action of every Shade member reflected back on her, and every decision she made affected far more lives than simply her own.

Like what the fuck she was supposed to do with this grinning elf sitting on the table like he’d just won some kind of secret war game.

On top of all that, now Maxwell’s scrutiny paired with the death glare he fixed on the side of her face as they stood side by side within the holding room’s open doorway was more palpable than ever.

So much for keeping a low profile.

Rebecca had to take care of this. Quickly.

Ignoring Maxwell’s low growl when she took two slow, confident steps toward the dark-haired elf sitting on the edge of the table, she clenched her fists at her sides and let the warning drip naturally from her words without even trying. “What are you doing here?”

No, this probably wasn’t protocol for questioning unidentified prisoners who’d infiltrated Shade’s defenses and temporarily neutralized nearly a dozen operatives at once. Maxwell would absolutely find her response to the current situation suspicious.

But she’d be damned if she let anyone else question this prisoner. Not before she had a shot at him.

The elf swung his legs a few more times beneath the table, then glanced in amusement around the room as if only now realizing what had happened .

Then, amidst the background of dispatched Shade operatives still groaning and clutching their heads or stomachs or nursing bloody noses, a dark, carefree laugh like the sound of danger in a song rose through the elf’s grin before he turned those hazel eyes back onto Rebecca.

“What am I doing here? I assumed that was fairly obvious. We need to talk.”

Wondering what kind of trouble Rebecca and Maxwell get themselves into next?

Find out in Elven Crown : Court of Rebellion Book 2.