Page 105 of Elven Shadow

“Then I recalled my team,” Maxwell stated without the slightest change in his flat monotone.

“Why the fuck would you do something so unbelievably stupid?” Aldous howled, tossing his hands in the air.

The rest of Shade’s ranks had abandoned all other conversation now. No one spoke. No one moved. Everyone watched the shifter Head of Security get a particularly undeserved verbal beating from their leader.

For as long as Rebecca had been with them, this was the worst form of public unraveling she’d seen from their commander. She certainly wouldn’t have expected Maxwell to bear the full brunt of it. He’d been Aldous’s little lapdog the whole time.

Unless he wasn’t…

Maxwell didn’t show any symptom of discomfort or frustration or even aggression. In fact, he stood perfectly still and answered Aldous’s question as if the changeling had respectfully asked for further details. “After assessing the situation, I concluded that recalling my team to regroup with the rest of our forces here was the best plan of action—”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Aldous screamed. “This is your job!”

“We can’t fight an enemy that doesn’t seem to exist, Aldous,” Maxwell growled—his first sign of contention. When the changeling leveled his blazing-green gaze at the shifter, Maxwell added a quick, firm, “Sir.”

With one of his signature rabid snarls, Aldous spun in a tight circle, grabbing greasy fistfuls of his slicked-back dark-green hair, then returned to his pacing. “We need to find these motherfuckers and make them pay! No one comes after me inmyhouse like this. Do you understand?”

No one said a word, including Maxwell.

Only then did Aldous seem to realize he’d had one of his little meltdowns in front of the entire organization—the private task force under his twenty-four-seven command.

From what Rebecca could gather, most of them had made it down here even before Aldous had bothered to show his face.

So where had the changeling been before all this?

Blinking quickly, Aldous turned back toward Maxwell and tossed a hand in the shifter’s direction.

“Well?” he barked. “What are we gonna do about it now? Why is everyone just standing here? The armory’s over there! I want a weapon in everyone’s fucking hand, and then I want every sorry son of a bitch in this building to start looking for the morons trying to bring me down!

“And then, ohthen, I’m gonna show the little pricks what happens when somebody messes withmyshit inmyfuckinghouse! They won’t get away with this. I can promise you that! I want their heads! Let’s go!”

A rousing battle cry.

It just came from the wrong leader.

A stark lack of movement among the gathered magicals greeted Aldous in response. For his everyday obliviousness, he was particularly quick to pick up on no one immediately jumping to follow his every command.

With his green eyes wide and flashing furiously in the garage’s low overhead light, he spun around once, twice, three times, searching the multiple dozens of faces all staring back at him. Then he stormed towardMaxwell again as if theshifterhad set this whole thing up on purpose.

Rebecca almost laughed. If only it had been Maxwell.

Then again, she didn’t know a thing about where he’d been while she’d hidden away in her room over the last twenty-four hours. Could Maxwell have shown up at the rebellion’s next secret meeting she’d missed on purpose and taken over from there?

Wouldsheget the boot afterward, just like Aldous?

Or maybe this whole “mystery attack” on the compound had been the shifter’s plan all along…

“What’s going on here?” Aldous snarled. “Get them moving, Hannigan!”

He whirled back toward the rest of Shade again, his entire face twisted into a tightly pinched scowl as he hopped around like a drunken curse-weaver whose threads had just backfired.

“Get your weapons! I want every useless fuck in this place with a firearm in his hands and whatever the hell else we keep down here. Now! Why isn’t anyone moving?”

Again, none of the active operatives moved to obey. Maxwell, however, nodded at their leader one more time. “We already opened the armory. Everyone loyal to Shade is armed and ready to defend against this threat.”

The shifter had the balls to break his stance for the first time and slowly turn his head just enough in Rebecca’s direction that those silver eyes of his flashed beneath the low lights as they settled directly on her face.

Dammit, what was hedoing?

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