Page 160 of Elven Shadow

“Your orders,” she said. “Yeah, we’ve established that. I get it. Someone could’ve gotten their hooks into him any time you weren’t around.”

Maxwell’s jaw muscles worked furiously as he glared at the package between them.

Was that a hint of embarrassment in the uncomfortable twitch across his face? Disappointment, maybe, in his own shortcomings?

It was certainly something she could use to her advantage under the right circumstances.

Trying not to smile at this potential future leverage, Rebecca took a chance on it. “But tell me. Just how many timesdidyou let Aldous give you the slip so he could go running off on his ownsomewhere?”

His jaw stopped clenching but now he just ground his teeth together in one endless flex before slowly meeting her gaze again.

A thrill of charged tension—of both warning and inviting challenge—prickled across Rebecca’s shoulders with that look in his eyes. Was she finally finding the shifter’s buttons?

“Again,” he growled, “no oneletAldous do anything.”

“Oh, totally. He was a shit leader. We know that too. But if he got himself mixed up with someone else who could keep tabs on hisvitalsigns, I mean… Come on. That’s pretty impressive, don’t you think?”

He snorted but didn’t provide her with an answer.

“Now I’m starting to see why you take your job so seriously with me around,” she added with a smirk.

“You’re not Aldous,” he said.

“No truer words, Max.” Rebecca stood to reach across the desk for the package. “Now let’s see what kind of congratulatory gift our mystery sender packed away in this—Hey.”

With a frustrated huff, Rebecca smacked both hands down on the desk, the package now once more out of reach because Maxwell had just snatched it away to start opening it for her instead.

“I’msorry,” she added, scowling at him. “We’re seeing the same thing, right? That this thing’s addressed to the new Roth-Da’al and not the Head of Security?”

He produced a blade seemingly from nowhere and used it to open her first official package as commander anyway.

“It’s for your own good,” Maxwell muttered, deftly slicing away at tape and glued cardboard alike.

For her own good.

First it was poison tests on all her food, then keeping other Shade members from getting remotely close enough for any form of conversation, and now he had to open hermailfor her too?

Would he start doing her laundry and inspecting her toilet paper every time she had to go?

“That’s getting real old, real fast,” she grumbled.

His blade disappeared somewhere on his person again before he ripped open the box the rest of the way with a loud snap. “You’ll get used to it.”

Or she could just let the homunculus poison take over completely and kill her so she wouldn’t have to deal withthisanymore.

With one more quick tug, Maxwell has the package open and let the cardboard flaps fall away from each other before he peered inside.

“Excellent.” Rebecca cocked her head. “We didn’t explode, and nothing popped out of there to kill me. Sonowcan I have my—”

“Not until I’ve cleared it.”

Ofcoursethe first thing he did was to give the package’s contents a good sniff. Rebecca really should have expected it at this point, just like she should have expected it when he reached into the box as well to pull out its contents so he could also inspect them more closely one at a time.

The concept of privacy and personal ownership apparently no longer existed for her new position. That wasn’t going to last much longer, even if it was the one and only change she made to the task force from the inside as its leader.

Scowling at the shifter’s unwavering dedication, Rebecca slumped back down in the chair and relented to letting him do his thing. Fighting him on it wouldn’t get her anywhere. With this shifter, she had to pick her battles.

When he seemed convinced no residual threat lingered within the box or its contents, the first item Maxwell handed her was a small stone trinket he’d unwrapped from within a strip of parchment paper bound in a piece of light brown twine. “This…doll mean anything to you?”

---