Page 183 of Elven Shadow

“On purpose!” She sent her second sphere of battle magic cracking into the bushes.

With a yelp, Maxwell moved through the wildly trembling brambles. “What’swrongwith you? We’re on the same side!”

“Not when you’re cowering in the fucking shrubbery!” she shouted back, summoning one more attack. “Do I have to set the whole thing on fire and smoke you out?”

“Unbelievable. I was doing my job, and you—Hey!”

Rebecca’s third magical blast into the bushes cut him off, and she snarled as she summoned a fourth.

“Jesus, all right. Fine! Juststop!”

The brambles trembled violently, dropping shredded leaves and whole clumps of heavy, ripe blackberries before Maxwell finally stumbled through the thickly twining vines and branches and into the open.

She’d already stormed toward the edge of the bushes to meet him there, snuffing out her battle magic to clench her fist instead.

When the shifter’s face came into view, Rebecca let her fist fly into it. Her knuckles cracked against the side of his jaw.

He reeled back with a grunt. “What the—”

“Yousounded their breach alarm,” she snarled, hardly feeling the sting in her fist as she cocked it back for another swing. “Youalerted the whole damn base. I had tostopyou from running snout-first into that prison teeming with Harkennr’s soldiers, and then you make mechase you down?”

She swung again, channeling all her anger and annoyance and admittedly some still-existing fear into her second blow aimed at theshifter’s face.

Maxwell reacted faster than she’d thought possible, his arm moving in a blur she hardly saw before he clamped a hand around her wrist and caught her punch two inches from his chin.

The instant flare of tingling energy and warmth mixing with her burning rage made Rebecca freeze even as she scowled at him.

His hold on her tightened, and his eyes flashed with warning silver as he growled. “Istronglysuggest you stop trying to fight me, Roth-Da’al.”

Screw him.

Rebecca couldn’t fight him the way she wanted. Not without revealing the true source of her power, which would only make him question her that much more. As long as Maxwell insisted on trailing her at every turn and hovering over her every move, she had to keep acting like any other elf who probably could have matched Maxwell Hannigan in speed and strength but would have been hard-pressed to overtake him as easily as she knocked everyone else to the ground.

Dammit, she couldn’t even beangrywithout holding back.

So instead, she let another snarl burst from her lips as she glared at him and let herself play his game. “That’s a two-way street,shifter.”

She knew the second she said it that she shouldn’t have. Not like that. But what else was she supposed to do? She couldn’t hurt him—at least not the way she liked to think would have made her feel better about the way he’d ruined her night.

So she’d gone with trying to tear him down for something he couldn’t help or control?

Not very commander-like, was it?

Maxwell narrowed his eyes, then released his grip on her wrist the same second Rebecca tried to jerk it out of his grasp.

Without a word, the shifter slipped away from her to storm across the surprisingly private back yard of the closest trailer home.

Buck naked.

By the time she thought she remembered what she’d been trying to say, Maxwell had already walked away from her toward a clothesline hanging yards away from the closest trailer home, completely oblivious to his own nakedness.

Either that or he was deliberately trying to get under her skin. And unfortunately for Rebecca, it was working.

She clenched her fists and ground her teeth as she glowered after him, reminding herself yet again that she’d spent way too much time watching the shifter’s bare ass as he walked away from her instead of focusing on their budding argument and all the valid, valuable points she still wanted to make.

“You know what?” Maxwell stopped in front of the backyard clothesline and hardly paused to consider his options before yanking random items off the strung rope. “I don’t even know why I bother with you. I should just let you do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

“You won’t hearmeargue with that,” she snarled.

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