Page 188 of Elven Shadow

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 haveyoutwo 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 hadactuallyhappened.

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 whatyou’redoing?”

“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 myteam’sjob.”

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!”

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