Page 34 of Elven Shadow

She wasn’t going to wait for the Head of Security to act on his own, seeing as Aldous still wanted something from her. His final words of, “Get her the hell out of here,” most likely did not extend as far as the entire building, this world in general, or even existence as a whole.

She wasn’t on his Make Dead list, just his shitlist.

Not that being on anyone’s calendar of enemies to kill and obstacles to eliminate had made much of a difference. One way or the other, Rebecca was still here.

Now she just had to deal with the green-skinned idiot who’d dropped her between a rock and a hard place, A.K.A. a myth and an impossible ultimatum.

All because she’d saved his life and brought their team back from the brink of destruction while Aldous suffered the consequences of knocking himself unconscious.

Just one more reason to support her firm belief that doing the right thing—that sticking her neck out for others, especially those she didn’t know personally—was just a brilliant fucking way to screw up all her plans.

And yet, she’d done it anyway.

All of a sudden, Maxwell was walking beside her in the incredibly narrow hallway and growled, “What the hell wasthat?”

Rebecca slowed to look up at him and his perpetual scowl beneath those glowing, misty-looking silver eyes. “I know, right? Hey, thanks a lot for stepping in when shit gotreallyweird.”

With a gruff sigh, he clenched his jaw and stared straight ahead. “I wasn’t part of the conversation. That’s not my job.”

“If only that were a solid foundation for a decent argument,” she said.

“You said you had it. That you could handle it yourself.”

“Yeah, because no one felt the need to intervene,” Rebecca quipped. “Or to remind that piece of shit what appropriate superior-subordinate interaction looks like. I’m curious, though. When you see shit like that happening, is it just so shocking that you can’t bring yourself to move, or do you just like to stand there and watch?”

A low growl rose from his throat, and the next thing she knew, Rebecca had stopped short in the narrow hallway because the shifter now stood directly in front of her, his face almost as close up in hers as Aldous’s had been earlier.

His was definitely easier on the eyes and a whole hell of a lot more enticing, but still. Had no one in Chicago ever heard of personal space?

“This is the kinda shit that’s gonna get you killed,” he said. “This, right here.”

She held his silver gaze and slowly tilted her head, letting another smile twitch at the corners of her mouth. “Says the shifter who disappeared in the middle of a fight while everyone else was trying to keep our collective asses out of the fire.”

Maxwell blinked at her and took one of the tiniest steps backwards she’d ever seen. “That was different.”

Rebecca huffed out a laugh. “Okay, whatever helps you sleep at night, Max. From your complete lack of reaction duringthatmeeting, something tells me you’re sleeping like a baby. Good for you.”

She shouldered her way past him, bumping up against his hardened bicep as he crossed his arms.

Despite her technically bodychecking him, the shifter didn’t budge an inch.

Like a fucking tree, this guy.

A tree that could plant itself firmly in the safety of Shade’s HQ when everything was in order and the boss made disgustingly unwanted advances on certain Elven members who’d had far more experience in legit wartime battles than ninety percent of the magicals in this place.

But when it came to actual battles out there in the field, or the parking lots of abandoned apartment buildings, Maxwell the shifter was a fart in the wind.

Wherever he’d disappeared to while Rebecca and the rest of their team had tried not to die, he obviously feltsomethingabout it. And it wasn’t pride.

Any other day, Rebecca might have taken a special interest in that fun little mystery.

Right now, though, she had much more important things to occupy her time and her mental energy. Which meant leaving the shifter behind her in the dust without giving him an opportunity to clear up any misconceptions.

Not that Maxwell thought that was very important in the first place, clearly.

In a way the changeling couldn’t possibly understand, Aldous had unwittingly put her in an impossible position, and now Rebecca had to work on making the impossible possible just to maintain her own personal status quo.

Sure, maybe the Darkspawn really did exist. Maybe it wasn’t just a myth after all. If it was real, she could absolutely find it. That was, after all, one thing at which Rebecca Bloodshadow had excelled most of her life—finding things others couldn’t.

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