Page 142 of Elven Shadow

Maxwell’s scowl returned, his silver eyes flashing again before he dipped into a surprisingly low bow for such a large, heavy box tucked under his arm. Then he sneered at her as if he meant to attack her the next second. “As mygloriousRoth-Da’al commands.”

If she’d been any closer to him, Rebecca was sure she would have found herself dripping with all the extra sarcasm spewing from the shifter’s mouth.

Normally, she greatly appreciated sarcasm in others who knew how to use it to its most debilitating and obnoxious effect. Right now, though, coming from him, after everything that had just happened…

Shereallydidn’t like it.

“You know what?” she snapped without thinking. “Aldous might’ve demanded that kinda thing from you. All this…overindulgent fealty. But in case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m not him.”

Maxwell straightened fully, still staring at her.

He took so long to reply, she thought she might have finally stumped him.

Did he really still think, even after her last few days in the infirmary, that Aldous’s overthrow, his death, and Rebecca’s subsequent assent to the position of Shade’s commander had all been part of some secret plan of hers?

Was this what jealousy looked like on her Head of Security?

If he was so intent on taking his job seriously, Maxwell wouldn’t dare lift a finger against her now. Not while she held this position.

Maybe if she pushed him hard enough, he might snap and tip his hand.

Instead, though, he ignored everything she’d just told him, masking all his thoughts and emotions with another unreadable blankness across his features.

That only made her want to get a reaction out of him that much more—something,anythingwould be better than this.

“Is there anything else you require of me, Roth-Da’al?” he hissed.

Rebecca shifted sideways in the armchair and propped an elbow on the armrest to run her fingers along the underside of her chin, taunting him in any way she could. “Just the appropriate show of respect toward your superiors.”

The echoing thump of the box in his arms smacking back down to the floor almost made her jump.

But then Maxwell surged toward her, his scowl deepening and his silver eyes flashing that alluring light of theirs. He stopped right in front of Rebecca’s chair, incredibly close, and bent over to level his face with hers as he snarled again. “Just to make this perfectly clear between us, Ididn’tvote for you.”

Rebecca wanted to laugh in his face, but that dark surge erupting between them, the pull toward this damn shifter she couldn’t seem to resist or turn off, only allowed her a smirk instead. “Any particular reason for that?”

“You haven’t been around nearly long enough to warrant the kind of confidence everyone else has in you, elf. And most people show their true colors in a place like this after the first few weeks. A month, tops. I made it clear there were better options, but that seems to be a radical opinion lately.”

That was the most he’d said to her since she’d joined Shade.

Now that he was being so candidly honest and forthright, while they both knew he could no longer act against her now that the task force had made her his new boss, this whole thing was just perfectly amusing now.

Plus, she really liked how close he’d leaned in in his attempts to intimidate her—the new details she could make out now within the glow of his silver eyes; the twitching muscles in his jaw; the way he pursed his lips, as if he were trying not to break into a smile, though that would have been quite the surprise.

“Better options, huh?” she replied, then realized she was staring at his lips and forced her gaze away to look him in the eye. “You mean likeyou, Wolfie?”

Maxwell loomed even closer and growled deep in his throat—the kind of growl that hinted at more animal than man. “Right now, there’s nothing for me at the top of anything. I don’t want that seat. I don’t envy you for sitting in it. You haven’tearnedit yet. But the huur-akíl is the huur-akíl.”

In that moment, as he leaned down toward her, their faces so close in his attempt to take her self-confidence down a peg, Rebecca found herself recognizing something in the shifter that she’d seen before so many times in herself.

The steadfastness. The willingness to do whatever it took to achieve a goal. The loneliness.

She almost felt sorry for him. What must a militant shifter like Maxwell Hannigan have had to do to be cast out of his pack? To be exiled with no possibility of return? To make him devote his life to an organization like Shade, which was probably as close to a pack as he was likely to get now?

It must have been something unspeakably terrible.

No wonder he had trust issues.

Rebecca recognized that too.

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