Page 42 of Elven Shadow

Rebecca’s heart skipped a beat when she caught sight of Maxwell and the four other guys making up the brunt of his security team standing around the outer edges of the gathered operatives. Ifhewas here, everything she was planning might already be doomed.

The shock of that possibility wiped her mind clean of literally everything else.

The next second, her self-awareness crashed back into her, and she abruptly snapped her gaping mouth shut with a sharp click of her teeth.

Maxwell’s silver eyes narrowed at her before he inevitably looked away to focus his attention on the matter at hand.

She couldn’t stop staring at him, though.

Dissension in the ranks, huh?

The shifter Head of Security was the absolute last person she would have expected to see present for something like this, whateverthisactually was.

To be honest, Rebecca had been counting on Aldous’s predictability and the very high likelihood that he’d ordered Maxwell to be her anonymous shadow—to spy on her, to report literally everything back to the very tippy-top of Shade’s command with unflinching loyalty and without question.

But here he was, already stationed here in the library with the rest of them to begin this thing they’d all gathered to do, and he’d beaten Rebecca to it.

If it were anyone else, she would have scratched them off the list of potential spies, simply because a good shadow stayed on their target from behind.

A truly exceptional spy, however, would have been two steps ahead of her at all times, just to throw her off the scent.

Fair enough. The shifter was obviously capable of that.

But if Maxwell was the one Aldous wanted watching her day in and day out, he ran a hell of a risk by showing his face at this meeting, especially with noguarantee Rebecca would show up after him, seeing as she hadn’t officially been invited.

Shade’s other operatives here didn’t seem to think that was much of an issue.

Rebecca folded her arms and leaned gently sideways against the end of the closest bookcase. This was going to be interesting.

Maxwell’s gaze locked onto hers again, this time lingering longer than a fleeting glance. His eyes, normally cold and unreadable, seemed to hold a challenge now—and something darker. More intense.

A hot flush crept up the sides of Rebecca’s neck, but she refused to look away first. She wouldn’t give himthatsatisfaction.

“All right. Everyone knows why we’re here. So I’m gonna skip past all the bullshit and just get down to it.”

Rebecca’s gaze was instantly drawn toward the center of the circle and the sound of that new voice.

Not entirely new, though.

She recognized it a second before the crowd of gathered members parted slightly and a short mage shouldered his way through the close quarters to stumble briefly into the open space at the circle’s center.

And he still wore that damn leather trench coat.

She pressed her lips together, fighting back the urge to laugh.

Leonard, of all people, had been the one to set this up.

Surprise, surprise.

Six months definitely hadn’t been long enough to get an accurately detailed read on even the Shade members with whom she’d spent the most time so far, which had been by necessity during all their shared missions. Still, Rebecca never would have pegged the mage as the type to lead a secret meeting in the compound library.

Good for him.

“We have a serious fucking problem,” Leonard continued. “Everybody here knows it. And if you’re here, you also know something needs to be done about it.”

He turned in a slow circle, swapping gazes with each magical gathered around him for half a second before moving on to the next.

Then his gaze landed on Rebecca.

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