Page 77 of Elven Crown

Another growl escaped him, but this time, he spun away from Rowan, dismissing the elf entirely, and—though it wasn’t necessary—raised his voice for everyone to hear. “Somebody get the van. Try to find the keys to one of these trucks. We’re taking the cargo with us.”

It was a fair call and made perfect sense, but the other operatives were too disoriented by his sudden change of mood to switch gears as quickly as Maxwell had. Which meant they all gawked back at him, their expressions ripe with surprise and dumbstruck confusion.

Was Rebecca really the only one who had seen both sides to their Head of Security?

When no one responded or moved, she stepped forward and added, “You heard him. Let’s move.”

That got the others jumping into action again. The team scattered. Nyx popped in and out around the docks in search of a set of keys they could use to commandeer one of the remaining transport vehicles. Then the others got to work on the cleanup.

For the most part, that entailed rounding up the griybreki corpses scattered all over the docks to dispose of them to leave behind the least amount of inexplicable evidence. Mainly for humans.

Rowan was the only one who stood back to watch for the first few minutes before he approached Leonard and Diego hauling a griybreki corpse between them. “Anything I can do to help?”

They stopped to acknowledge him, the griybreki swinging carelessly by its limbs in their grasps. Leonard snorted. “Damn, Blackmoon. You’re something else, aren’t you?”

Rowan grinned. “Is that a compliment?”

Leonard looked all around the docks, then shrugged. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Look at all this,” Diego said, nodding toward the bodies lying everywhere. “I thought it was insane to have just the one elf, but now we’ve got two. And who knew you guys were sousefulin a battle like this?”

“Right?” Leonard chuckled, and they continued their hobbling walk with the griybreki corpse dangling between them. “This whole time, I thought elves were just into a bunch of tree-hugging hippie shit and loved spells in the woods or whatever.”

Diego snorted and shook his head.

Rowan turned slowly around to watch them as they passed, then chuckled. “That certainly is an image.”

Then he took off across the docks to find for himself the best way to pitch in.

Apparently, that was all it took to diffuse the tension left over by unresolved issues between Maxwell and Rowan. And after, Leonard, Diego, Titus, and Nyx needed nothing else from Shade’s newest elf beyond the fact that he was already here.

Rebecca listened to the ensuing conversations as the team worked, amused to find the majority of them centered around Rowan’s acrobatic abilities and the way he’d taken out the giant griybreki with a laser gun when no one else could.

Rowan soaked up the attention, just like she’d known he would. His last-minute move to bring down the operator of the magical laser hadn’t stemmed from a genuine desire to ensure the team’s safety. Not in the same way Rebecca would have done such a thing. Or even Maxwell, if he’d succeeded in his attempts.

Knowing this, however, made cut Rebecca’s amusement short beneath her quickly growing exasperation.

Rowan Blackmoon didn’t do anything for purely selfless reasons. He’d joined Shade because he wanted something from Rebecca, which she had so far refused to give him. So he’d turned his focus to her team instead. Not because he wasgenuinely interested in them as individuals but because he wanted something from them too now.

Most likely to ingratiate himself withthemso he could use these magicals later to get what he really wanted from Rebecca.

23

She couldn’t very well warn them, these magicals she cared for, against Shade’s newest member. Not if she wanted them to keep believing Rowan had been a stranger to everyone when he’d walked through Shade’s front doors.

But her team tonight sure enjoyed his company, laughing and joking as they worked together to clean up the evidence of their short but intense skirmish with the Edwardo’s griybreki.

At least Rowan was pitching in with this part of the mission.

The next time Rebecca spotted Maxwell, he stood on the other side of the fourth transport truck at the edge of the docks, where he’d amassed a pile of griybreki corpses at the water’s edge. At first, she assumed his perpetual scowl were just another way he exhibited intense concentration on his current task. She’d seen it before.

But every time the docks echoed with a new round of laughter while the rest of the team worked together, Rowan among them, the shifter stiffened. Sometimes, he even gritted his teeth againstthe sound, occasionally snarling in response, but always looking more pissed off than he had seconds before.

The rest of the team might have already accepted Rowan Blackmoon among their ranks. Hell, the entire task force had shown up for The Striving to cheer him on. But their Head of Security clearly remained unconvinced.

Rebecca headed toward Maxwell and his pile of bodies before she’d even considered what she wanted to say to him, if anything. By the time she realized she didn’t have a plan for starting a conversation, she’d already joined the shifter. Turning back without a word wasn’t exactly the best way to get him to open up.

He gave no indication of noticing her, even when he turned around to grab another griybreki off the ground and drag it back with him toward the pile, though he growled when another burst of laughter rang out from the others. This time, the sound was joined by someone pounding a fist on the side of a shipping container as part of the joke.

---