Page 8 of Elven Crown

“You were supposed to interrogate him,” Maxwell snapped, “not throw around The Striving like it’s some kind of game any two-bit wannabe can start playing the second they come in off the streets!”

Time froze again as Rebecca’s steadfastness silently battled the will of this angry, lonely, dangerous shifter who also happened to be her second-in-command. Her Head of security. Her go-to guy for anything and everything the Roth-Da’al wanted to delegate onto someone else’s capable shoulders.

Why the hell was she just standing here letting him speak to her like this?

So she tried again. “It’s really not—”

“Now we knownothingabout him,” Maxwell spat, “but we have to accommodate him through The Striving anyway. If I’d known you were going to offer it to him—”

“And why shouldn’t I have made the offer?” Rebecca finally blurted, overcoming that strange hold that unknown darkness in him seemed to have over her at all the wrong moments. Coupled with the electrifying tingle of warmth and pressure and calling that overwhelmed her whenever the shifter was close, it was almost crippling.

“We have The Striving for a reason,” she continued, finally remembering how to stand up to him when he went off the rails like this. “And the challenge comes with its own failsafe. Why shouldn’t the elf get a chance to prove himself, too?”

“He’s an outsider,” Maxwell growled through clenched teeth.

Rebecca blinked slowly at him, hoping it looked more like the expression of someone who wouldn’t be swayed or intimidated than the look of someone who still couldn’t ignore the effects his presence had on her physical body.

“I was an outsider too when I first showed up.” Her voice had gone cold now, hard and steady. Nothing like the raging force of an almost undeniable pull between them only growing stronger the longer they stood here, squaring off in the hallway. “And in case you forgot, I was held in that exact same room when I first got here, just like every other member of this task force before they completed The Striving and proved their worth. That’s the whole point.”

“This is different.” His eyes blazed with an even fiercer silver light as he gritted his teeth and tried to stare her down. It only lasted two seconds before he pulled back.

Or at least it felt like he had. The intensity of him looming over her, boiling over with anger and exasperation, backed off enough for her to feel the change, even if Maxwell hadn’t physically backed off just yet.

“This is different,” he grumbled again.

“And how is that, exactly?”

“To start, I don’t remember you disarming wards and our entire security system before beating a dozen operatives to hell, just for fun.”

If she’d been speaking with anyone else right now, she would have laughed.

Rowan had chosen his own unique approach to entering Shade headquarters. That much was certain.

But Rebecca couldn’t even bring herself to smile now. None of this was funny.

“No.” She held his attention with her own unwavering gaze. “Ijust knocked on the front door, and I still got locked up for twenty-four hours first.”

Maxwell scoffed. “You should’ve let me interrogate him before anything else. Even before you spoke with him. Then we’d haverealanswers about this asshole to help us make the right call. But instead, you went straight to rewarding him before he’s even done anything worth rewarding!”

In lieu of shoving him away from her the way she wanted, just to get him out of her face, Rebecca took a single step backward and inhaled deeply through her nose.

The Thon-Da’al didn’t shove around her subordinates. Not this one, anyway.

“Trust me, Max,” she said, “you wouldn’t have gotten anything else out of him.”

“I didn’t get the chance.”

“And if youhad, it wouldn’t have mattered.” She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows, daring the shifter to keep arguing with her.

He seemed to realize this conversation wouldn’t change what had already happened. Rebecca hoped he could eventually cometo terms with the reality that questioning everything she did wouldn’t make either of their jobs any easier.

“Taking out a dozen operatives is only a fraction of what that elf’s capable of,” she added.

“How do you know what he’s capable of?” Maxwell’s gaze roamed across her face, flickering up and down and side to side before another half-snarl escaped him. “You know who he is. Don’t you?”

Dammit, why did her second in command have to be literally the most suspicious person on this planet?

Rebecca could use her position and the mask of certainty she’d perfected to an effective degree with literally everyone else in Shade. But Maxwell Hannigan had to be the one who consistently tried to see through her and her act.

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