Page 94 of Elven Crown

She was fully prepared to order it out of him, but he pulled it together to give her an answer.

“The elf,” he growled.

Rebecca couldn’t help but scoff. “Blackmoon?”

Maxwell’s features darkened even further with a flash of silver light behind his eyes. “I don’t trust him.”

“You don’t trustme, either. What else is new?”

The shifter either didn’t have a response or thought it was wiser to keep it to himself. Which was for the best.

Rebecca was tired and overwhelmed and annoyed with Rowan still. That didn’t make her the best conversationalist or the most level-headed.

Her rational mind understood this, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from reacting. Because now Maxwell was getting on her nerves again too.

“So you don’t deny it,” she continued. “You don’t trust me, either. And why is that? I’ve been wondering lately why you’d find it so hard to trust either of us, and the only thing I can come up with is that you’ve got some specific issue with elves in general.”

“I have a specific issue withthatelf. Because he wants something. You know it. I know it. There’s a reason he’s here. I don’t know what that reason is, and he hasn’t been forthcoming about it or anything else. But I don’t think his interests align with ours. Or, more specifically, with yours.”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure what to think of that. It sounded like Maxwell was trying to be on her side through this. To support her, even.

He was choosingherover something else—or someone else, in this case—a specific threat to her and Shade. At the moment, that happened to be Rowan Blackmoon.

She was so surprised by this change in him and his concern for her that she couldn’t find anything to say.

Instead, Rebecca felt herself filled with an overwhelming compulsion to open up to the shifter right here and spill her guts to him in the hallway. To tell him everything about her andher past, about who she was, what she had done to become this version of herself, and why.

She wanted him to know the truth. In a strange way, sharing with him that truth, unrestricted by her necessary secrets, felt like the perfect way to thank him for being on her side. For being willing to try to trust her.

No, it felt like theonlyway.

27

As soon as Rebecca recognized the compulsion for what it was, the need to reveal everything to Maxwell was overshadowed and drowned out by a heavy, frigid dread curdling in the pit of her stomach.

More terrifying than the thought of her enemies finding her here—more even than the thought of herfamilyfinding her—was the idea that shewantedsomeone to know her true self. Not Rebecca Knox of Chicago but Rebecca Bloodshadow of Xahar’áhsh.

She shouldn’t want that. Ever.

Rebecca had designed her entire existence on Earth to avoid wanting to share anything with anyone. Every decision she’d made had prioritized her solitude and anonymity, every action taken to keep her from getting close to anyone.

Why the hell would that change now? Because a shifter acted like he actually cared?

She couldn’t eliminate that desire for connection altogether, so shoving it back down where it belonged was the best alternative.

But the more she struggled against the unexpected urge to tell Maxwell everything, the stronger it became.

Not just the desire to finally reveal herself to someone she thought she could trust.

That physical pull between them strengthened as well.

She hadn’t seen the shifter move since they’d stopped in the hall, but now he loomed over her, that much closer. A vague ache appeared in her neck, which she realized she’d craned to look up into his silver eyes.

The truth was right there on her lips, ready and waiting to be shared. Ready to put Rebecca’s life in someone else’s hands.

Of everyone she’d met and appreciated and come to care for in this world, Maxwell Hannigan would have fallen low on the list of people she might have wanted to tell. But here they were.

She almost gave in, but centuries of running, decades of keeping her truth locked away inside herself, shared with no one, helped her regain her senses.

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