Page 11 of Elven Crown

It was impossible to tell which would rise victorious.

She couldn’t even tell if those two things were entirely separate, but it didn’t matter.

Her final words had done what they were supposed to do.

“Fine.” The word came out of him like a curse—or like pulling a stubborn piece of shrapnel out of his flesh.

The second it left his lips, though, the growing tension between them lightened.

Not all the way but enough for Rebecca to feel like she could breathe again.

Enough for her to be fairly sure the shifter had regained his senses too.

He knew she was right. The way he looked at her now told her he’d remembered the same thing she did.

They’d made each other an agreement earlier tonight, on their way back from the Old Joliet Prison before any of the chaos inside Shade headquarters had caught up with them. Before anynews of an elven prisoner held in the stockade had reached them.

Maxwell Hannigan had agreed to give her a chance as Shade’s commander and as someone he could try to trust—someone whose orders he could try to follow—because that was how things worked. Rebecca had agreed to let him do his job.

The two were not mutually exclusive. They had to work together if they were to improve the state of this task force with any lasting efficacy.

This was one of those moments where Maxwell needed to try.

When he finally tore his gaze away from her face, sighing heavily through his nose and shaking his head, the relief washing through her was an unexpected bonus.

She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to spell it out for him again so soon, to remind him of the temporary truce they’d entered, albeit more or less on a trial basis.

If they were each going to do their jobs, the shifter had to get off his high horse and give her enough space to do her best first, at the very least, before he blamed her for failing.

Apparently, this was what that looked like.

“But I won’t make any special accommodations for him,” Maxwell warned.

Well, this was a start. The shifter was relenting and deferring to her leadership. For now. Rebecca could work with that.

“I’d be severely disappointed if you did,” she replied.

He glanced up at her again with something she could have sworn bordered on a hint of embarrassment.

But then their little spat in the hallway came to an abrupt end when the same door to the security room Maxwell had exited opened again with a soft squeal of its hinges, and they were no longer alone.

“Oh. Um…” Rick froze in the hallway, looking quickly back and forth between Rebecca and Maxwell before he grimaced.

It was an unusual expression to see on the blackhorn. With his mottled red-and-black flesh and the barely visible nubs of spiked horns protruding from his bald head, that grimace looked more like its own kind of snarl. Rebecca was sure it would have driven off anyone else who didn’t know Rick as well as she did.

And she didn’t know him nearly as well as Maxwell did. Being Shade’s commander was changing that in record time.

“Should I…just go back and wait?” Rick asked, his hairless eyebrows drawing together in discomfort.

“No,” Rebecca told him with a nod. “We’re finished out here.”

“Oh, okay.” He gave Maxwell one more questioning look, but the Head of Security snorted and folded his arms.

At least he wasn’t openly defying her in front of their shared subordinates.

“Now that you’re here, though, Rick,” she said, “I’d like an update on everything else that’s happened tonight before Hannigan and I returned to the compound. And not the abridged version.”

“Right. Sure.” The blackhorn’s eyelids fluttered. He scrunched up his face, as if it physically pained him to remember the last several hours, then lowered the overly stuffed clipboard in his hand to abandon whatever task had called him from the security room. “Well, our system got flagged. Incoming intel tripped the alarm, and we just…weren’t around to hold it off until we confirmed it.”

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