Page 161 of Elven Crown

Which only begged the question: What the hell would make the enemy pull back like that when the Shade team hadn’t once hit them with anything remotely powerful enough to warrant a retreat?

After shaking a combined layer of sawdust, shattered glass, and wood chips off the top of her boot, Rebecca moved cautiously down the steps off the front porch. She scanned the surrounding darkness, gripping her pistol tightly enough to feel marginally reassured by the weight of its presence in her hand.

If the circumstances called for it, though, she might have to pull out a few tricks slightly more powerful and effective than anything a simple magitek firearm could achieve.

Just not now, if she could help it. Not quite yet.

Maybe if she shared her thoughts, someone else might hop on board and tell her she wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

“I can’t shake the feeling we’re being herded into something,” she mused aloud. “Not just directed but specificallydrawn intosomething. Going where they want us to go and at a specific time. Like whoever’s behind this has wanted us right here, right now, this whole time.

“Like they want us to make it all the way to the end, still hopeful and feeling proud of ourselves, before they strip it all away right in front of us.”

“And there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” Whit murmured. The entire team stared at the warlock, who realized it secondslater and shrugged. “I mean, if we’re just throwing our feelings out there…”

“It feels too much like a trap,” Rebecca added.

Maxwell’s silver eyes flashed in the darkness when he met her gaze for half a second. “Of course it’s a trap. Why else would we be here?”

The way he said it made Rebecca’s stomach curdle and sink toward the center of the Earth.

However unlikely, it sounded like Maxwell Hannigan knew exactly what they’d just walked into, exactly what would be required of them, and exactly how they would fail.

It sounded like he’d known all along.

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The shock, betrayal, and indignant fury rising inside Rebecca was instantaneous, filling her body with the stifling heat of rage at the thought that this all could have been one giant mistake from the very beginning.

Could Maxwell have known what they would be walking into tonight, before they ever left the compound?

Could he really have had a darker part to play in this entire mission from the start?

It only took her another second to realize how quickly and effortlessly she’d fallen into suspecting the shifter, just like the day she’d stumbled upon the secret rebellion meeting in the compound’s library, without knowing whose side Maxwell Hannigan was on or where his loyalties truly lay.

But this was the same game she’d been playing with him the whole time, wasn’t it?

A game they’d made a private agreement to stop playing, for the sake of Shade itself.

Rebecca had wanted Maxwell to trust her without undue suspicion, or at the very least to trust her dedication to the job she hadn’t wanted but couldn’t refuse. Since then, he’d actively tried to give her a chance. She owed him the same courtesy, didn’t she?

If Rebecca had already proven herself and her willingness to do what it took for the task force she now commanded, Maxwell Hannigan had certainly done the same.

This setup in the abandoned amusement park very well could have been a trap, but the shifter’s only involvement in it was his desire to get their captured operatives out in one piece. Nothing more.

She had to believe that.

Otherwise, she’d spend all her energy watching him, questioning his motives with growing suspicion at his every move and decision. If she let that happen, this mission was dead in the water.

If she knew anything about him for certain, it was that Maxwell’s dedication and loyalty to the success and well-being of this task force was unquestionable.

So stop trying to make new problems where there aren’t any, she told herself.

“Knox?” The sound of Maxwell calling her name, even her fake name, whipped her back into the present.

Every member of the team stared at her, waiting for her command.

Rebecca blinked and turned toward the shifter. “Sorry. What was that?”

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