Page 57 of Elven Crown

The rest of the team burst out laughing..

Even Rowan seemed amused as he shrugged before climbing into the back. “What better way to get to know my new team, right?”

“Oh please,” Rebecca murmured, closing her eyes when she reached the front passenger-side door. She steadied herself with another deep breath, then figured she didn’t have to decide what to do about the Blackmoon Elf right now, or even before they completed this mission.

Then she opened the door, climbed inside, and plopped down into the seat right next to Maxwell, who had automatically taken his role as their driver because he always drove.

She didn’t mean to slam the door shut and automatically turned toward the shifter, expecting a forthcoming remark from him about doors and destroying their vehicles before the warranty was up.

This time, he didn’t even seem to have noticed.

Because he focused on the rearview mirror, glaring into it at the reflection of Rowan, settling into whatever available space he could find among the rest of the team.

So she silently strapped on her seatbelt just for fun, and when she felt Maxwell turning to look at her, she didn’t wait for him to talk. “I don’t wanna hear it. Just drive.”

He kept staring at the side of her face even while he started the engine, but he didn’t argue. After one more exasperated glance in the rearview mirror at whatever Rowan was up to in the back, Maxwell finally got them moving and drove the whole team out of Shade’s underground parking garage to head toward their target location at the Port of Chicago.

At first, Rebecca had expected things to get easier after she’d called them both out for being so petty with each other. After only a few minutes on the road, however, she couldn’t help thinking of everything that was now at stake for this team and for all of Shade.

So much had already shifted within the task force since their last real mission.BeforeRowan had shown up and gotten himself locked away in that holding room. She might have even been excited about this new op tonight.

After this team’s last skirmish with Eduardo and his griybreki soldiers, this was an excellent opportunity to clean up the epic mess Aldous had left behind.

But the farther they drove from Shade headquarters, the more the heavy, crippling grip of the knot in Rebecca’s gut tightened, and she couldn’t let it go.

She would have been excited, yes. She would have looked forward to something like this. But now Rowan was here, and his presence tainted everything.

If he kept acting like a damn child while they were on mission, he was more likely to throw the whole team off their game. Even worse, he couldn’t possibly know already how much that would make him like Aldous than he truly was.

Rowan was a good person. A great elf. An invaluable soldier. Rebecca knew all of this. But no one else did. So far, Rowan hadn’t lifted a finger to get to know the private task force he’d agreed to join in his attempts to get to her.

He had no idea how easy it would be for these operatives laughing with him in the back of their vehicle to turn on him the second they realized his apathy was just as dangerous to them as Aldous’s reckless insanity.

He had to stop making an ass of himself.

If the Blackmoon Elf made the wrong move without recognizing its potential for triggering a lot of dormant rage and resentment Shade hadn’t even begun to process after removing Aldous from command, Rebecca didn’t know if she could protect him from Maxwell or anyone else.

Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month—she didn’t know how long, but she did know it would happen. Therewouldcome a time when Rowan miss-stepped, or said the wrong thing one too many times, or got in the wrong magical’s face under the perfect combination of catastrophic variables.

Then the task force would turn against him, because he didn’t take any of this seriously. And when that time came, what bothered her more than anything else right now was that Rebecca didn’t know who she would choose to support or protect in that inevitable scenario.

Her best friend from an entire lifetime ago, or this task force she was never supposed to have been in charge of in the first place.

The task force that had become, in many ways, far more of a family than the one she’d left behind in the old world.

Fuck. She didn’t want to choose, but the more she turned it over in her mind, the more she convinced herself that toeing the line between both of these loyalties—between both versions of herself, past and present—would not remain an option for much longer.

Neither would maintaining the safety and anonymity she’d hoped to continue fostering here with Shade.

If it did come to that, and she had to choose Rowan or Shade—including Maxwell—that decision would change everything.

There were dozens of lives on the line, and they were all in her hands now. Meaning, if she chose wrong, she wouldn’t last very long at all, and she’d end up taking everyone else down with her.

How the hell was she supposed to do the right thing when the right thing had never done anything for her before?

18

Rebecca crouched in the darkness behind a stack of shipping containers at the Port of Chicago, tightening her grip around an augmented magitek assault rifle in both hands as she scanned the docks for signs of Eduardo’s enemy convoy.

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