Page 110 of Elven Lies

Rebecca’s hyper-vigilance where the shifter was concerned forced her to turn back toward him. “What is it?”

“Just…” He tried to breathe through it. “I think…”

She must have been an open book in that moment as he gazed up at her. It visibly cost him an enormous effort to wipe most of the pain from his expression before he added, “I’ll be…fine. Eventually. You saw to that.”

Convinced he wasn’t in any more immediate danger, Rebecca squeezed his hand and looked over her shoulder, meaning to tell Rowan she shouldn’t have reacted that way. That they could talk when all this was well and truly over.

But Rowan was gone.

There was no sight of him amidst the battlefield, which she now realized had changed significantly since she’d left it to pull her Head of Security back from the brink of death.

A few sporadic pops of weapons fire cut through the air. They’d clearly reached the end of the battle. All the vehicles were abandoned. The inside of the warehouse had caught fire and continued to burn.

Miraculously, all of Harkennr’s forces stationed at this warehouse facility for storing his next shipments of abducted victims had been put down for good.

Most of the bodies littering the ground belonged to the enemy, though Rebecca recognized the horrified expressions of three civilians she could see from here who’d fallen in the fight, realizing only at the last second before death that they’d been rescued.

Now, the only activity around the battlefield came from Rebecca’s operatives. Some scoured the facility for gear and weapons to take back with them. Others searched for any civilians they might have missed in the chaos. The rest combed through the property for any potential evidence to help them pin down more of Harkennr’s facilities, resources, and plans they couldn’t have discovered on their own.

After all, they’d needed a witch named Maddie to tell them about this warehouse in the first place.

By the Blood, it was over. Shade had come out of it on the other side, with few injuries beyond Maxwell and—from what Rebecca gathered now—zero casualties.

She hoped it stayed that way.

Maxwell’s next sharp breath drew her attention right back to him again, even beneath the sound of Zane and Ben shouting for someone to go get the vehicles from down the road to start loading up the wounded.

Their words hardly registered. Now that she studied Maxwell again under the flickering light of the growing blaze still burning away inside the warehouse, nothing else existed but the two of them, the proof that he was still alive, and the tingling flare of energy surging through their clasped hands and racing up through her entire being.

Strangely, that unknown connection between them now somehow felt like her prize. The long-awaited recognition and validation of everything she’d been trying to do for Shade. For Maxwell. For herself.

“Hannigan!” Tig shouted somewhere behind her. “He’s over here! Let’s get him in first.”

“Roth-Da’al,” Maxwell muttered, his voice so much weaker now than it had been only a minute before.

He was barely conscious. She’d put him through the rigors of an intense Bloodshadow healing she’d only ever used on herselfbut once.Nobodycould have withstood that and jumped right back to their feet.

He still had plenty of recovery ahead of him. Only now, they both knew he’d pull through it.

“Don’t give me that Roth-Da’al shit,” she muttered, leaning down over him to make sure she heard whatever he said next. “You’re gonna be fine. You’ll see. I bet Zida only locks you up in the infirmary for a week. Two, tops.”

She huffed out a wry laugh that died when Maxwell’s eyelids fluttered, closing slowly as if they each weighed a hundred pounds, no matter how hard he fought to stay conscious.

“Youdid this,” he murmured, “and I owe you a debt.”

“You don’t owe me a damn thing.”

He licked his lips, his face quickly losing color from sheer exhaustion. “A debt I’ll spend the rest of my life repaying.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, still trying to keep the levity so she wouldn’t completely break down. “Who says I want that I-O-U?”

Even his next grunt as he fought to stay awake sounded weak, fading along with him.

“Rebecca…” He managed to squeeze her hand in his weak fingers.

The sound of her own name on his lips stole her breath completely. She clasped his hand with both of hers now before gently squeezing back. “We can hash all that out later, okay?”

“No…” His eyes fluttered shut and stayed closed.

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