Page 98 of Elven Lies

“When’s the recovery team supposed to be here?” she asked.

His eyes widened before he nodded toward something over her shoulder. “Now. And right on time.”

Rebecca turned to see four Shade vehicles, two of them recently purchased with the task force’s newly inherited funds, slowing along the shoulder as they reached the field before turning in to join Rebecca and her teams.

At least this was coming together easily enough that she had no viable reason to say no.

“Okay. We’re gonna have to pivot a little on this one. Get some food out to these prisoners, and I want a running list of every civilian who not only wants to hit back tonight but who’s physically capable of it. I’m not putting anyone in harm’s way if they can’t even stand, no matter how badly they want to be there.”

Maxwell dipped his head. “We might have more volunteers than you think.”

“Good thing I trust you to assess who can handle another fight and who can’t, then choose as many operatives on the rescue team as you think we can spare to come with us. We move out at zero two thirty.”

“Consider it done.”

The shifter set his jaw so tightly, she wondered if she’d taken it too far and made a call with which he strongly disagreed.

But then he leaned toward her again, his closeness sending blazing shivers of energy rippling down her face and the front of her body as his silver eyes centered on her. He opened his mouth, closed it again as if reconsidering, then looked like he was about to reach for her before thinking better of it.

Instead, he set a hand on her shoulder.

The normally reassuring gesture sent a jolting shock of warmth and weight and tingling frenzy rippling through her, as if his hand on her shoulder had taken full control. Rebecca leaned into him, pulled by that ever-present thread connecting them in ways and for reasons still aggravatingly unknown.

She thought she felt his grip tightening, fingers digging in with increasing pressure as his silver eyes flashed at her.

Everything around them disappeared beneath the private world suddenly formed from his hand on her shoulder as their gazes locked, the darkness and the need and something ancient and unknown calling to Rebecca.

Calling to them both now. She could feel it.

For those brief seconds, nothing else had ever or would ever exist.

Then the pressure of Maxwell’s grip relaxed slightly, and when he spoke, Rebecca could almost feel the enormous effort of anchoring himself here in the present, with everything else they still had to do.

“The right way,” he murmured.

Rebecca could only nod, nearly incapacitated by this thing between them, until Maxwell removed his hand from her shoulder—slowly, shakily, as if he couldn’t bear to let go.

As soon as he did, the rest of the world came flooding back into her awareness. The moment was over. The present had returned, and with it, Rebecca’s ability to breathe.

Which she forced herself to do calmly and with just as much effort when the shifter stepped past her to her orders to the other teams and Harkennr’s rescued victims.

The shooting pain of his absence, of their separation, felt like a blade slicing through her chest—an unbearable agony that lasted a fraction of a second and left her sucking in a sharp breath through her teeth before pulling herself back together.

She couldn’t afford to feel anything more than that. They had a warehouse to infiltrate, more civilians to liberate, and three competent, skilled, and far more resourced Shade teams to lead through the whole thing. The Roth-Da’al couldn’t afford any weakness tonight.

Rebecca couldn’t yet afford to admit that weakness might also have started to become a strength.

The four Shade vehicles rerouted to this new last-minute breach op rolled to a stop on the wide gravel shoulder off the cracked, pothole-strewn side road leading straight ahead into the darkness.

In the distance, the bright floodlights mounted on the building’s external walls marked their target destination like a blinding bullseye in the night. Half a dozen streetlamps illuminated soft yellow pools scattered across the front lot.

From this distance, it was impossible to see anything else with the naked eye, but Rebecca and her teams now had updated weapon systems with advanced scopes to confirm every word from afar.

They also had Maddie, her knowledge of this previously unknown facility for storing newly acquired civilians just likethem, plus five other kidnapping victims to corroborate every detail the witch shared with the Shade teams.

Six of thirty wasn’t much, but it was more than Rebecca and her teams would have had on their own. Their intel, if accurate, would be invaluable once the fighting started.

Rebecca could have picked apart every detail of what Maddie and the others described to her teams, but there just wasn’t time. Not only that, but she realized with a level of ironic wonder that she trusted them. Their information and instructions. Their willingness to fight against those who had abducted, held, and abused them before they ever even made it to Harkennr’s base.

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