Page 1 of Elven Prince

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“The war is never truly over.”

For the first time in her life, Rebecca Bloodshadow was starting to realize how true that worn adage from her old life in the Bloodshadow Court really was.

Especially now that it no longer applied only toher—on the run, making whatever moves she saw fit in order to protect herself.

No. Now it applied to Shade and every member of the task force so quickly and unexpectedly thrust into her care and under her command.

They might have won the last underhanded battle at Harkennr’s warehouse of abducted civilians meant to supply the bastards’ soulless experiments. Barely. But this was far from over.

Not just with the warlock Kordus Harkennr, either.

This morning, Rebecca sat at the desk in her second-story office at Shade Headquarters, poring over all the new intel reports Rick had delivered half an hour ago.

She’d asked him and his team to keep an eye out for anything—information that could either give Shade a one-up moving forward or come back to bite them in the ass. The printed reports scattered across the desk in front of her covered nearly every other threat currently in Shade’s sights.

Surveillance write-ups followed Eduardo and his griybreki army, though their movement had apparently all but come to a standstill over the last several weeks. For however addlebrained Eduardo was, he’d proven himself almost a match for Aldous, all things considered. The likelihood of the arms dealer lashing out at Rebecca and her task force for retribution grew by the day.

Then there was the new player on the board, so far known only as Big Boss—because Rowan had eliminated any possibility of quickly gaining more information the second he’d broken the orcs’ necks right outside the Level 5 Nexus vault the day they’d found Aldous’s stash.

No telling how long it would take this Big Boss to put the pieces together of what had happened, but hewouldfind Rebecca eventually. And Shade.

Though Aldous had left Shade in tatters and with very little information or resources to prepare them, Rebecca was certain he’d amassed more than a sufficient paper trail for his “partners”, now left in the dark since his death.

It was only a matter of time before they followed that trail back to Shade. Back to the compound. Back to the elf who’d taken command after the changeling’s un-mourned, though admittedly untimely, death.

After Big Boss came reports of the sadistic mastermind behind the abduction of Shade’s transport convoy that had put Nyx out of commission for weeks, while Diego, Titus, and Burke had served as hostages and bait at the abandoned amusement park weeks ago.

So far, despite all the intel and Rick’s meticulous reports, Rebecca still couldn’t find a connection between any of these criminal groups in Chicago. Including Harkennr. It seemed impossible that so many gangs and crime lords and wannabe magical badasses had popped out of the woodworks all at once now that Rebecca commanded the task force.

Then again, that could have simply been the result of taking Aldous Corriger out of the picture for good.

He’d left one hell of a mess behind—whatever he’d done while in command—and now Rebecca was left to pick up in the pieces.

And Shade had to deal with the consequences in an entirely new way.

Who else had Aldous aligned with in his secrecy during his reign of error? The possibilities were endless.

The pressure of figuring it all out in time to protect her task force from the fallout of one epic mistake after another now bore down on her far more than she’d anticipated. Rebecca’s resilience had assisted her through countless difficulties over several centuries in this world, but never before had those difficulties stacked on top of each other quite like this.

The cherry on the nightmare sundae, though, was Rowan Blackmoon.

Go figure.

He’d disappeared after the battle at Harkennr’s warehouse after lending the use of his magic as the backup fuel Rebecca’s had needed to bring her Head of Security back from the brink of death. After that, Rowan still hadn’t returned to the compound.

He hadn’t attempted to contact Rebecca in any fashion. He hadn’t made an appearance anywhere in Chicago, as far as the Intel team could gather.

For all intents and purposes, Rowan had wiped himself off the map without a trace.

That should have come as a marvelous relief.

It wasn’t.

The more time passed since his disappearance, the more this particularly dangerous loose end worried Rebecca.

Rowan could have been anywhere now, doing anything. She couldn’t begin to guess where he’d gone, what he was up to now, who he’d spoken to, or with whom he’d planned to align himself.

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