Page 37 of Elven Prince

The searing heat burning up from Rebecca’s core and spreading in seconds through all her limbs didn’t belong to her. The sensation washis.

He was about to shift.

Refusing to break from his gaze, she summoned a crackling orb of crimson attack magic in her hand and gave it an extra little boost until it doubled in size, casting violent red light across both their faces like blood spatter. It filled the air with the overwhelming scent of ozone and intensely concentrated magic.

Rebecca held the crackling, hissing orb out to the side, just high enough to ensure he saw it in his periphery. By now, he had to know she would use it on him if she felt the need.

She’d done it before, and she would do it again if the shifter didn’t back the hell down from this one.

“Have I made myself clear, shifter?” she murmured, her voice dropping into its own promise of violence and pending consequences Shade’s Roth-Da’al was well within her rights to dish out, especially now.

In the corner, the new guy let out a terrified squeak, slipped out of his chair and onto the floor, and crawled beneath his desk.

Whit slowly rolled himself backward in his chair until it bumped against the far wall.

Rick hardly breathed.

In the brief seconds of squaring off against Maxwell like this—her Head of Security, her acting lieutenant in all but name, the single person on this task force capable of rivaling her as an equal she used to think she could trust—a furious urge overwhelmed her like never before.

The urge to put him in his place far more than she already had. To prove she could destroy him with a single flick of her wrist and a quick thrust of her Bloodshadow spear. Not to kill him, no. Not to consume him.

This sudden urge whispered to her, egged her on, taunted her with false solution to her biggest problems.

Tempting her to hurt him. To tear him down. To break the lone shifter who dared speak to her like that, just because shecould.

The urge was so strong, Rebecca hardly had time to recognize it as the exact opposite of what she really wanted.

She barely had time to stop herself from acting on such a violently cruel impulse, but she did stop herself.

She might not have been able to if Maxwell had pushed her again by a fraction of an inch. Fortunately for them both, he didn’t.

Instead, he looked like he’d just woken from a dream. Or a nightmare.

The violent strobing of his silver eyes slowed and quieted again into their normal dark-silver glow. His shoulders drew back and down with visible effort, either twitching or trembling when he heaved a massive sigh. That exhale seemed to draw all the fight right out of him along with it, the tautness in his every muscle seeping away in seconds.

He completed the transformation from homicidal shifter investigating an attack to a weary, exhausted, confused man towering over Rebecca and blinking at her.Staringat her, as if he had no idea how she’d gotten there. He looked completely beaten, worn down, and returned to his right mind all at once.

The change was almost instantaneous.

At first, Rebecca prepared herself for some other nasty trick or backhanded move he’d kept in his back pocket as a last resort.

But when Maxwell sighed again, cleared his throat, and forced down the last of his pride, she knew it was over. Even before his brows drew together into the most painfully mortified expression she’d ever seen.

Seeing it onhisface only made it that much worse.

“Perfectly clear,” he muttered, his voice raw with bottled emotion and coarse, as if the words clung to his throat and physically pained him. “I understand.”

Then he broke away from the challenge of Rebecca’s unwavering stare, averted his gaze, and dipped his head. “Excuse me.”

He said it so softly, in such a low tone, she thought she might have imagined it until she heard the tremble behind his words.

Before she could offer a response, Maxwell stepped around her, burst through the open Security-office door, and stormed down the hall. When he disappeared from view, she realized she couldn’t even hear his footsteps.

She stood there a moment longer, watching the hallway in case he decided to come back. He didn’t.

She could have tried to guess what had gotten to him, but the truth seemed fairly obvious. Shade’s Head of Security—with one of their own operatives beaten and locked in the back of his own vehicle on a supply run right under their noses, without any shred of evidence left behind to pin such a crime on any of their enemies—had found himself feeling useless and powerless to either avenge the attack or ensure it didn’t repeat itself.

He'd lost all control.

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