Page 7 of Elven Prince

Rebecca forced herself to keep staring down through the window instead of meeting his gaze. “If you believe in that kinda thing. Then again, you’re a shifter. She’s not. That probably has more to do with it than anything else.”

“A good part of it, anyway. Nyx, however, didn’t haveyouto help her along through the worst of it. But I’m certainly gratefulIdid.”

She stiffened beside him and said nothing. She couldn’t even bring herself to move.

Maxwell hadn’t explicitly laid it out, but she knew he referred to the healing abilities she’d used to draw him back from death’s door that night. Her Bloodshadow healing. The type of magic no other elf should have possessed and no otherdidpossess, as far as the Agn’a Tha’ros Clans of Xahar’áhsh were concerned.

Just one of her power’s various facets, highly sought after by countless different factions and warlords intent on owning that power—right along with owning Rebecca Bloodshadow. Using her and her abilities to carry out their own agendas on Earth or Xahar’áhsh or any other conceivable battlefield.

She’d used it to save Maxwell because, when faced with the possibility of losing him, she’d known in her bones and without a second’s hesitation that she couldn’t lose him. That she needed him far more than she’d ever let herself need anyone, no matter how ridiculous it seemed or how little evidence she’d amassed to explain such a need.

Except now, with the knowledge of that fucking rune tattooed on his chest, that need felt like a liability now more than ever.

But was it enough of a liability to make her wish she hadn’t saved him that night?

She didn’t know.

What waswrongwith her?

Once again, in the absence of Rebecca’s attempts to continue the conversation any further—and she certainly didn’t want to—her Head of Security took it upon himself to do so anyway.

“And speaking of that help… We still haven’t fully debriefed that part of the operation at the warehouse.”

“Haven’t we?” Rebecca turned away from him to face her desk again, her movements stiff and mechanically clunky, no matter how hard she tried to hide it. “Because I definitely remember seeing a full report of that night’s events on my desk. More than one, actually…”

The sensation of the shifter’s movement across the office as he followed her with perfectly silent footsteps made her wish—not for the first time—this connection between them didn’t exist.

It was so much easier to walk away from him when she couldn’t feel his lingering gaze on her, or his every movement toward her, or his almost desperate need to get to the bottom of each and every damn mystery existing between them.

Could the shifter really not just leave anything well enough alone?

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he said above the muffled thump of his slow, steady, calculating gait across the floor. “And it won’t be found on any debrief report. You and I both know that.”

Rebecca had thought stopping to take a commanding position behind her desk might have offered a bit of a buffer between them—something physical and solid, the closest thing she could get to a wall. But it proved disastrously ineffective.

Of course it did. She couldfeelthis shifter through solid walls now. What good could a fucking desk do?

She cleared her throat and pretended to re-engage her concentration on the reports scattered across her desk. “I did what had to be done, and we’re both still here. “I’m not sure what more could possibly be included in an official debrief—”

“Unofficially, then,” Maxwell interrupted. “Just the two of us.”

Despite her constant commands to avoid it, she couldn’t help but look up at him again, instantly falling prey to the intensity of his silver eyes fixed firmly on her face.

Blue Hells, she literally couldn’t take her eyes off him, could she?

What did he think he would get out of cornering her with this conversation, now or at any other time? Did he really think she would unload her secrets to him, all at once, simply because he’d inadvertently asked for it?

Did he truly believe she now trusted him anywhere near enough to begin?

They stared at each other a moment longer before Maxwell let out another heavy sigh through his nose and tilted his head. His brows drew together in concern and confusion and some other emotion she couldn’t accurately name right now. But she was sure it had cropped up before on the shifter’s very short list of known expressions, animated or not.

“Are we really not going to talk about this?” he asked.

Somehow, she kept a straight face. “Would talking about it change the outcome of what was done?”

Maxwell’s frown deepened. “You know it’s more complicated than that.”

“Actually, the way I see it, it’s really very simple. You almost died. I had a way to keep that from happening. I used it, and here you are, no longer dying.”

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