Page 66 of Elven Prince

The urge to lean into him grew overwhelmingly powerful, as if being physically closer would magically fix everything that had gone so horribly wrong today. As if it could erase the pain and the guilt and the heavy burden of what still had to be done.

Rebecca couldn’t let herself give in to that physical longing for the shifter beside her.

If she did, she worried everything else around her would cease to matter, including the safety and survival of her task force. She couldn’t let that happen.

“I can’t shake the feeling that I should’ve known,” she murmured. “That I should’ve done better. Anticipated this asshole’s next moves. Whoever he is.”

“No one could have done that.”

“And Shade still has to pay for it anyway. Is that what you’re saying?”

Maxwell’s gaze settled on the side of her face like a block of ice, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him just yet.

“There’s always another possibility,” he murmured.

A hot shiver raced down Rebecca’s neck, as if he’d whispered it in her ear despite the six inches between them as they stood in the garage, side by side.

“The possibility that this may not be about Shade at all,” he added.

The despair she’d been fighting back burgeoned into a fiery burst of anger and suspicion at his words. She stepped away from him, scowling. “And whatmightit be about, Hannigan?”

Was this his way of not-so-subtly suggesting she reallywasat fault here? After everything else he’d just said?

The shifter’s frown darkened as he watched her, gauging her reaction, battling with his own private thoughts and feelings.

Though she’d instantly gone on the defensive, she didn’t feel any suspicion from her Head of Security. No anger aimed at her. This wasn’t a personal attack on his part, but somehow, it still felt like one.

“It might be someone out there, an old contact or disgruntled adversary, thinking Aldous is still alive and in charge of things,” he explained. “Or it could be nothing more than a coincidence that some other unknown organization in Chicago thinks they’re getting retribution against a different enemy who isn’t us.

“Thiscouldbe a blood feud between other parties that has nothing to do with us and we just happened to get caught up in the middle of it.”

“They would have to be epically ignorant to make that kind of oversight,” she muttered.

Maxwell grunted. “They wouldn’t be the first.”

It was hard to believe there were others out there as clueless and manipulative and reckless with their power as Aldous had been. But it wasn’t impossible.

Maxwell was right. This could have been anything, even a power struggle in Chicago that had nothing to do with Shade. But it had swept them up into its chaos all the same.

She shot him a sidelong glance. “And you’re telling me you genuinely believe in coincidences?”

“I can’t say that, no,” he grumbled.

It shouldn’t have surprised her that Maxwell now returned to his natural default, shooting her suspicious sidelong glances while he stood there—silent, dark, brooding, and unwilling to share more with her.

It didn’t surprise her. Not really. But it still hurt in a way she couldn’t fully describe.

For one brief and fleeting moment, Rebecca had thought she could actually trust the shifter to be her ally in this. That she could let herself get close, open up, share with him how she really felt without fear of judgment, or of his deepening suspicion, or of the barrage of interrogating questions he otherwise would have thrown at her.

One moment, weeks ago, when she might actually have found something meaningful with another person. Right before everything blew up in her face.

The kiss. The elven rune on Maxwell’s chest. All these attacks on Shade’s operatives and any business contacts even remotely affiliated with her task force in any way.

Now, she couldn’t even trust him to tell her the full truth while they worked in tandem to solve the threatening question of who was doing this to them and why.

Theywouldwork together for Shade’s common good, because it was necessary. Maxwell could suggest all manner of additional possibilities as to why this was happening to them now, though none of those suggestions offered any viable solutions.

But deep down, Rebecca knew he still suspected her of far more than he was willing to admit out loud.

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