Page 83 of Elven Prince

Somehow, she managed to look up into his brightly glowing silver eyes while her entire body ignited with flaring energy and its growing need for her. For Maxwell. For itself. “It’s never over with you, is it?”

Before he had a chance to draw her back in, Rebecca spun away and took off for the door. The pain instantly flooding her as she left him behind made her suck in a sharp breath, but then that same pain receded as the shifter followed her out of the office.

In the hallway, Maxwell was immediately at her side and stayed there, ever present, ever possessively protective, without another word.

Desk chairs swiveled and all eyes turned to her when Rebecca stormed into the security office. “Pull it up.”

Whit looked sharply at Rick. “I told you toshowit to her.”

The blackhorn shrugged as he nodded toward the Roth-Da’al and their Head of Security now entering behind her. “No computer.”

“Which we’re going to fix the first chance we get, boss.” With a heavy sigh, Whit snatched the thumb drive from Rick’s hand, spun his chair back toward his workstation, and pulled up this oh-so-important new discovery.

Rebecca was too impatient to wait for the files before she started asking questions. “When did this come in?”

“Right before I sent Rick up to you.” Whit’s fingers flew across the keyboard before several file boxes popped up on his screen. “Murray came back from recon with this news straight from Underdark. Apparently, he’s pretty buddy-buddy with the owner and managed to snag us a copy of the footage.”

Maxwell grunted as he folded his arms. “Drinking on the job in the middle of the day?”

Clicking around with the computer mouse in one hand, Whit thrust a finger in the air with the other. “Reconin the middle of the day. And if he had a few drinks while he was there, could you blame him?”

Rebecca shot Maxwell a knowing look, and the shifter almost rolled his eyes.

Thingshadbeen especially tense around here over the last few days, so no, even Shade’s Head of Security couldn’t blame anyone for wanting to unwind a little. Even in the middle of the day.

Especially not when Murray had also retrieved new intel that clearly had the Security team more excited than she’d seen them all week.

“All right. Here we go.” Another box opened on Whit’s screen, and he leaned forward to crank up the volume on his speakers before pressing play.

The first frozen frame of the video began to play.

This better be good…

Amonstrously enormous orc sat at a small table in the corner of Underdark, nursing a tankard ofhinwi. The telltale blue glow of the Xaharí drink lit up the underside of his face and the two intimidatingly large tusks protruding from beneath his lower lip, almost long enough to make drinking from the tankard impossible.

Every few sips, he looked up from his table to scan the inside of the bar. When his squinting orange eyes pulsed with light and widened slightly, his gaze remained on a single target until he pushed himself out of his chair to stand.

As the new figure approached, the giant orc extended a beefy blue-gray hand, which was grasped by a comparatively smaller though still average-sized hand that looked more human than immediately magical.

They shook, then the orc dropped back into his seat, the wooden chair beneath him creaking dangerously beneath his humongous weight.

The newcomer unfastened the bottom two buttons of his sports jacket before taking a seat across the table.

The two couldn’t have been more different.

One grotesquely giant orc with fat fingers, gold chains dangling around his neck, and a disturbingly large and glittering gold front tooth on top, which revealed itself when he attempted an equally grotesque smile at his associate.

The other man certainly looked human, though in a bar like this in Chicago open to magicals only, the unspoken understanding of acceptable human illusions hid the man’s true race. He was particularly well-dressed—navy-blue sports jacket over a light-blue button-down shirt, light-gray dress slacks, neatly trimmed hair styled smoothly back over his head and away from his face.

Once he took his seat and ran one hand smoothly over the top of his hair, a pair of diamond-studded cufflinks winked under the bar’s lighting as his only bit of additional adornment.

“He’s late,” the orc grunted before lifting the tankard to his lips between his tusks, intently holding his associate’s gaze.

“You came early,” the suit replied, his voice a silky softness against the brutish growl from across the table. The corner of Suit’s mouth twitched.

“So, then,” the orc began. “Now that he’s here, Big Boss expects a lot of business talk. He’s eager to hear everything.”

“I’m sure you are.” The illusion of Suit’s calculating brown eyes twinkled in the light. “So I’ll get right to it. A lot of things have changed around here in a surprisingly short amount of time, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. One major change being that Aldous Corriger is no longer in the running.”

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