Page 32 of Elven Throne

“I disagree.”

When he stepped closer, the instant surge of tingling heat and energy—combined with how hard she constantly struggled to ignore it while all the other variables of Shade’s current grave circumstances crashed through her mind—made Rebecca reflexively step back.

Into the wall, with nowhere else to go.

But this wasn’t another attack. Certainly not by Maxwell.

The jagged edges of the jutting hole in the brick wall bit at her back as she stared up at the shifter, Eduardo’s flip phone in her hand instantly forgotten.

Maxwell’s nostrils flared, his jaw muscles working overtime as he clearly struggled to keep himself in check. His eyes widened slightly before he leaned away to look her over from head to toe, as if realizing for the first time that she wore Titus’s ridiculously large jacket over what little remained of her magically burned-up clothes.

“We do not have nothing,” he murmured. “Weare still here.”

She didn’t have the strength to keep from throwing herself at himandfilter her words at the same time.

“Zero casualties is always a plus,” she blurted. “But without a base, we’re just a bunch of homeless magicals wandering aimlessly outside the city. Can’t organize much of anything without—”

“I meantyou.”

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Ifthecrumblingbrickwall at her back hadn’t been there, she might have backed away a second time when Maxwell stepped even closer, nearly pressing his entire body against her to pin her there.

She had nowhere else to go, anyway.

She didn’twantanywhere else to go.

Then Maxwell lifted a hand, brought it toward her throat, seemed to change his mind, and reached for her hair instead. But he withdrew his hand again without touching her, just enough to hint that he was afraid to touch her at all.

His hand trembled.

“I felt the explosion,” he rumbled. “When it happened. I felt…”

Oh.

Thatwas what had been bothering him this whole time.

Why hadn’t she been able to feel that in him? How deeply had he tried to bury it?

“That makes a lot more sense,” she said, surprised by her own breathlessness and the fact that now she didn’t even try to get away from him. “Ripping off heads with your teeth isn’t normally your style.”

“I thought you had…” Drawing in a trembling breath, he lowered his hand a bit more and dipped his head even closer, exploring every detail of her face with an urgently flickering gaze. As if something compelled him to memorize every part of it, and onlyheknew he was running out of time to do so.

When he opened his mouth again, nothing came out. The audible click of his next heavy swallow matched all the agony suddenly etched across his features.

Maxwell’s stony mask had not only cracked but shattered completely.

He looked likehewas about to break at any moment.

“It didn’t seem possible that you had survived,” he added, his voice barely above a whisper. “I had already tracked down the grimbúl by the time it hit me, and I…”

Another shaky exhale, and the desperate flicker of his gaze across her face—lighting up Rebecca’s skin with their burning intensity—and of his closeness slowed onto a calmer dance of relief he seemed not quite willing to fully accept.

“I didn’t knowwhatto think,” he whispered.

“So itwasa present, then,” Rebecca muttered, thinking instantly of Eduardo’s head tossed at her feet and unable to stop her every thought from bursting out of her mouth. Obviously, now was the least appropriate time for it.

Maxwell blinked through his surprise and tilted his head. “What?”

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