Page 72 of Elven Throne

Interesting bit of mystery there too. Which didn’t exactly make any of the other mysteries they were dealing with easier to solve.

“And no,” Maxwell added, his silver gaze flickering toward her with another short-lived smirk twitching across his lips. “No one knows where the mark came from, either. Including Jim and Annie.”

His left hand rose absently toward the right side of his chest, as if that might help him remember something he’d never been able to recall before.

“I always assumed it was either an oddly detailed birthmark or something my parents chose for me before they died. I was never treated any differently for it. Never questioned about it. It drew no more attention than any other mark on any other shifter.”

Maxwell stopped in the underbrush and turned toward her again with another deep exhale through his nose. “I had no idea it was elven. Or that it could have been anything but a mark or tattoo. Until…”

“Until your wolf jumped in the line of fire for me and sparked off the whole thing?” Rebecca finished, raising an eyebrow.

His stony lack of expression didn’t change as he studied her, but his words betrayed it all. “I can see how my actions may have come across as particularly reckless, knowing what I know now.”

She snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Or, asyouput it, I believe,” he said, reaching for her until his hands settled on her hips and he drew her closer, “irrational and incredibly stupid. Which very well may be the case.”

“Oh,nowyou agree with me,” she murmured, caught by his eyes again and their pulsing silver glow.

There was little else she could think of after that but the heat of his hands on her hips through Titus’s overlarge jacket, the electrifying flare of tingling energy fueled by a growing need in both of them as he held her against him, how easy it would be to pull his bowed head closer and press her lips against his…

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Andhoweasyitwould still be to nearly lose all sense of herself in him if she acted on it. Just like she’d almost lost herself in Zida’s infirmary with a kiss that had been so much more than that.

Dangerously so.

Losing herself in the shifter wasn’t just a figure of speech, either, or a useful metaphor. There was still something between them, pushing them toward each other, daring them to throw caution to the wind and just submit. That third presence, born of their unexplained connection, that almost seemed to have a mind of its own.

It would bethatnearly sentient thing she couldn’t name but which they would unleash if Rebecca and Maxwell both gave in to desire and let it overtake everything else. She was sure of it.

And she still didn’t know what that other entity was, or where it really came from, or what it wanted.

It could have been something as harmless as the natural product of an elf and a shifter falling for each other, which she’d never heard of before but clearly wasn’t impossible.

Or it could have been something as unpredictable and complexly dangerous as something new and uncontrollable unlocked within her Bloodshadow magic, with no explanation and no contingency to fall back on if something went horribly wrong.

She just didn’t know, But if Maxwell Hannigan had lived nearly his entire life with that elven rune on his chest, there was an answer for all of it.

It was just a matter of looking in the right places and asking the right questions.

And probably not giving in to her nearly insatiable need while telling all the potential consequences and repercussions to go fuck themselves.

Which was exactly what she wanted to do now, despite how little either of them still understood about what this actually was and how or why it even existed in the first place.

Maxwell’s strong, steady, pounding heartbeat thumped through her chest as he held her against him with his body and held her hopelessly in his gaze.

He swallowed thickly and let out a shuddering sigh. “What I feel for you, Rebecca. How important you are to me… It’s unlike anything I’ve ever known. I have never felt this way for anyone, even when I walked the expected path. That will not change, regardless of how I received this mark or why. Or how it has changed. But it would be foolish of us to ignore the possibility that itdoesmean something, whatever that may be.”

Yes. Foolish of them.

Just like it would be foolish of them to take this any further before they understood what it meant.

Rebecca wetted her lips and hardly heard herself reply, “You’re not wrong…”

“I did not think I was.”

They could talk about being foolish and knowing what to do all they wanted, but without acting accordingly, it wouldn’t mean shit.

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