Page 39 of Elven Throne

He let out a hissing sigh as he scanned the rubble around them, clearly without actually seeing any of it. When he looked at her again, the blaze in his silver eyes had dulled, his lips trembling for the briefest moment before he finally whispered, “And I almost lost myself.”

Damn.

She’d been too focused on Zida’s magic to consider how her choices might have affected him, from so far away…

But she also vividly remembered the horrors of thinking she was about to lose Maxwell at Harkennr’s warehouse storing shipments of kidnapped magicals. The memory suddenly made it hard to breathe again.

If he’d felt anything close tothat…

“I didn’t know,” she murmured.

“Which is why I wish to make this clear now,” he rumbled, looming over her again with possessive intensity. “I willnotleave your side again. Even if you command it.”

That wasn’t a threat at all. It was a promise.

A promise Rebecca fully understood.

“If I burn, you burn.” It was the only way she could think of to prove to him she did understand.

Maxwell’s unwavering stare only intensified as he dipped his head, the surges of panic finally settling within him again. “If it comes to that.”

“Sounds like a giant waste of potential. Not to mention irrational and incredibly stupid.”

The shifter’s lips twitched again—much more of a smile than the last time. “I believe we crossed that line some time ago.”

Another joke from her Head of Security? At least his timing had improved.

Returning the smile, she held his gaze as she turned toward the front of the building. “I think you’re right. Consider me forewarned.”

And that was it. Just a briefly touched-upon agreement that everything else would have to wait. Again.

But now with a new understanding between them, and that was enough.

Maxwell ran a hand through his hair, stopped at the corner of the building to fully button up his shirt, then rounded the corner behind her.

Rebecca didn’t wait for him, but she felt him following her with long strides, easily closing the distance until he was at her side again. Once again Shade’s stoic, silent Head of Security.

Their work here was far from finished.

Crossing the sprawling distance of destruction toward the slowly recovering task force huddled in small pockets across the parking lot gave her the opportunity to feel her own reactions—instead of a complex mix of them with the shifter so close and up in her face.

Relief, first and foremost. Pride. Gratitude for finally having made significantly more headway with Maxwell, even with another raincheck. And that had seemed all but impossible after discovering the truth of his potential alignment with her enemies.

But as soon as she recognized this, the bits of guilt rushed in.

For having unknowingly hurt him when her only focus had been keeping Zida’s power from killing them all.

And another instant rush of very familiar annoyance, now that Maxwell had made it perfectly clear she would never get another moment alone without him.

Beneath it all, though, at her core, Rebecca was immensely pleased.

The shifter could be trusted. Elven rune on his chest or no. Inexplicable connection or otherwise. That was their new bottom line. Despite the fact that his promise to burn with her because he refused to leave her side was a particularly stupid thing to promise, it also meant she didn’t have to keep hiding everything from him. Not in the same way.

It wouldn’t be entirely painless, sharing the full truth with Maxwell, whenever that came about. But now Rebecca had no reason to doubt it. Whatever came next, they would figure it out together, and they would handle it.

Even when there was no way to know what came next. Not anymore.

As soon as the task force noticed their Roth-Da’al and Head of Security returning, the questions flooded in like water through a burst dam.

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