Page 49 of Elven Throne

“I will.”

“And what am I supposed to do with you?”

Maxwell swallowed thickly, but nothing else changed in his stance or demeanor. “Your house, your rules.”

The other man offered a sighing grunt in either disapproval or disbelief. “So I accept appeal and turn my back to the shadow. What then? You got a plan forthat?”

Rebecca could hardly take much more of this—this unexplained ritual and ceremony of whatever the fuck these two were doing right now. Which looked like nothing more than one guy showing up on another guy’s front porch. Casual on the outside.

On the inside, though, deep down? It was anything but.

That was perfectly clear.

She would have come to the same conclusion even without the barrage of concern, nervous pleading, and so much overwhelming shame blasting into her.

Unfortunately, her connection with the shifter offered no further insight whatsoever.

After another moment of hardening silence, Maxwell finally spoke again. “Refuge and shelter for those in need.Theyare in need.”

The gray-haired man gently tilted his head. “What other roads?”

Maxwell swallowed and muttered, “None.”

“So the first is also the last. Narrow minds lead to narrower options. Funny how that works.”

Rebecca almost gasped at the renewed flare of anger and frustration now peppering everything else she felt from him.

If this odd bit of ceremonial interrogation lasted much longer, Maxwell would lose his shit.

Even still, he fought desperately to maintain his composure. “If there were any others, I would not be here—”

“You’re damn right, you wouldn’t,” the other man snarled. “Shouldn’t be here anyway.”

In an even more surprising display of submission, Maxwell dipped his head even farther, almost turning his stance into a bow. “The shadow moves without face or fangs or fur. Your house—”

“My house, my rules. I know. You got anything else to say to me?”

More silence. More waiting.

More effortless precision in ignoring literally everyone else but Maxwell—the elf standing beside him on the front porch and nearly a hundred other magicals huddled on the front lawn.

None of this conversation made any sense beyond an incredibly formal method of Maxwell asking for protection for all of them.

The quivering tension only rose and thickened on the porch. No one moved or said a word. No indication that the pulses of complex, indecipherably enmeshed emotions all stuffed beneath the worn and weathered mask Maxwell maintained were warranted at all.

It still felt like one wrong move, one mistakenly misunderstood word, would be the end of everything.

Not knowing how or why was enough to make Rebecca lose her own temper, but she held it in check.

For now.

The moment of frozen, suspended time finally burst when the gray-haired man asked, “How long?”

“Two weeks,” Maxwell replied. “No longer.”

Then the man let out a sigh and opened the door a little wider. “Two weeks, huh?”

“Yes.” Maxwell didn’t so much nod as almost bend in half when he dipped his head again, still staring at the metal grate along the threshold of the farmhouse. “No longer.”

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