Page 56 of Elven Throne

She turned back toward Maxwell and cleared her throat. “I won’t try to pretend I’m not picking up what everyone else is putting down right now. But maybe if I knew a little more about what’s actually going on, I could be a lot more helpful.”

He shook his head and still wouldn’t look at her. “There is nothing you can do. But I will try to offer a more complete explanation when you and I have the time for our…longer discussion on the matter.”

Wow. He was really shutting her out. And he’d mistakenly assumed she would allow it.

“Any idea when that’ll be?” she asked.

“Later,” he growled. “Once I am satisfied that everyone has received what they need and is sufficiently cared for.”

That was it. Everything he was willing to say, no matter how unsatisfying.

Rebecca would have preferred to drag him with her toward the woods along the river to hash this out now, so she wouldn’t have to keep feeling the mind-boggling, relentless force of his agony without knowing where it came from or why. Maybe even so she could help him alleviate some of it, for whatever that was worth.

But it wouldn’t have worked. Not now.

She’d basically done the same thing to him countless times anyway—putting off a real conversation over and over, because something else she deemed more important had demanded her immediate attention.

Sometimes, that more-important thing had simply been her desire to avoid the shifter at all costs.

In the beginning, anyway.

She thought she could wait.

The longer they stood there, though, the more Rebecca worried for the future.

Specifically what it would cost Maxwell to remain here, ignored and spurned by so many of his own kind, after an entire week of Shade receiving shelter and aid from their hosts.

They’d only been here maybe an hour, and already, it was breaking him.

Tearing him up. Eating at his soul. Degrading and belittling and disrespecting him in every way.

She just couldn’t fathom why the Maxwell Hannigan she knew refused to do anything about it.

Why he continuously subjected himself to this treatment and all the pain it caused him.

Pain no one else could see.

Pain Rebecca never would have known existed if it weren’t for their unexplained connection.

She had to take him at his word, though, as he’d given it. They would talk about all this later. She’d be ready for it, regardless of how long it took for Maxwell to be sufficiently satisfied with Shade’s current temporary circumstances.

Expecting this impending tell-all conversation didn’t do a thing to smooth over her concern for him. The longer they waited, the more she worried about the version of Maxwell Hannigan that would emerge from this week-long stay when everything was said and done.

What kind of man he would be, after he’d been torn down so much and shredded into pieces. After he’d insisted the whole time on taking it lying down.

She’d never seen him like this, and already, she couldn’t stand it.

Then her mind ran wild with the other possibilities until she settled on one that made her blood run cold.

She’d been viewing this change in him as a response to where they were, to receiving help from a shifter pack with which he obviously had a complicated history.

But what ifthisversion of Maxwell—the dejected, cast-aside, submissive shifter she barely recognized—was therealMaxwell Hannigan, and he’d been hiding it from everyone all along?

Just as Rebecca had been lying and hiding her own true identity in exactly the same way…

A lump formed in her throat, and no matter how hard she tried to swallow it back down, it remained, refusing to be ignored or overlooked.

What happened if she discoveredthisside of Maxwell was histrueself and always had been? Would that change the way she felt about him?

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