Page 7 of Elven Throne

“After?” she repeated.

“You better fucking be there afterward too,” he growled, finally lifting his hand from her arm and leaving a painful cold in its place.

Rebecca couldn’t help but smirk up at him. “Your threats are starting to lose their bite, wolfie.”

“Don’t worry.” Maxwell rolled his eyes and looked away to face the battle ahead. “I’ll have plenty more for you when this is over.”

Well, at the very least, his comedic timing had improved. A little.

She didn’t have to say it in that moment, but Rebecca knew instantly what this was.

For the first time since Shade had made her their new Roth-Da’al, she and Maxwell were about to walk into significant danger and a whole lot of unknowns, and her Head of Security hadn’t demanded he remain at her side for her protection.

He wouldn’t. She could feel that too.

Without any words or concrete thoughts shared—the only thing their connection hadn’t yet tapped into—she also knewwhyMaxwell didn’t insist on staying at her side this time.

Because his wolf could do a lot more damage against the enemy than trying to protect her from something neither of them had ever seen before and still didn’t understand.

This time, they trusted each other to get the job done, without physically staying together, without fighting side by side.

All due to Shade’s literal survival at stake now in a way they’d never faced before.

Even with all of that unspoken, she had one more thing to say, and she suspected Maxwell was waiting to hear it.

“If Eduardo went through allthistrouble, there’s no way he’s sitting this one out. He came here to watch us burn, because he thinks we will. When you find him, I want his last thought to be how fuckingwronghe was.”

Maxwell’s eyes pulsed with a hungry silver glow as he dipped his head toward her and growled, “It’s done.”

That was it. No orders needed. No arguing. No trying to hammer out the details of a last-minute strategy when there had hardly been time for this conversation.

He already knew exactly what she wanted; they shared the same goal.

Without another word, Maxwell shifted right there in front of her, in the middle of the road in the early morning darkness. Shadows scattered like terrified rodents beneath the silver blaze of light blooming around him.

Rebecca’s veins boiled with searing heat and a shuddering burn rippling down her spine, her flesh igniting with the echoes of what the shifter always felt when he called his own inherent ability out to play.

But she only felt a sliver of it, she knew. It was enough to make her glad of their magical differences.

When the burst of silver light faded, all that remained were her Head of Security’s empty shoes, his clothes crumpled in a pile in the dirt, and a final glimpse of Maxwell’s enormous, shaggy gray wolf bounding into the woods before he disappeared through the trees.

Setting her sights on the battle, she forced herself to move. To keep walking on her own. To enter the fray as herself and hope it would be enough to stop this.

If she didn’t force herself forward, to just put one foot in front of the other and not look back, the physical pain of Maxwell’s wolf loping away from her and after his prey would have made her stop.

The startled yelp and ensuing snarl bursting from the thick woods, with a brief and heavy crash through the underbrush, reached her at the same time.

Somehow, knowing he felt that pain of their separation too—whether wolf or man—gave her the strength to keep moving and trudge through the rest of it until they were so far apart again, the pain finally receded.

It still hurt like a bitch.

But they had a job to do, and for this one, they each had to do their part alone.

Maxwell would find Eduardo.

Rebecca would reach the center of that agonizingly powerful column of white-hot energy burning away in the parking lot. She’d make sure that when it erupted—and not knowingwhatit was wouldn’t change the inevitability that itwoulderupt—she would be there keep it from taking everything Shade had left.

Namely, all their lives.

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