11

R ebecca’s stomach flipped on itself, her mouth suddenly try as she stood on the edge of powerful knowledge.

Of confirming with undeniable proof whether the shifter—overwhelming her with searing heat and need and the irresistible darkness she knew loomed behind it all, just beneath the surface, as he pressed himself against her—was who she desperately hoped he was.

Or something else entirely.

Her breath caught in her throat when she tried to speak, and her shallow breath made it nearly impossible to get out the words.

“You might be right. Maybe we are out of excuses.”

She couldn’t look away from those silver eyes now, even if her life depended on it.

And her life did depend on how Maxwell answered her now.

“Just tell me one thing now,” she added, “before we make any other decisions.”

His eyes widened, and he slowly drew his hands away from her face, as if suddenly realizing what he’d done. “Anything.”

And he meant it. She could feel that truth inside him, at least.

So if he meant it, he should have no problem providing her with an answer.

“The attack under Blackmoon’s dome by the bridge…” she began in a breathless rush. “Who was that?”

Maxwell removed his hands from her face completely and lowered them at his sides, blinking in confusion. Then he took the smallest step away from her, not nearly enough to give either of them much more space but enough to show how much her question stunned him.

As if he’d expected something entirely different.

“I have no idea.”

Pure honesty in his words. No hint of hesitation. No tiny inkling that he fought back the physical pain of lying to her.

That was the complete truth as he understood it, however simple.

He had no idea, and if she’d brought up the Azyyt Ra’al by name right now, there would still be no hint of familiarity or recognition from him.

Rebecca stifled a gasp as a heartbreaking relief flooded through her. Overwhelming and all-consuming. Drowning out nearly everything else.

If she hadn’t already been pinned between the shifter and the wall at her back, she would have staggered against it anyway to keep her footing.

Tears sprang to her eyes when the concern flooding from Maxwell matched his deepening frown. No amount of strength, discipline, or practice pulling herself together under harrowing circumstances could have stopped her from trembling like she did now.

A part of her had been so sure Maxwell was against her at his core, connection or no. That, no matter how desperately she wanted to give in to him, some secret the shifter kept as well-buried as her own would destroy her the second she made the decision to trust him completely.

That part of her had been utterly terrified of finally revealing the truth. But now…

“What is it?” Maxwell looked her over, his concern only deepening. “What have I done?”

“Nothing,” she whispered and drew in another shuddering breath that did nothing to settle her nerves. Or the fact that she trembled like some kind of Lashir’i Acolyte on the first day of training.

Maxwell Hannigan had done absolutely nothing to prove the depth and extent of her suspicion was as warranted as she’d feared. If he didn’t know the Azyyt Ra’al, there was no possible way in all Blue Hells he had any true understanding of who she was to her people, to Agn’a Tha’ros or the old world, to the war that had clearly stretched its greedy claws all the way out to this world now just to find her.

The Azyyt Ra’al had come here for Rowan first, though, not Rebecca. Which also meant Maxwell knew nothing more about the Blackmoon Sion, either, beyond what he’d witnessed for himself.

Nor could the shifter possibly comprehend the deadly politics following Rebecca across two worlds, or any of the implications and consequences and sacrifices that came with all of it.

He was safe.

She could trust him, wholly and completely, if that was what she decided to do.

Now that it was real, now that she had her proof, the thought of submitting to this thing between them and opening herself up to it any more than she already had was nearly just as terrifying.

And how could Maxwell possibly know any of that?

All he had to go on was what he saw in front of him and the bafflingly contradictory emotions battling within Rebecca, which he had to have picked up by now.

He looked horrified, stuck halfway between reaching for her again and completely backing off, as if he’d just broken her.

“Rebecca, I swear,” he added hastily, the low rumble through his chest rippling into her and not necessarily making this any easier. “I swear on my honor, I do not know who it was. I would have told you. I would have—”

“I know.” She closed her eyes and felt the hot sting of those same tears squeezing out from between her lashes, trickling down her already burning cheeks. She hated those tears, though not nearly as much as she once might have.

“I know,” she repeated. “I believe you.”

When she opened her eyes to finally look at him again, he was clearly unconvinced.

Maxwell’s frown had become a raging storm on his face, and he kept slowly reaching out to comfort her before thinking better of it. “ Should I have known?”

“No. Trust me. It’s so much better that you don’t.”

The surprising softness of his fingers against her cheek as he wiped away the tears made her freeze.

Maxwell instantly lowered his hand again, leaving the other side of her face untouched. “Then why are you so terrified?”

After all the things he felt in her, that was the one he’d settled on?

Rebecca huffed out a laugh rendered desperately flat beneath the irony of the answer she had to give him. “Relief doesn’t generally last long when the impossible turns out to be…the truth. Especially when it’s exactly what I’d hoped for.”

Then realization dawned on the shifter’s features. While his frown of concern remained, the anxious confusion behind it melted away before he lifted his hand again to brush the tears off her other cheek. “An impossible truth? That is what you hoped for?”

By the Blood, he had her now. The tension thrumming between them as he pressed against her, pulled more stray hair away from her neck and face, his heartbeat thundering against her as every inch of her body ignited with heat and need and the tingling intensity of their connection urging more from them both.

It was even harder to resist now that suspicion and doubt no longer held her back. Not with him. Not anymore.

“Usually when I get what I want,” she whispered, “it just means bigger problems and more room for disappointment.”

The hint of a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth before Maxwell exhaled slowly and dipped his head toward her. “Sounds like you’ve been wanting the wrong things.”

One hell of an understatement.

“I’m working on it.” Her smile diminished beneath the growing power of their connection bringing them together like magnets—still with some unseen, unknown force keeping them from coming together all the way.

But the thing between them that had grown for months, feeding off their desire and their struggle and all the things they’d denied themselves because of it, just kept pushing.

And it always would, she realized. Until…

Until what?

What did it want? What was any of this actually about? What purpose did it serve and why?

It would have been only too easy to find out right here along the side of Shade’s destroyed Headquarters building—with the first bit of uninterrupted privacy she and Maxwell had had since they’d stopped suspecting and despising each other more than they wanted to make things work.

For Shade. For the roles they each played and the duties they still had to fulfill.

That hadn’t changed, either.

Rebecca had no idea when she’d settled her hand on his bare chest again, her fingers a hair’s breadth away from the edge of the elven rune once again lying in wait as a mark of black ink, with no other current indication it was anything else.

His skin beneath her palm and the strong, elevated pounding of his heart beneath sent a constant rush of electrified, tingling energy through her fingers and wrist, up her arm and shoulder, and into her own chest.

By the Blood, if they didn’t end this now, they never would. She understood that certainty clear as day.

That they still weren’t alone. Not really.

But before she could say anything about it, Maxwell cupped her cheek again, like she was some precious, priceless, insanely delicate and breakable thing he had to shelter and protect with his life.

That might have been exactly what he thought.

He certainly wouldn’t think that ever again once the truth was fully out in the open between them. Once she’d told him everything.

“Rebecca…” Another low growl rumbled out of him, as if drawn out by this connection urging them forward along a path they just didn’t have the space for right now. “If what you want is—”

“Later,” she blurted. Only one word, but the weight of them pulling her away from him in this moment still clenched painfully around the center of her chest. “Right now, there’s a task force of displaced magicals around the corner who need a place to lie low and lick their wounds before any of us can do anything else.”

His glowing silver eyes studied her in the darkness. He swallowed, nodded, then slowly back, releasing her. “Later, then.”

Rebecca forced herself to look away from him as she removed her hand from his chest. Then she tried to slip away from him along the wall. To get back to business and handle the larger, more crucial issues before—

Maxwell caught her wrist and pulled her back toward him—not overly rough, but he clearly didn’t intend to let her go. “ After I clarify one last point with you. For now.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and despite everything they still had to do and the weight of so many new unknowns facing them, she couldn’t help but give in.

He wouldn’t let up until he’d said what he still had to say. Until he’d clarified…whatever this was.

The gentleness Maxwell had just displayed disappeared beneath a violently angry flash of silver in his eyes and another low, much louder growl. “If you ever send me away again, I will be forced to defy a direct order from my Roth-Da’al. I never have before, and doing so opposes everything I believe in value. But I will do it.”

That sounded like a threat.

It was still hot and cold with him, wasn’t it?

Rebecca smirked at him anyway, holding his gaze as his grip on her arm tightened. “You know, I’ve found there’s always a little wiggle room where beliefs and values are concerned…”

“Not with you.”

She might have tried to play that off as a joke, but he certainly didn’t.

His silver eyes blazed as he stepped toward her again instead of pulling her closer, towering over her. “I will follow you to the end of whatever comes next. As many times as it takes. Until death ends either one of us, or both. I will honor my vow to you for a debt I can never repay. I will obey every command…”

He sucked in a sharp breath and paused, his silver eyes boring into her, his jaw muscles working furiously again as he held her there with both the intensity of his gaze and his still tightening grip on her wrist. “But not that one.”

His voice wavered at the end before he stopped himself and instantly released her.

Rebecca didn’t know what to say.

He was serious about all of this. Whatever he was working himself up to say next, it had already choked him up.

She wouldn’t have thought that possible.

Then again, she’d just shed tears of relief in front of the shifter, and that had defied all the same expectations of herself.

“I felt you out there,” Maxwell continued, his voice low and thickened by the effort of holding himself together. “ Burning . I felt you…disappear. Two seconds, maybe three, before it all came back at once. But I wasn’t there with you. I couldn’t get to you—”

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 to that …

“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 will not leave 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.

“What do we do now?”

“Where are we supposed to go? We can’t stay here…”

“It doesn’t stop with Eduardo. How are we supposed to handle another attack now?”

“Do we know anyone else in the city? I sure as hell don’t.”

A jumbled flurry of voices and hasty concern echoed across the decimated parking lot, and Rebecca didn’t even get the chance to tell everyone to quiet down before addressing the important topics and concerns one at a time.

A hushed wave of stillness and expectation swept across the Shade members all on its own before a shuffling struggle of movement created an open path through those desperately waiting to hear what came next.

“ What ? Oh, come on. There’s no point now . Everybody just—”

Someone shoved Leonard forward, and he stumbled out of the gathered group with a grunt. He quickly righted himself, turned around to glare at whoever had forced him forward, then shook out the lapels of his brown leather trench coat also covered in dust, dirt, debris, and blood.

After clearing his throat, he finally stepped toward Maxwell and Rebecca and shrugged.

“I, uh… I guess you already heard all the questions. But those were supposed to have been a little more organized.” The mage looked hopefully back and forth between them. “Have you guys figured out what we’re doing now? You know, like what happens after all this? Where we’re supposed to go?”

Rebecca and Maxwell shared a quick glance.

“We’re still working on it,” she said before nodding toward the group of their few injured operatives gathered off to the side. “How’s it going over there?”

“Everybody’s all right, for the most part,” Leonard replied, gazing that way. “Nothing serious, at least. But between you and me, I don’t think Zida’s all that happy about working out of a Tupperware box…”

“Everyone over there sustained injuries?” Maxwell asked.

“Not exactly.” Leonard scratched his head. “Most of them just gathered over there on their own. You know, like those who were still here when Eduardo attacked. They’re pretty… shaken up. Still exhausted. Mostly still confused.”

The mage’s thin, nervous chuckle sounded quite a bit like one of Nyx’s. “Guess we all have that in common now, huh?”

“Besides the fact that we’re all still here?” Rebecca nodded. “Yeah.”

“We need an inventory of remaining supplies and resources,” Maxwell said. “Where’s—”

“Oh, yeah.” Leonard spun around to search the parking lot. “We already got that figured out. Whit!”

“Right here,” Whit replied behind them.

Rebecca, Maxwell, and Leonard whirled around to find the warlock already there, looking crestfallen and a little hesitant about delivering this next report.

“Inventory?” Maxwell asked.

With a heavy sigh, Whit opened his mouth to respond.

“Yeah…” Leonard interjected with a grimace. “But it’s not very, you know… Impressive.”

Maxwell ignored the mage—who merely shrugged when Rebecca shot him a questioning glance—and nodded for Whit to continue.

“Zida’s already got everything from the infirmary that wasn’t destroyed,” the warlock continued. “And it’s not much. Rick and I double-checked the building as much as we could. Common room and kitchens are gone. Residential wing doesn’t even exist anymore, like Archie said. Same with the training room and additional supply storage. Can’t even get to the Security office.

“I wouldn’t hold out hope that any of our tech’s still salvageable, even if we somehow could get it out. The armory’s no different, either. Stockade’s gone. So we’re really…well, still running on empty.”

“This sounds like an inventory list of what we do not have,” Maxwell grumbled.

“I know.” Whit puffed out a sigh and folded his arms. “What we do have is everything the teams left with when we took off for the bridge tonight. I mean last night, I guess. So it’s a short list. Vehicles and all the weapons and gear we already had on us. Other than that, though, we got nothing.”