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E verything Maxwell bottled up and tried desperately not to show outwardly was difficult to pick apart through their connection. The only thing Rebecca did clearly understand was the undercurrent of looming terror and violence thrumming beneath the surface of his stony exterior.

She wasn’t worried about everyone else. Maxwell wouldn’t have led them all here if it wasn’t safe.

But she absolutely worried about him and the cause of his undeniable discomfort in this place.

She still had no idea why.

So she stayed by his side the whole time. Short of pulling him aside to ask, at the risk of insulting their new hosts, that was all she could do for him at the moment.

After several minutes of watching her task force blend with the Sparta shifters in a heartening mix of generosity and gratitude, however, Rebecca noticed very clear and abnormally strange patterns of behavior among the shifters.

Specifically that not a single one of them had looked her way while the groups mingled. As if she were invisible.

No… That wasn’t quite it.

As if Maxwell were invisible and, by proxy in standing right beside him, so was Rebecca.

Some of the barefoot and wide-eyed children looked like they wanted to approach her. They watched her from their seats at the picnic tables, or while standing behind their parents, or after running away from the operatives who’d playfully made them laugh and scurry away in the excitement.

One small, thin girl of maybe six with dirt stains coating her skinny legs gathered enough courage to head their way, staring at Rebecca with unrelenting interest as she looked the elf up and down.

Rebecca offered a warm smile, which would have felt strange in any other environment. Somehow, it didn’t here.

The girl’s wide brown eyes flashed with a low, sputtering silver glow, then took a few more staggered steps closer. But she was stopped by a passing adult gently grabbing her arm before stooping down to the same level as the child’s face and muttering something firm and inaudible from where Rebecca stood.

The child’s eyes widened as she shot one more glance toward Rebecca, their glow snuffing out instantly. The woman bent over in front of her jostled the girl’s wrist, said something else, then straightened and pointed off in a different direction. “Go play over there. Go on.”

Looking both terrified and desperate to investigate the elf on their property, the girl darted off as she’d been told, stopping only once to look over her shoulder at Rebecca. Then her gaze flickered toward Maxwell in a disapproving scowl, with the rare intensity of which only children were capable, morphing her features.

Then the child spun around and sprinted away.

Rebecca caught sight of several other children shooting the same expressions in Maxwell’s direction before whispering to each other and racing around the yard again with all the space they could possibly hope for to run wild.

What the hell was going on?

Still eyeing the movement and conversations scattered around the property behind the farmhouse, Rebecca leaned toward Maxwell and muttered, “Did you catch that?”

“Every single bit of it.” His voice was low, subdued, missing its usual confidence. “Always.”

“So what’s the deal, then? Some kinda shifter legend at play? ‘Eat your vegetables, brush your teeth, do what the grown-ups say, or an elf will come snatch you from your bed’?”

She was trying to lighten the mood a little, to show him she was unaffected by the children’s reactions and maybe that she found it more odd and amusing than any form of insult.

Maxwell hardly moved, his dully glowing silver eyes focused on a single point somewhere off in the distance, and sighed heavily. “Their version of the so-called boogeyman does not include an elf. What you saw has nothing to do with you.”

An itching, burning trail of discomfort, shame, and regret burrowed beneath her skin, like some parasite that had lain dormant for an unbelievably long time, just waiting for a moment like this. When it was granted the opportunity to revive itself and make her skin crawl.

It wasn’t hers, though. This was all Maxwell.

The inconceivable discomfort worming through him with a new type of internal agony she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

It made her think of the pain and rage and monstrous resentment that had filled her when she’d agreed to perform the connection spell with Rowan to finally, after so many centuries, speak with the Bloodshadow Council face to face.

She understood those feelings, which seemed to be exactly what had been terrorizing Maxwell since before they’d even left their decimated compound.

Still, he refused to give her a straight answer or elaborate any further. She could only assume that was because he didn’t think he could control whatever might explode out of him if he opened that can of worms. Even to her.

The unwavering intensity of all that complexly layered pain inside him, every bit of which she still felt, made her want to fix it. That didn’t seem quite possible now, but she had to do something.

She reached out to gently settle her hand on his upper arm, meant only to reassure him.

The shifter flinched at her touch, grimaced for half a second before covering it back up again beneath his unreadable mask, and didn’t move.

This was really bad, wasn’t it?

She didn’t remove her hand, though, and gazed up at him before softly adding, “I understand.”

He closed his eyes and sighed, as if he couldn’t bear to hear those words.

As if he’d wanted nothing but to hear those words from anyone .

Clenching his jaw again with the almost violent effort of holding himself together, he finally opened his eyes and still stared straight ahead. “You should go. Meet your hosts. Introduce yourself, if you wish.”

“Nice try.” Rebecca removed her hand from his arm, fighting back a gasp at the tingling surge of energy racing across her fingers as she did so. Then she returned her attention to the livening gathering and lifted her chin. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She meant it. Shade was clearly safe here. All signs pointed to the astronomical probability that they would all be well cared for here during the week of sanctuary and support the gray-haired man had agreed to provide.

Which meant she had plenty of space and time to focus on her concern for the shifter standing so painfully rigid beside her. Right now, that seemed more crucial than anything else.

After another twenty minutes, though, she found a variety of other subtle clues to confirm her original assessment.

Something was clearly very wrong here, as far as Maxwell’s presence was concerned.

The adult shifters never once looked their way. The children eventually accepted the fact that the elven woman among them was also off-limits, for the time being. As a result, they also completely ignored Rebecca, as if she wasn’t even there.

No one attempted to approach or showed any sign of acknowledging her and Maxwell standing silently off to the side.

No matter how much time passed or how quickly it seemed Shade’s operatives received what they needed to settle in for their temporary stay, Maxwell’s boiling discomfort—with that same looming thread of quivering violence and denial and terror underlying it all—didn’t fade.

In fact, it only intensified, bit by bit and second by second, until Rebecca was certain his steady resolve would burst. Then they might have a real problem.

That never happened. Maxwell didn’t move a muscle, his shallow breath barely audible, and he still said nothing.

The more Rebecca watched the shifters, feeling everything coursing through Maxwell with an agonizing intensity that never let up, the more she identified the finer details of what was happening.

Maxwell knew these shifters. That was a certainty. No stranger could have elicited this kind of reaction in her normally stoic, even-tempered Head of Security.

The shifters here knew him too, despite the collective decision to never once acknowledge his presence.

But the familiarity there was not normal. Far from it.

There was something else at play that just…wasn’t right.

Something that had turned the Maxwell Hannigan she knew into a complete stranger. Eating away at him like acid from the inside out. Shutting him down.

Whatever existed between him and what Rebecca could only assume was an entire shifter pack living on the property, it was some serious shit.

Another ten minutes of standing, watching, listening, and growing more frustrated by the glaring lack of answers, the last of Rebecca’s patience frayed.

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 if this version of Maxwell—the dejected, cast-aside, submissive shifter she barely recognized—was the real Maxwell 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 discovered this side of Maxwell was his true self and always had been? Would that change the way she felt about him?

She didn’t know.

But now that it occurred to her, Rebecca was certain that when she finally chose to reveal her true identity to him—not as Rebecca Knox but as Rebecca Bloodshadow, the Bloodshadow Heir, Agn’a Tha’ros’s greatest weapon lost for so long and now found, her people’s last hope—Maxwell probably wouldn’t like what he saw there, either.

How much that would change things between them, she couldn’t say.

It was too late to back out now. This pending conversation they’d finally agreed to have would happen anyway. But now, the inherent dangers of it no longer applied solely to the growing risks she took in revealing her identity to anyone in this world.

Now, everything between her and Maxwell might change, once he knew.

And if he wasn’t as ready for it as he thought, it would absolutely change everything for the worse.