21

A nd how easy it would still be to nearly lose all sense of herself in him if she acted on it. Just like she’d almost lost herself in Zida’s infirmary with a kiss that had been so much more than that.

Dangerously so.

Losing herself in the shifter wasn’t just a figure of speech, either, or a useful metaphor. There was still something between them, pushing them toward each other, daring them to throw caution to the wind and just submit. That third presence, born of their unexplained connection, that almost seemed to have a mind of its own.

It would be that nearly sentient thing she couldn’t name but which they would unleash if Rebecca and Maxwell both gave in to desire and let it overtake everything else. She was sure of it.

And she still didn’t know what that other entity was, or where it really came from, or what it wanted.

It could have been something as harmless as the natural product of an elf and a shifter falling for each other, which she’d never heard of before but clearly wasn’t impossible.

Or it could have been something as unpredictable and complexly dangerous as something new and uncontrollable unlocked within her Bloodshadow magic, with no explanation and no contingency to fall back on if something went horribly wrong.

She just didn’t know, But if Maxwell Hannigan had lived nearly his entire life with that elven rune on his chest, there was an answer for all of it.

It was just a matter of looking in the right places and asking the right questions.

And probably not giving in to her nearly insatiable need while telling all the potential consequences and repercussions to go fuck themselves.

Which was exactly what she wanted to do now, despite how little either of them still understood about what this actually was and how or why it even existed in the first place.

Maxwell’s strong, steady, pounding heartbeat thumped through her chest as he held her against him with his body and held her hopelessly in his gaze.

He swallowed thickly and let out a shuddering sigh. “What I feel for you, Rebecca. How important you are to me… It’s unlike anything I’ve ever known. I have never felt this way for anyone, even when I walked the expected path. That will not change, regardless of how I received this mark or why. Or how it has changed. But it would be foolish of us to ignore the possibility that it does mean something, whatever that may be.”

Yes. Foolish of them.

Just like it would be foolish of them to take this any further before they understood what it meant.

Rebecca wetted her lips and hardly heard herself reply, “You’re not wrong…”

“I did not think I was.”

They could talk about being foolish and knowing what to do all they wanted, but without acting accordingly, it wouldn’t mean shit.

Aching to do the exact opposite, Rebecca pulled gently away from him, finding no resistance from Maxwell’s hands on her hips, though he didn’t fully let her go.

They were both fighting this, and they would have to keep fighting it together until they understood more.

“Whatever it is,” she told him, “we can find those answers. I’ll help you. I want to help you. We’ll figure out exactly what happened and how it got there and what it means. At this point, I think we agree it’s not just a mark.”

The shifter’s gaze softened as a rumble of amusement reverberated in his chest. “Clearly.”

“That’s the first thing we’ll do,” she added. “ After I get my hands on the Bloodshadow prophecy.”

“A fair trade.”

There it was. Their next plan settled.

But they still didn’t pull any farther away from each other, suspended between desire—that nearly irresistible force between them thrusting them together at every opportunity—and the recognition by their rational minds that going any further held far more potential dangers than they currently understood.

And how much longer would they manage to fight back one more than the other?

“Though, I do wonder…” Maxwell murmured.

Oh, boy…

“Wonder what?” Rebecca whispered, the growing desire burrowing through her chest and belly making her breathless and her throat dry.

“If knowing would make a difference.”

“What?” She could hardly think now, despite trying so hard to follow his train of thought.

“What the mark is,” he clarified, his eyes pulsing faster as his gaze roamed across her face. “What it is. What it means. Why it’s there. Would knowing make a difference to you?”

“I…” Blinking quickly, she pulled farther away from him, her effort to think again now overpowering how close she’d come to losing that ability altogether. “I don’t know…”

She hadn’t thought it through that far, honestly. The question hadn’t even occurred to her.

Maxwell’s frown deepened, and though he spoke gently, there was no doubting the seriousness in his voice or the brief flashes of new fear, still unrealized, flaring bit by bit through their connection. “Personally, if the answer changes the way I feel about you, I would rather not know. There is knowledge for its own sake and knowledge that rewrites all previous misconceptions. There is always a chance of the latter, and if a discovery like that were to fracture this? What we have, with or without this…connection between us?

“I do not know if I could handle it. Even to understand the truth. My desire for the truth does not outweigh this. With you.”

Well, that made two of them.

She hadn’t thought of it in that way, until now. When would she have had the time? But now that he’d brought it up…

She had to agree with him. The possibility of discovering exactly what that rune meant, and why it was there somehow tainting their connection—changing what they felt for and with each other because of their unavoidable ignorance—was a terrifying concept.

After everything they’d gone through together, with Shade and for Shade, all the battles they’d fought, everything that existed between them as a result, explained and unexplained…

What if knowing did change at all? How were they supposed to go back to the way things were before, after something like that? Even back to the old status quo, before this connection had erupted between them seemingly out of nowhere.

Would that even be possible?

“I don’t know what it means or what might change,” she told him. “But I think it’s best to leave it undecided for now. Focus on the Bloodshadow prophecy. Make a decision about everything else once we get there.”

Maxwell swallowed, finally removed his hands from her hips, and took a devastatingly small step backward. As if that was the space necessary to break them both out of this tantalizing spell.

It wasn’t.

But it wasn’t like they hadn’t already gotten used to fighting it off at nearly every waking moment.

“Agreed,” he said. “We will decide together.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The ensuing silence felt like a wall between them. Not one they had aggressively erected in defense but as if one of them had stepped into an adjacent room. Temporary, but no less real.

It was one more agreement between them, but this one didn’t seem nearly as complex, as if it loomed over them somewhere in the future.

When the time came, when Rebecca held the Bloodshadow prophecy in her own hands, she’d let Maxwell decide how far he wanted to take their search for his answers. And she would follow his lead.

But first things first.

They kept walking, eventually doubling back through the woods to make their way toward where they’d entered it. The soft laughter and spirited conversations drifting toward them from behind the farmhouse grew louder until it was no longer possible to forget where they were or why.

Or what waited for them when they left the cover of the trees.

But Rebecca still had one more decision to make.

“I really don’t think we should stay much longer. If it made sense, I’d suggest heading out now, for both our sakes. In this case, though, I think as soon as possible means before sunrise. When no one else is awake.”

He studied her a moment longer, as if wanting to make sure this was truly what she wanted. And how could it be anything else?

Then Maxwell nodded. “Sunrise, then. “

“That’s not too long for you?” she asked.

The shifter’s lips twitched in a smile that looked a hell of a lot like relief as they emerged from the trees. “Now that I expect to be gone from here in less than ten hours? No. Not too long at all. I think I’ll live.”

A sarcastic joke from the shifter now about something that had nearly whittled him down to nothing just an hour before? That felt like progress.

As long as he didn’t look anywhere nearly as terrified of the experience as he had before arriving at the compound, and as long as Rebecca didn’t feel him spiraling into a broken version of himself she hardly recognized, it was worth it.

She even thought he walked a little taller as they crossed the open land beside the crop fields on their way back toward the gathering, and that made all the difference.

But in that time, Rebecca found herself acknowledging yet another looming possibility hanging over her head, with no knowledge of if or when it would descend upon her and wreak havoc.

Of course she wanted to know what the elven ruin on Maxwell’s chest really meant. Why it was there. How a shifter could have anything to do with ancient elven symbols. How it related to their odd connection.

And she was certain it did in some way.

But if learning the full truth and answering all those questions changed things between her and Maxwell…

What would Rebecca have left?

Since the night he’d blown her cover at the Old Joliet Prison and they’d agreed to work together to get the job done the right way, she had always had the shifter at her side. Granted, Shade’s successes since then had also been Rebecca’s successes, but they never would have turned out that way without the effective though admittedly tense and sometimes distracted team they’d become.

And he’d been on her side ever since.

She knew that now. The rune wasn’t some mark from her enemies. The shifter wasn’t a spy sent to tear down her defenses. He had always been what she knew him to be, and that was enough.

They had grown even closer, benefiting them both. And Shade. It didn’t matter how they’d grown closer. Their intensely strange connection hadn’t offered them anything false, just aggravatingly tempting.

So did she really want to know the answers to his questions about that mark?

Was there any way to avoid stumbling upon it unexpectedly while he helped her find the Bloodshadow prophecy and whatever came with it after that?

Something told her those answers might end up being more difficult to avoid than they would be to find by actively searching, and she hoped the answers wouldn’t change a thing.

Because now, a new question had risen and taken shape to affect and even dictate every decision she made from this point forward.

Without Maxwell, what the hell was she even doing , anymore?

Without him, what would be the point?