Page 24

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“W ell, now’s as good a time as any.” Rebecca sat up straighter in the armchair, trying to draw her mind out of the sleep she didn’t get.

“Um…yeah.” Nyx’s voice squeaked, followed by a long pause. “I don’t know if it’s really something we should talk about over the phone, though. Do you know when you guys are coming back?”

“Not entirely sure, but the goal is to get this wrapped up before Shade’s week at the compound’s over. Did something happen there?”

“Oh! Uh…no,” Nyx said, followed by a rising shout of happy voices and laughter to conveniently verify her response. “No, we’re all fine here. But I…I think this is something really important, Knox. And we probably shouldn’t wait too long…”

“Okay.” Rebecca looked up at Maxwell to find him frowning as he hovered over the armchair. Of course he could hear both sides of the conversation from where he stood. “Well if we can’t talk about it over the phone, it’ll have to wait ‘til Hannigan and I get back.”

“Yeah. Right. Okay. Just, when you’re done… We just really need to talk, okay? Um…what are you guys trying to do?”

“That’s…classified,” Rebecca replied. Not technically a complete lie.

“Right. Anything we can do to help?”

“Not now, but if anything comes up, we’ll make sure you know about it.”

After another long pause, Nyx sighed. “Just be careful, Knox.”

Then the katari ended the call, and that was that.

Still frowning, Rebecca absently offered the phone back to Maxwell. “That was…odd.”

“It doesn’t sound like anything happened at the compound,” he muttered.

“No, it sounded like everyone’s still having a big old time.” Rebecca pushed herself out of the armchair and onto her feet. “But Nyx sounded really worried. More than usual.”

“More or less than the last time you spoke with her under the dome?” he asked.

She slowly paced the small room. “More. By enough to notice.”

“Do you think it’s related?” he asked. “She hasn’t seemed herself since she fainted.”

“I don’t know. But there is something I didn’t tell you.”

Maxwell’s eyebrows shot straight up. “Oh?”

“I didn’t think it was that important, honestly. And we got just a little distracted pretty much right afterward. Plus, I don’t even think I was supposed to have overheard any of it at all.”

His silver eyes followed her as she walked back and forth. “I don’t follow.”

“The first night under the dome,” she said, “or what we thought was the first night, when I was heading into the woods, I passed Nyx and Leonard and overheard their conversation. Something about visions but not quite visions. Something Nyx saw…

“She clammed up pretty quick when she realized I was walking past, so whatever it was, I guess she only wanted Leonard to hear. But she sounded really worried about whatever it was, just like on that call. Definitely more concerned than when she passed out and said she just hadn’t eaten enough.”

For a long moment, the shifter scowled across the room at nothing in particular, then grumbled, “That probably would have been good to know before now.”

“Hey, I’m right there with you.” Rebecca spun toward him and spread her arms. “But then I walked into the woods, you had your little meet-and-greet with four other shifters who somehow slipped through the dome, then the Azyyt Ra’al showed up and the dome came down, and it’s kinda been non-stop since.”

“I understand.”

Whether he’d simply stated the obvious or had remarked in disappointment that she hadn’t shared with him some crucial piece of Nyx’s puzzle—which Rebecca had no other knowledge of and no reason to understand—she didn’t really care. Something about Nyx’s call had sparked the feeling of familiarity in the back of her mind. Some piece of knowledge she knew was there but just couldn’t put her finger on…

Now that that topic had been brought to her attention again, she couldn’t help feeling like that connection she couldn’t quite make was particularly important.

And concerning.

She picked up her pacing again, recalling every moment of that night beneath the dome as she remembered it.

Then she stopped and turned back toward the shifter, who still hadn’t moved. “By the way, you didn’t happen to slip through the dome as a wolf before the attack brought it down, by any chance, did you?”

Maxwell cocked his head. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

“So it worked, then. Animals and shifters weren’t affected at all by the spell.”

“As far as I am aware.”

“That probably would have been good to know before now,” she quipped.

Maxwell spread his arms with a tiny flicker of a smile breaking through his deadpan expression. “We got just a little distracted right afterward.”

Rebecca snorted. “Fair enough.”

Then the question of why this issue with Nyx and what was worrying the katari so much returned to her mind, and Rebecca followed the feeling.

The same feeling of knowing she had at least two pieces of information that would make so much more sense, and maybe even a world of difference, once she put them together, but she just couldn’t find that other piece.

“Did you notice anything odd about Nyx?” she asked. “Beyond what we’ve already covered?”

“No. I maintain my previous stance that even if she does not remember it, her time inside Harkennr’s prison may still present unexpected and unpredictable side effects.”

She stopped pacing to look at him across the room again. “You think that’s what all this is?”

“Possibly. You seem more agitated by her current state than I would have expected.”

“I’m glad we got her back and that she’s still in one piece,” she said, clenching her eyes tightly shut with a sigh.

“Of course.”

“But there’s something else. Something I saw or overheard. Some other thing connected to whatever Nyx is so worried about, and I… really don’t like not being able to find it.”

“It will come to you when you need it,” he said gently, moving toward her. “In the moment, when the details are crucial. If that moment were now, your conversation with Nyx would have gone very differently. For the time being, I think we can both agree our current objective takes precedence.

With another sigh, Rebecca opened her eyes.

He stood directly in front of her, towering over her again, his eyes pulsing with silver as he swept his gaze across her face.

Her cheeks flushed and tingled because of it, completely beyond her control.

“You’re right,” she murmured, attempting a nod. Her head suddenly felt so remarkably heavy. “We focus on what’s right in front of us. Get this done. When Nyx’s problem becomes the next most important issue, I’ll deal with it then.”

“Yes, we will.” The shifter settled a hand on her shoulder, sending another electrifying jolt through her body at the contact.

How the hell hadn’t that part started to let up by now, even a little?

A frown of deepening concern cast darker shadows across Maxwell’s features before he dipped his head toward her. “If it were my place to tell you what to do, I would say you need to sleep.”

Rebecca let out a wry laugh. “Good thing it’s not your place.”

Unsurprisingly, Maxwell didn’t find that funny. He gently released her shoulder. “But I can strongly suggest it. Do you have any idea when Blackmoon means to make contact?”

Rebecca puffed out a sigh. “That’s like knowing with any certainty what you’ll have for breakfast five years from now. But he said he would find me when he had everything in place. Not that I have any idea how he means to do that, either, but that’s where we are. And I know that’s what he’ll do. Eventually.”

“Then you should sleep while you can.” Maxwell started to reach for her face, but then he quickly retracted his hand and turned away from her to head for the door. “I will secure the perimeter here. Should have been our first step anyway.”

Reeling with the harsh ache of him walking away from her but too exhausted for it to make much difference, Rebecca chuckled. “The perimeter of a shitty hotel off the highway that isn’t worth the gas to drive out here and stage an attack?”

Maxwell only stopped when he reached the door, then turned partially back toward her with a hand on the doorknob. Though now, he looked particularly distracted and solemnly brooding.

His gaze flickered toward the bed beside her, then he swallowed thickly. “I would rather double-check anyway. All sorts move in and out of these places. Constantly. Even a human motel.”

He was perfectly serious, wasn’t he?

They stared at each other a moment longer, and just as Rebecca opened her mouth to say she really didn’t think that was necessary, Maxwell jerked open the door, slipped through it in a single stride, and all but blustered out of the room without another word.

She’d grown used to the pain of their separation by now, but she still hissed as he walked away. The unavoidable pain now felt far more like an extra giant helping of exhaustion. She lowered herself onto the edge of the bed and gave herself a moment to breathe deeply and settle into the silence. Alone.

Just a little sleep.

After kicking off her new shoes, she swung her legs up onto the bed, not bothering to even pull back the comforter to climb beneath it.

The mattress was soft enough, and now she finally had a moment of peace and quiet to catch up from the last few days of constant battles, searching for safety, or being kept awake by the onslaught of Maxwell’s roiling emotions that had also keep him up all night.

Rebecca let out a long, heavy exhale, closed her eyes, and waited to drift off so sleep could finally claim her.

But it didn’t happen nearly as quickly as she’d hoped.

She felt Maxwell beyond the room, prowling along the side of the motel. Securing the perimeter . Peering around every corner and beneath every parked car.

Shortly after that, his sturdy intentions of ensuring their safety in a place like this morphed and changed, until all she felt from him, even from this far away, was an overwhelming desire to come back to the room.

To come back to her .

It seemed like the right idea to stop trying to think of nothing and just let her mind wander however it wanted.

And it wandered in only one direction.

Toward Maxwell.

The heat of his body pressed up against her, with the crumbling brick of the compound’s outer wall at her back. His chest bare, skin nearly on fire after the harrowing battle they almost hadn’t survived. The way he’d warred between wanting to touch her and fearing she might disappear in a burst of smoke if he did.

The feeling of her hand on his chest. The aching burn in her fingers as she’d traced his skin around the elven rune, never quite touching it but coming so dizzyingly close…

That rune strobing with an alarming golden-orange light when she’d found him in the woods beside the Polly L Bridge, freshly shifted out of his wolf and trying to find his feet. Her surprise and horror when Maxwell’s enormous gray wolf had leapt in front of the nurúzhe’s deadly attack to intercept what was meant for Rebecca.

The fear she’d felt when the shifter had intervened and then struggled against that glowing rune on his chest. All the horror of thinking she might lose him again in battle, every second of it mirroring the very same terror consuming her when she’d watched him slip toward the edge of death at Harkennr’s warehouse of magical-experiment victims.

And then the horror smoothing away, dissipating beneath the memory of so much staggering, all-consuming relief when Maxwell hadn’t died. When she knew, even with all his injuries, that he would pull through. That he would be okay.

Seeing him alive and well in the infirmary.

And then that kiss…

The memories and emotions of her wandering mind surged through her with such incredible speed, Rebecca was hardly aware of the change from one to the other, each moment in time blending into the next in an endless rush.

Then, her memory of that one kiss with Maxwell seemed to stick in her awareness, captured by the visceral sensations she remembered only too well.

The raging hunger and darkness behind it, belonging to each of them. The overwhelming desire and need. The feeling that it was everything she’d ever wanted.

The knowing that if she fully gave into it, it would consume them both. The growing presence between her and the shifter—that unknown thing that wanted for itself something she couldn’t name. That it would consume them, and what lay in wait on the other side of it would never be known to either of them until the moment they reached it.

Until the moment they surrendered everything. Together.

Well now she sure as shit wasn’t falling asleep with this racing through her mind.

Rebecca only realized how much her breath had quickened, how painfully hot the flush in her cheeks and neck and across her collarbones had become, when the motel-room door burst violently open.

She sat bolt upright on the bed, already breathless from nothing but fucking memories.

But she reacted anyway and scrambled off the mattress as quickly as if she’d been fully rested and prepared.

By the time her bare feet thumped onto the carpeted floor at the same time the door banged against the inside wall, she already had a crackling, hissing orb of crimson battle magic summoned in one palm. Just waiting for any excuse to launch it.

But this wasn’t an enemy.

It was Maxwell storming into the room like the rest of the motel had caught fire and mere seconds remained before they burned with it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What did you see?”

He kicked the door shut with a bang and surged toward her, looking crazed, eyes flashing dangerously as he stormed across the room.

Rebecca staggered toward him, surprise and adrenaline failing to alleviate all her exhaustion, but she snuffed out her battle magic anyway. “Did someone follow—”

He gave her no more chance than that to put two and two together. To recognize the mad need in his flashing eyes. To sort through the jumble of which emotions belonged to him .

Growling like he meant to rip apart the entire room, Maxwell pulled her against him with a breath-stopping ferocity.

She would have gasped when her back thumped against the wall behind her if he hadn’t already smothered her mouth with his, pinning her there beneath him. His hands burning her face then tangled up in her hair as he kissed her like a dying man.

Then everything else disappeared, and nothing else mattered.

The need building between them broke through the wall of their self-control, and it was the only thing that existed. Swelling into a ravenous darkness billowing with desire.

This thing they knew they shouldn’t do, consuming Rebecca from the inside out.

Every inch of her lit ablaze with the energy of this thing that had held them together for months now urging her forward. Urging Maxwell. No longer tempting them but now cheering them on. Pouring gasoline all over an already blazing fire.

Rebecca could hardly breathe until she realized she didn’t have to. Neither of them did.

They could suffocate in this, kept alive and wrapped up in each other by the thing their connection had been waiting for. This moment, right here.

Maxwell pulled away from her ever so slightly, his eyes wide with longing, hunger, and a tantalizing horror at what he’d done.

Rebecca didn’t give him a chance to slip further into it.

With a feral hiss, she grabbed his face and pulled him again, pressing her already sore, burning, aching lips to his. Not just letting herself go beneath the surface this time but actively joining him there.

Submerging them both. His breath inside her and hers in him. Hands and blazing skin like sparks before an electrical fire that took the whole world down with them.

It was exactly what they’d been trying so hard and for so long not to do.

It was dangerous without all the other missing pieces.

It was dark, and endless, and nothing like what Rebecca had wanted from anyone before, because she hadn’t wanted like this.

It could destroy them both if they let it.

And it was so fucking perfect.

That third presence between them, the thing that wanted their annihilation and their salvation, pulled them along, urging them forward and past the uncertainty and self-control. As if now Rebecca and Maxwell had handed the puppet master their very own strings, and there was no cutting themselves down.

The sharp rip of tearing fabric filled the room, and she didn’t know what it was until she’d stumbled over what remained of Maxwell’s button-down shirt around her feet. Her back thumped painfully against the wall again with a snap and clatter as something dropped from the wall and shattered on the ground somewhere beside her.

But Rebecca only had room for this, her fingers clawing at the base of Maxwell’s head, the back of his neck, the searing heat of his chest, and Blue Hells take all of it.

His lips burned agonizingly perfect holes into the side of her neck and across her collarbones. Her shirt was gone. Of course it was. And everything else could fuck off right along with it.

She needed him. She needed this . The world would end without it, and that was all that mattered.

They bit and clawed and tore at each other, their need no longer their own, their actions disconnected at the source by their unknown third wheel. The invisible passenger now fully in the driver’s seat, while everything they wanted and required and couldn’t get enough of from the other surged through their connection, heightening every blistering touch and every aching kiss. Every scratch and tug and painful embrace.

But it still wasn’t enough.

Maxwell’s violent growls shuddered through her until she could’ve been the one growling too.

Something sharp she hardly felt jammed into the back of her legs before Maxwell pressed her backward over the edge of…what was that? The dresser?

It shuddered beneath her. The light in the room spun and toppled before winking out with a flickering buzz and more shattered glass.

Rebecca couldn’t pull him to her fast enough, deeply enough, not completely enough…

Her feet left the floor. Maxwell’s arms were hot and hard and blistering around her while she tried to devour him, and why not? They’d come this far…

But it still wasn’t enough.

She caught a flash of silver in the darkness before her back sank onto the mattress, limbs hooked around him and pulling him down on top of her. Because if she let him go, if she backed off an inch, the universe would ease to exist.

He never backed away, the heavy weight of him blazing down on top of her, and she gasped for air beneath him, holding him ever closer.

She needed more …

Then everything stopped. The heat, the yearning, everything Maxwell felt for her stoking everything she felt for him, all of it feeding on itself.

Like a door of finality had been slammed shut between them, cutting them off.

It all stopped.

Maxwell still hovered over her on the bed, muscles taut and tensed but in a way that was the exact opposite of everything they’d just been.

Then he pulled slightly away from her and snarled, his eyes flashing in warning as they stared blankly at something on the mattress just beside her head.

With her chest heaving as she lay there beneath him, their bodies painfully separated again, Rebecca studied him in alarm and could hardly find her ability to speak. “What’s wrong?”

His growl vibrated through her chest despite the fact that his flesh no longer seared against hers. “I smell a rat.”

“ What ?”

His gaze flickered violently toward her, every bit of him seething with a territorial rage that made no fucking sense.

“A really big rat,” he growled.

What the fuck?

All the heat rushed out of her, and her blood ran cold as they stared at each other.

Those had been her words, once. “A really big rat.”

Was this about her ? Had he felt something through their connection that shattered everything between them, just like that?

Nothing came to mind. She’d already told him everything she’d held back for so long. Everything he needed to know.

What in the Blue Hells had she done ?

He cocked his head and snarled again before springing off the bed and whirling away from her.

The suddenness of it left her reeling and breathless. The pain hardly registered anymore because now she was just fucking pissed.

“A rat ?” she snapped. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Maxwell paced once across the room, then froze and sniffed at the air. When he whirled to face her again, her next thought was that this was the face of death staring her down, merciless and brutal and for no fucking reason.

His eyes flashed once more, his teeth glinting in the semi-darkness within a cruel snarl.

“ Blackmoon .”