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M axwell’s murderous hatred was about to erupt at any second, she was sure of it.

The drive turned out to be slightly longer than an hour and a half, and from start to finish, a tensely roiling silence had filled the car, while Rebecca received the full force of Maxwell’s emotions as he drove.

Nothing but his ceaseless urge to rip Rowan in half.

Things could come to a boiling point at any second, and it wouldn’t be good for any of them.

Rowan wouldn’t see it that way, though, would he? No, any attention he received, good or bad, was only fuel for his own obnoxious fires.

Maxwell, on the other hand, looked like he was about to lose all self-control, even when no one had uttered a word since leaving the motel.

“Oh, hey!” Rowan leaned forward in the back seat and pointed through the windshield. “Right there. That’s where we’re going. Macs.”

Rebecca braced herself against the door when Maxwell swerved violently off the highway, cut across the parking lot, and slammed the Honda to a screeching halt in front of the building.

Everyone got out together, fortunately without coming to blows, but that could end any moment.

Rebecca was so sure these two were about to tear each other to shreds, she didn’t even notice at first where they were.

Then she took in their surroundings.

A parking lot just off I-70, directly in front of the Macs, with a neon Open sign and the other dozens of flashing lights in the windows staring her in the face. Taunting her the way she knew Rowan was also taunting her.

She caught up to him in his bouncy little stride on the way toward the liquor store’s front entrance and pulled him aside. “If we were wasting time at the motel, I’m pretty sure stopping to get lit only wastes even more of it.”

“But wouldn’t that just make this so much more fun ?” he asked, grinning despite her warning. “Come on. Why don’t you guys come with me?”

Rebecca backed away from him and scowled at the marquee above the front doors.

Beside her, Maxwell did the same and answered for them both. “We will wait.”

“Both of you?” Rowan looked back and forth between them, then shrugged. “Okay. Fine. I’m telling you, though, this is a fun place… Your loss.”

Then he spun around and waltzed right through the door, the jingling of the bell chime echoing after him.

The whole thing baffled Rebecca more than she could have explained. She’d really thought a stop at the liquor store was just another one of Rowan’s obnoxious jokes, but this was very real.

“Do you have any idea what he’s doing?” Maxwell grumbled.

“Not at all.” She puffed out a sigh. “This is ridiculous.”

“It feels appropriate to remind you of your promise to let me work out my own frustration on him, if we find proof of even the slightest deception.”

If she hadn’t been so on edge herself, questioning Rowan’s motives and everything he did, Rebecca would have found that particularly amusing.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I remember.”

The shifter could use Rowan Blackmoon as a fucking pinata for all she cared, though she would have highly preferred knowing without a doubt that the Blackmoon Elf wasn’t jerking them around for no reason.

That he hadn’t lied about helping her find the prophecy. That he wasn’t drawing up some other plan of betrayal right now, while she and Maxwell waited for him outside a fucking liquor store.

She didn’t trust Rowan at all. He’d broken every last ounce of her willingness to trust him, which still amazed her even now, after everything they’d once been to each other in the old world.

But all that was clearly over. Rowan was no longer who he’d been, and she had to keep treating him as such. His priorities had changed drastically.

Then again, so had Rebecca’s.

They stood there no more than two minutes before Maxwell tensed beside her, his senses on full alert, every muscle growing rigid at a new discovery Rebecca hadn’t yet made.

When she turned toward him, meaning to ask, he set a hand on the small of her back to guide her away from both their vehicle and the liquor store’s front doors. Dipping his head toward her ear but still fervently scanning the parking lot, he murmured, “We are being watched.”

She forced herself not to look hastily around. That would only draw more attention they didn’t need. “Any idea who it is?”

A low growl escaped him before his gaze flickered toward the liquor store’s front wall of windows. “If I did not know better, I’d say it’s Blackmoon.”

Which made absolutely no sense.

Even less when Rebecca followed the shifter’s gaze, because they could both clearly see Rowan inside the store, yucking it up with the cashier like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Then we need to figure out who it is,” she whispered.

“Agreed.” Maxwell walked ahead of her along the sidewalk, sniffing the air, trying not to be too conspicuous despite the nearly empty parking lot. Then he turned back to face her and nodded toward the corner of the liquor store.

Whoever it was, the unknown party watching them was hiding behind the building.

Rebecca nodded, and they both moved silently around the corner. When the side was clear, they made their way toward the back.

Being watched wasn’t particularly new, but all the way out here, off the side of the highway, with no reason for anyone else to keep an eye on them or to know where they were in the first place?

That made the probability incredibly high that they were about to face another attempted attack.

Maxwell clearly felt the same. He gestured for her to wait, then slowly snuck along the side of the building to check it out on his own first.

Only then did Rebecca notice a change in the air. A new presence she could have sworn she felt. Something alarmingly familiar, and though she couldn’t immediately make sense of it, it did feel like someone was watching her.

Not just watching. Searching for her.

The second before Maxwell slipped around the back corner, footsteps approached from the other side.

Rebecca caught a glimpse of the shifter leaping forward into his own attack, and she took off after him.

The air filled with rabid snarling and flashing lights. Maxwell’s anger and protectiveness surged over her through their connection.

The next second, the brief and violent scuffle ended with a heavy grunt that also sounded so impossibly familiar…

She darted around the corner to join him, a hissing orb of crimson battle magic already in hand.

In the split second it took her to realize what she was looking at, she almost had the exact same thought as Maxwell.

Holy shit. It’s Rowan.

But no, not quite.

It was another elf, pinned against the wall by Maxwell’s hand around her throat. The woman struggled feebly to free herself, boots scuffling across the asphalt as she sagged against the wall beneath his grasp.

Definitely not Rowan.

“Hannigan,” Rebecca called warily.

He whipped his head toward her and snarled, “She’s been following us.”

Rebecca couldn’t stop staring at the other elf. Coherent thought eluded her.

The other woman gave up her meager struggle, then released Maxwell’s forearm with both hands before she sighed. “I gotta say, I never expected to see a shifter in the mix. Just full of pent-up rage, aren’t you, big guy?”

Then she rolled her glinting hazel eyes in Rebecca’s direction, unable to move her head with Maxwell’s hand around her throat, and raised her eyebrows. “Tell him to let me go.”

That was honestly the last thing on her mind. Rebecca still couldn’t comprehend what she was looking at, but it was very real.

Maxwell wouldn’t have pinned a hallucination against the wall just to humor her.

“What are you doing here?” Rebecca asked.

With another snarl, Maxwell tightened his grip.

The elf woman choked before croaking out, “I’d love to tell you once I can breathe again.”

Rebecca nodded at the shifter. “Stand down.”

He looked baffled by her decision, then begrudgingly loosened his deadly grip around the woman’s throat, no more.

She hadn’t told him to release their captured spy, but at least the other woman could freely breathe and speak at the same time.

Then Maxwell narrowed his eyes at his Roth-Da’al. “Would you like me to dispose of our spy now, or subdue her and take her along for later?”

A simpering giggle fluttered out of the woman’s mouth as she looked Maxwell up and down and winked. “Definitely take me along for later, handsome. Granted, a shifter’s not usually my first choice, but I’m always down for new thrills.”

With a snort, Maxwell merely frowned at her.

Rebecca was still too stunned to say anything else.

Then quickly scuffling footsteps echoed against the building’s outer wall, growing louder and closer before they were joined by Rowan’s voice as he rounded the corner. “ There you are. You know, if you wanted to slip away without a trace, leaving the getaway car behind seems like a pretty counterintuitive—”

He froze the second his gaze fell on the woman pinned to the wall beneath Maxwell’s hand. Rowan almost dropped the plastic bag of purchases in his arms. His mouth worked open and closed without sound for a moment before he blurted, “Maleine. You look… here. ”

Maxwell started to step away, but Rowan pointed at him. “Hey, you know what, Wolf Boy? Go ahead and keep her there for another few minutes. Hours, even. I really don’t mind. Just as long as you press that hand down hard .”

And of course, because Rowan had said it, Maxwell did the complete opposite and fully removed his hand from Maleine’s throat.

She stumbled a little beneath the release, quickly straightened, and grinned, brushing her fingers across her throat as if he’d left kisses there instead of reddening lines in the shape of his fingers.

If the trembling tension between the three of them had been bad in the car, it grew to completely new heights with four of them.

Rowan smacked his lips, glancing from one of them to the next and seemingly unable to look at Maleine for longer than a second. “What are you doing here?”

The woman tossed her russet-colored hair over her shoulder and simpered, “I heard a thing or two about what you’ve been up to in this world. And that you’d finally found Agn’a Tha’ros’s precious gem .”

When she nodded toward Rebecca, Rebecca almost turned around and stormed off.

“I figured I’d tag along to make sure everyone was doing their jobs,” Maleine finished.

Rowan stared vacantly at her before his eyes narrowed with a twitch. “Who sent you?”

“No one.”

He squinted even farther and tilted his head, eyeing her warily.

No, the woman’s answer hadn’t convinced Rebecca, either.

Then Maleine glanced at the plastic bag dangling from Rowan’s hand and the bottle of liquor clearly visible inside it. “ This is what you’re delaying your homecoming for? Spirits?”

“There’s a bigger plan involved,” he muttered.

“Well great. I’m happy to help wherever I can.”

“Yeah, actually…” Rowan pointed at Rebecca and Maxwell, the bag rustling in his grip. “We’re on a little side mission, here. So, you know, nothing you’d be interested in. You should probably just go find some poor, thirsty farmer from beyond The Rift and bestow your beneficence there while he gets his rocks off.”

“Oh please.” Maleine smoothed her hair away from her face and brushed off her clothes as she finally pushed away from the wall. “I’m staying right here. Where I can keep an eye on you and protect you. Make sure you stay on the path. Who knows? Maybe even offer a few pointers with my own wisdom, here and there.”

Rowan’s eyes widened in terror before he wiped the entire expression completely off his face. Then, rolling his eyes, he scoffed and turned away from them all to stomp back around the corner of the building.

Throwing a fit like a fucking child.

Maxwell stared after him in growing bafflement.

Maleine looked Rebecca up and down. “Honestly, I thought you were dead.”

“I thought you’d be rotting in Ryngivát Prison,” Rebecca quipped.

The elf woman grinned. “Fun little surprises all around, then, huh? Look at us. Aren’t reunions fun ?”

Without waiting for a response, she surged past Rebecca and Maxwell to follow Rowan back into the parking lot.

Rebecca sighed and headed after them, Maxwell moving beside her in his long, slow stride.

“Who the hell is that ?” he asked.

“Maleine.” Rebecca already hated the taste of the words in her mouth before they even came out. “Blackmoon’s older sister.”