27. Chapter 27
Gravel and dead weeds crunched beneath his boots as he walked steadily away from the trees, his hazel gaze roaming across the Shade teams all gaping back at him.
Not Rowan Blackmoon the way they’d only thought they’d known him.
This was the Scion of the Blackmoon Clan in all his glory. A powerful force for Agn’a Tha’ros. An elven prince.
His plain Earthside clothing in dark and nondescript colors were gone, replaced by the splendor of a true commander’s garb. Full elven armor of a brighter white-silver than any of the others, detailed with intricately swirling symbols of his station.
A full helm crested with a tuft of black feathers completed the ensemble, though he’d since removed it to tuck it under one arm as he approached.
Knowing Rowan, he’d probably never put it on in the first place.
He stopped halfway toward Rebecca, then took a moment to look at everyone—the four Shade teams standing in frozen disbelief behind their Roth-Da’al, and the elite battalion surrounding them all both on the ground and from above.
His soft chuckle felt like it came from a different world. “I’d almost forgotten how heated these things can get. And how easy it is for the whole lot of it to just…go up in smoke. Figured I’d get a good front-row seat to the show, but you know what? I couldn’t help noticing something just doesn’t look quite right here.”
Rebecca’s operatives hissed, growled, whispered threats under their breath, but none of them moved toward the Blackmoon Elf or let an emotional outburst get the better of them.
Rowan advanced again, smiling his secret, devilish smile with each slow-falling footstep, swaggering toward Rebecca like the king of both fucking worlds.
Her only hope.
Her devastating weakness.
He said nothing as he cut across the road, refusing to distinguish between dirt and magical corpses in his path and stepping on whatever he pleased. Then he stopped directly in front of Rebecca, helm still cradled in the crook of one arm, and flashed her a feral grin.
Maxwell bristled instantly, leaning forward like he meant to lunge at Rowan but refusing to leave Rebecca’s side. “Traitor.”
Rowan’s hazel eyes never left Rebecca’s face, but he snapped his fingers and pointed at the ground at the shifter’s feet. “Down boy.”
All Maxwell could do now was growl even louder, silver eyes strobing with violent intent but nothing more. She’d ordered him to stand down. He would obey.
She’d also ordered her entire task force not to engage Rowan Blackmoon under any circumstances. At the time, she hadn’t once considered this type of confrontation even existed among the possibilities.
Her gaze flickered toward the commander’s helm in his arm, and the last connection she hadn’t yet made lit up in her mind with an electric jolt.
This was his army. All this was his doing…
“Rowan,” she hissed, abandoning her former pretenses of familiarity with the Blackmoon Elf. Maxwell already knew she and Rowan shared a history. There was no reason to keep trying to hide it. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Rowan shifted his weight to one foot, looked her up and down, and winked. “Good to see you, too, Kilda’ari. ”
Rebecca’s fists curled into themselves all on their own. She couldn’t stop them, nor could she keep the furious tremble at bay as she glared at him and felt as though any minute, she would burst into flames. But she did maintain a relatively level control over her voice. “That’s not what I said.”
“Hasn’t that always been the way between us?” Rowan chuckled, then fixed Maxwell with a conspiratorial smile. “Don’t hurt yourself trying to puzzle it out, shifter. It’s an elf thing.”
When he winked at Maxwell next, Rebecca was sure Rowan would be on his back in the dirt in the next two seconds with an enormous gray wolf standing on his chest and tearing out his throat.
Wishful thinking.
“Is this why you disappeared?” she hissed, barely containing her rage with so many soldiers surrounding her teams. “To go back for Gazen’s battalion because you couldn’t get the job done on your own?”
“ Gazen’s battalion?” Rowan threw his head back and filled the air with his dangerous laugh. The laugh of a jester. Of a performer. The laugh of a traitor who still thought he walked his own path.
When his laughter died down, he sighed and tilted his head at her. “Wow… That’s actually pretty cute. No, the Hakalini’ir are mine now. And they’ve been in this world almost as long as I have. A lot has changed while you’ve been away, Kilda’ari . But, of course, you wouldn’t have known about any of it. So how about we have ourselves a chat and I bring you up to speed? I’d hate to see your little toy soldiers go to waste because their Roth-Da’al couldn’t swallow her pride…”
There was no mistaking that as a threat. They both knew the He's threatening all her operatives out here right now, because they both know the Hakalini’ir could destroy her operatives in minutes, just like they’d wiped out Big Boss, Suit, and both their gangs.
With the evidence smirking right in front of her, Rebecca knew that was what had happened. He’d led both criminal factions into this meeting, somehow, and then he and his precious battalion had ended them all. With nothing more than a snap of his fingers.
Then the terrifying certainty of everything else seeped through her veins, crystallizing her strength, pounding her resolve into dust.
It was Rowan.
This whole time, while Shade scurried to find those responsible for attacking individual operatives and murdering their contacts, Rebecca had thought so many times how easily Rowan Blackmoon could have been behind the atrocities. And every time, she’d convinced herself that wasn’t the truth. That he would never go to those lengths to make a statement.
She’d been wrong.
Rowan had killed off their entire magical network in Chicago. He already knew everyone Shade dealt with on a regular basis. He’d infiltrated the compound and their daily lives so he could betray them like this, and for what?
This moment, right here.
He’d done it all just to get Rebecca standing right here, inches away. So close, she could have speared him through with her magic and ended it all. But she wouldn’t get out of it alive after that.
Rebecca had never felt so furious—not since those final days, centuries ago, when her wrath had propelled her to new heights and she’d made the first purely free decision of her life to leave all of it behind forever.
She’d never felt this way about Rowan , but now he’d moved beyond annoying and potentially dangerous.
He’d betrayed her. He’d played the long game, luring her to this very moment, and now he had the upper hand.
There was nothing she could do, because all the consequences were unthinkable.
“So what do you say?” he asked again, wiggling his eyebrows. “I’m sure we can clear this up in no time.”
She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself before she ripped out his heart, but even then, her operatives would still be dead. Most likely, so would she.
Though it seemed impossible, she managed to swallow enough of her venomous anger to give him a reply that didn’t make her sound insane. “Only with an assurance that your men will stand down and allow my teams to fall back.”
“Well that’s very valiant of you,” he said. “But I’m afraid no one’s leaving until we’ve come to an agreement. Though in the interest of mitigating any potential interruptions, I say we both stand down. I will assure your toy soldiers’ safety as long as everyone behaves themselves.”
How could he do this to her? How could he betray her like this?
He had them all here now, dangling at the end of his puppetmaster’s strings, and she had no choice.
Rebecca drew her shoulders back with far more dignity than she felt and nodded.
Rowan broke into another grin, his hazel eyes shimmering madly beneath the night sky. Like this was everything he’d ever wanted. Like he’d just won the lottery.
Stepping back, he turned to shout up into the darkness. “Hakalini’ir! The grownups are stepping away for a moment for a private conversation. Unless something drastic happens, we’re all allies. For now. The soldiers of Shade are our honored guests.”
Nothing but silence greeted him, but the Blackmoon Elf began to stroll away as if everyone had replied in perfectly cheery agreement. Then he stopped, turned slightly back toward the bridge, and added, “To be clear, this is an official call for a ceasefire. As long as everyone behaves themselves while Mommy and Daddy are away, I’m sure you’ll all get along just fine.”
The elven soldiers didn’t move a muscle. They could have been stone dressed in shimmering elven steel.
Rebecca’s teams weren’t nearly as stoic.
“Knox? Knox! You’re not just gonna go with him, are you?”
“Don’t trust him, boss. That bastard’ll say anything!”
“If you’re going, we’re going. This is bullshit.”
With a deep breath, Rebecca turned fully around to address them all. The second she moved, all the wary comments and the refusal and the shouted barbs aimed at Rowan settled into a hushed silence.
“You heard him,” she said. “Stand down. Do not engage. This won’t take long.”
Rowan burst into a crazed round of cackling at that, slapping the side of his helm as he doubled over.
Everyone’s attention ripped away from the Blackmoon Elf when a sharp crack and dazzling zigzag of light came from the bridge.
The lieutenant who’d thrown that spear now drew his hands apart to reveal a growing wall of shimmering purple-white light spreading between them. Then, one by one, a dozen other elves in the battalion in a dozen different places did the same.
Their brilliant spells spread across the would-be battlefield for Shade and the graveyard of two Chicago crime lords. The light crackled and grew, forming an intricate dome high above the bridge’s highest beam and penning the Shade teams in with the elven battalion.
A final crack echoed around them with a warble of light across the dome when all glowing spells converged up top at the very center.
“No, no, no…”
“What the fuck are we supposed to do about that ?”
“Shit, we are here forever? Can we even get out?”
Rebecca craned her neck to view the top of the shimmering dome, but her attention was torn away again at the sickening sound of Rowan once again addressing both parties, though this time, his words seemed far more for Shade’s benefit.
“In case there was any confusion, you’re not prisoners. Not yet. Think of it as more of a kiddie playpen, if that’s easier. In effect, no one goes out, and more importantly, no one comes in. I find it highly effective against unwanted interruptions.” With another slap against the side of his helm, he spun toward the bridge and thrust a hand in the air. “Thank you, Lieutenant!”
Atop the bridge, none of the soldiers responded. None of them moved. Rebecca wouldn’t have been able to find the lieutenant at all if she hadn’t seen him catch his own spear earlier.
Rowan laughed it all off and shrugged, oozing with fake embarrassment. “That’s Lieutenant Grak for you. Always on duty, even when he’s not. Not too unlike your pet here.”
Though he spoke to Rebecca, he jerked his head toward Maxwell.
“I’ve never wanted to disembowel someone more,” Maxwell snarled.
“Huh.” Rowan raised an eyebrow and leaned toward Rebecca as if they were trading childhood secrets. “Though yours is a little on the cranky side, isn’t he? Have you considered a muzzle?”
Rebecca’s hatred for him already made her eyes burn, though she refused to look away. “Stop fucking around so we can get this over with.”
“As you wish.” His smile flickered, then he stepped back, dipped into a flourishing bow, then turned and gestured toward the woods where he’d first appeared. “Let’s step into my office.”
Before Rebecca could say a thing, Maxwell’s next snarl erupted beside her, his teeth bared and his silver eyes flashing like a lightning storm.
She could feel him doing everything to avoid shifting, and she silently thanked him for it.
The smile disappeared from Rowan’s face before he fixed the shifter with a deadpan stare and pointed at him. “Sit.”
“I stay with her.”
Rowan barked out a laugh and rolled his eyes.
Rebecca didn’t want any more violence to break out, especially between these too. Rowan and Maxwell at each other’s throats as Shade members was one thing.
This was an entirely different situation with a much higher likelihood of ending in blood and instant slaughter.
She had to be more careful now that she’d been in centuries.
“He stays with me,” she echoed, her voice dropping into a stern command of its own.
Once she said it, she realized how much she did want Maxwell at her side for this, no matter what he might see or hear during this little chat with the Blackmoon traitor who’d stabbed them all in the back.
Rowan blinked at her in surprise, then shrugged, still without giving Maxwell a second more of his attention. “If you say so. But if he pisses on the furniture, I’ll have to put him outside.”
With that, he spun around and sauntered off toward the tree line, shoulders swinging with every overconfident step, his elven armor glinting under the stars.
Rebecca wanted to scream into the sky and tear it all down around her, but following Rowan and hearing him out, no matter how much it gutted her to do so, was her only choice if she wanted to keep her operatives alive out here in the process.
She had to humor Rowan, publicly and privately. She had to play along.
The Scion of the Blackmoon Clan had well and truly cornered her, and there was no other way but to submit. .
Feeling every operative’s gaze on her, she turned toward them one more time, summoning as much confidence and reassuring into her expression as she could manage. “Sit tight. I’ll get us out of this.”
Her words didn’t seem to have any effect. Her teams certainly didn’t look any more comfortable or any less clueless in their shimmering forcefield of a cage.
But she didn’t have time to explain anything to anyone.
Steeling herself, she took off after Rowan toward the thick woods, with Maxwell immediately at her side.
Before they stepped into the trees, he leaned toward her and growled in her ear, “You’re going to kill him, right?”
She couldn’t even justify that with a response, though if she were in the shifter’s shoes, she probably would have wondered the same thing. He had every right to ask, and every right to seek that kind of justice.
Unsatisfied with her silence, he added, “If you won’t, I will.”
“If that’s what we need, I’ll let you know. Until then, I just need you to follow my lead and let me handle this.”
When she looked at him, the pained accusation on his face nearly broke her. He didn’t even have to ask the question; it was written all over his features, surging into her through their damn connection that made it impossible for her to pretend she didn’t know:
“How can you even consider playing into this asshole’s fucked-up game?”
Rebecca wondered that herself before remembering exactly how she could do this. There just wasn’t time to explain it to the shifter, even though she knew he would stand with her to the end of this. Whatever that was.
With another grumbled, Maxwell grabbed her forearm and leaned closer, though his grip was gentle. Just to get her attention. “If he tries anything—”
“Blackmoon won’t start anything. But if someone else does, he has every advantage. And he will finish it. Please, Maxwell, just…let me take care of it.”
Whether it was her insistence that she knew what she was doing, or the fact that she’d used his real name, he immediately released her arm.
At first, she thought he’d changed his mind and would turn back to spend the rest of the night under the protective dome with the rest of their operatives.
But he stayed beside her, matching her pace through the undergrowth as Rowan’s footsteps ahead led them on, and formally dipped his head. “Roth-Da’al.”
His response was perfectly acceptable, but it did nothing to hide the boiling anger bubbling beneath the surface, barely held at bay with every step.
Great. Now he was pissed at her because he thought she was giving up without a fight.
Fine. He could be pissed at her all he wanted, because she’d just saved his life and everyone else’s.
At least for tonight..
But, depending on how this chat with Rowan played out, who knew how many more impossible sacrifices Rebecca would have to make to keep them alive?
Including herself.