Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Elise's sisters were going to murder her when they realized she'd gotten herself kidnapped by a freaking werewolf.
She'd realized what he was sometime between his eyes glowing in the hallway and her desperate attempt at a magic zap fizzling to nothing. It would have knocked a human out. Or, well, it should have.
In theory.
She didn't get to practice that kind of spell very often.
She was trying to keep her wits about her as Nico—no, the wolf, she couldn't be thinking of him as a person—drove farther east towards the edge of the city.
They were driving away from Iron Runner pack territory, which was probably good for her.
The Iron Runner pack was big enough to have witch-hunters, wolves who specialized in scenting witches and hunting them down.
Lucky for her, most shifters couldn't sense a witch if she wasn't actively doing magic. And even luckier, her wolf kidnapper hadn't sensed the magic when she tried to zap him.
Briana might have tried her luck with magic again. Delainey could have laid him flat with barely any effort.
But Elise was a healer at heart, and hurting people, even wolves, didn't come naturally.
Nico thought she was a vet, which she could work with.
Hopefully. If someone in his pack needed medical attention, she had some basic training she could use.
All healers had a bit of non-magic first aid and field medic training to support their magic.
Because she definitely couldn't risk using her true power anywhere near a wolf.
Heat scoured her all over, and she didn't think it had anything to do with her anger.
Nico was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles had turned white, and every two minutes or so he glanced her way with a look like he wanted to devour her.
Which wasn't supposed to be hot.
He was a werewolf! He was a kidnapper!
And when he'd backed her up against that door and stolen the keys from her hand, a small part of her had wanted to melt.
Ugh! She had a terrible survival response. This was what she got for being coddled her whole life. Instead of running or fighting like a sane witch, her stupid body wanted to climb the werewolf and never let go.
If her sisters didn't kill her for getting kidnapped, they'd definitely kill her for that.
But maybe she could turn this kidnapping into a kidnaprotunity. She couldn't think of a single witch that had been inside a shifter's inner sanctum. Witches and weres weren't at war, not exactly. But the threat of it was always there.
And when shifters got bored, they liked to make that a problem for witches.
If she could get inside of his pack headquarters, maybe she could plant some magic. Not enough to do anything or even be detected, but something that could be left to take root and be used later.
Serena would be better at that, but Serena hadn't been kidnapped.
If Elise could pull it off, she'd be a freaking legend. And if she saw enough, maybe her coven could even sell the information. It wasn't like they were going to start fighting wolves, but shifters all had enemies. And those enemies liked to pay.
If her werewolf knowledge was up-to-date, she was almost sure Nico was taking her to the territory of the Southern Basin Pack.
The Iron Runner pack ruled most of the city, but packs like the Southern Basin had carved out their own territory and were always nipping at the Iron Runner pack heels, which, as far as she was concerned, was a good thing.
If the shifters were fighting each other, they weren't killing witches.
Was Nico the alpha? He sure seemed commanding. But she couldn't exactly ask. She'd already slipped up, but he hadn't noticed.
Her only hope for survival was that he kept thinking she was human and he had enough moral compunction not to kill her when she was done.
He pulled his truck up the driveway of a huge house and followed it around to the garage on the side.
It was three stories tall and sprawled out in either direction, so big she couldn't take all of it in.
A mansion, definitely, with dozens of windows and gray bricks stacked up high. Just how big was his pack?
"Come on," Nico said and got out of the truck.
He waited for her to get out, but Elise glared and pointed at the door. "Child lock."
He looked a bit sheepish at that, which was almost endearing.
No! Elise was not allowed to find her kidnapper cute! It was one thing to think he was hot, that was just an undeniable fact about the way his face and body was shaped. Cuteness was something worse, something that could worm its way deep inside and make her all weak and tingly.
More weak and tingly.
Nico opened her door and offered her a hand. He had calluses on his thick fingers and a bit of dark hair on the back of his hand along with a thin white scar on one of his knuckles. What could make a werewolf scar? Elise ignored her curiosity and the hand and stepped out on her own.
"Things might seem a little strange here," he said. "But I promise I'll keep you safe."
Yeah, right.
Nico led her through the door in the garage to a mudroom in the back of the house. There were a few jackets hanging on hooks by the door and a dozen pairs of shoes tucked under a bench. It looked so mundane, so normal that Elise's brain short circuited for a moment.
There was a hallway that led farther inside, but he took her up a staircase instead.
Her feet sunk into the plush, beige carpet that would probably feel really good on bare feet.
She hoped she was leaving mud stains. Elise tried to take in as much as she could, but he was moving fast and nothing looked all that out of the ordinary.
It was a big house, sure, but there was nothing particularly wolfy about it.
They walked down another long hallway and past several closed doors that looked more like they belonged in a hotel than a mansion. How many people lived here?
One door was open, and she peeked inside to see a small couch and cooking area, along with a bed. It was more of an apartment than a bedroom.
Interesting. Not useful, but good to know.
They walked down another hallway, this one without any doors along the wall, and ended at a room that seemed bigger, even just from the dimensions of the walls, than the ones they'd passed.
Nico gave her a strange look. He was standing in front of the doors like he was ready to go to battle. "Please," he said. "Even if you don't understand, just help him." He put his hand on the doorknob and opened it.
It was a huge room, definitely the main suite.
The room had a vaulted ceiling that was ten or twelve feet high.
The walls were painted a gentle green, and on the opposite side of the giant room, there were French doors that led out onto a balcony, or, they probably did since they were on the second floor.
It was too dark for Elise to really tell.
A window had been cracked open to let in fresh air, but it hadn't done much to banish the smell of sickness from the room.
And on the bed in the middle of the room was a shifter who was caught between human and animal form.
It made her stomach roil to see it. She could count on one hand the times she'd ever interacted with werewolves outside of the harassment she and her coven endured from time to time when they were doing magic at the edge of witch territory.
But she'd never seen one like this. Elise covered her mouth with her hand and didn't need to pretend to look shocked.
This man looked wrong. Where there wasn't fur, his skin was sickly pale, almost gray, and he was covered in a sticky sheen of sweat.
His hands were misshapen, fingers too long and nails almost talon-like. And his face?
His face didn't look human. He almost had a snout, though his nose was still covered in skin. It was like his skull was the wrong shape, and she couldn't tell if it was a normal beard or fur that was growing over it, but it wasn't natural.
Her magic surged within her, desperate to be let out, and Elise choked it down. She couldn't do any healing here, not if she wanted to survive.
But she didn't need to pretend to be horrified by the state the werewolf was in. And she didn't need her magic to tell her that something was monumentally wrong.