Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
Elise was still sleeping in his bed when Nico got up. He had shit to do. He shouldn't be wasting time looking at the way a beam of sunlight, that was peeking through the crack in the curtains, landed across Elise's nose and highlighted the variations of blondes and darker strands in her hair.
And he certainly shouldn't have had to force himself to stay in place, to not stalk across the room and lay down next to her on her side of the ridiculous boundary down the middle of the bed, gather her in his arms, and hold her close until he could wake her up with kisses and more.
Damn it.
He had hoped last night was a fluke, that the insanity of his actions and the pressure of Cole's injury was making him a little crazy. But if that was true, the craziness had persisted.
He had even put her in his own clothes, which was the kind of thing a shifter woman would have never let him get away with.
It was proprietary, possessive. Not something he would do to a stranger, but she didn't feel like a stranger.
Nico forced all those thoughts out of his mind. The pack wasn't going to take care of itself, and it was probably best to let the woman sleep. He didn't want exhaustion to cause her to make mistakes when it came to treating his alpha.
He checked his phone and saw a text from Javi, telling him to get his ass downstairs. The others wanted to talk.
Of course they did.
Nico spared one glance back at Elise before forcing himself away. But before he went all the way downstairs, he detoured down the hall to one of the common sitting areas where he saw one of his pack members, a woman named Aubrey, eating a muffin and playing some sort of game on her phone.
"Hey," he said, "can you do me a favor?"
Aubrey looked up at him. "What?"
She was in her mid-20s and was going to college for some sort of master's degree that he always forgot about—social work, public health, musicology, he really wasn't sure.
A good beta would've remembered that, but right now he couldn't afford to care.
She was even wearing a university sweatshirt that said School of Social Work, which didn't jog his memory in the slightest.
"Keep an eye on the door to my room," he said. "No one goes in or out."
"Is someone in there?" she asked.
Nico just gave her a hard look, and Aubrey looked away. He didn't like to abuse his rank in the pack, but sometimes it had its uses, and he wasn't about to leave Elise to her own devices. Besides, he didn't like to think what would happen if someone else discovered her roaming the halls.
This was the pack's inner sanctum, and they took their security very seriously.
Hugh, Reece, and Javi were waiting in the meeting room downstairs. It looked a bit like a business boardroom with a large table surrounded by chairs and a projector screen on one wall where they could theoretically do video calls or project PowerPoints or whatever it was that business people did.
Mostly they used the projector to play video games but today was not a game day.
Nico took his usual seat and braced for impact.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Reece demanded. He sat directly across from Nico and was brimming with so much anger Nico expected him to explode out of his chair at any moment.
Hugh didn't look at all confused, so he must have been briefed about the situation. Today the sleeves of Hugh's dark, long sleeved T-shirt were pushed up to reveal the tattoos on his arms.
"You brought a fucking human into pack territory," Javi said. He sounded so much angrier than usual. Of them all, Javi was usually the most relaxed. As relaxed as a werewolf beta ever could be. "Cole would fucking murder you before he let you do that."
They had gone over this the night before, and Nico didn't see any reason to retread old arguments. It was done. He looked at Hugh. "Any luck finding Mark?"
Hugh shook his head. "I haven't found him, but I did get a little bit more information.
Apparently, he and his healer friend are on some meditation retreat they decided to take after they finished whatever training thing they were doing.
They don't have their phones with them. And it'll be another couple days before anyone can track him down. "
"Fuck." Nico breathed out the word.
He wanted to rail at Mark. How could their healer do that? But life in a werewolf pack was dangerous, and they couldn't be cared for 24/7, not with only one healer.
The Iron Runner pack probably had a whole team of healers and hospital facilities.
Everything a pack could hope for. Nico knew they were lucky to have Mark.
It was a thankless job being the only healer, or the main healer, when your apprentice was a teenager who was eager and unskilled.
But he still wanted to rip Mark a new one for disappearing on them.
How could he have left his phone behind?
Asshole.
And a tiny part of him wanted to thank Mark, which was insane.
But if Mark hadn't gone on his little wellness retreat, then Elise wouldn't be sleeping in Nico's bed right now or wearing his pajamas and covered in his scent.
Fuck, he had to stop thinking about that. And then he stopped thinking about everything he wanted to do to her. And all the ways she made his body light up and his cock harden. The reaction he had to her was so strong that he had to wonder: was there something off about her?
He didn't know many humans. He spent his life in the pack.
He had been born into a different pack, and most of his contact with the human race was at places like the grocery store or the movie theater—fleeting encounters that told him nothing about their lives other than the fact that they really liked Oreos. There were so many different flavors.
But he was pretty sure most humans would freak out at a person with claws and half a snout. Elise had barely blinked.
"What do we do if she figures out we're wolves?" Reece asked.
Was he reading Nico's mind? Not that werewolves could do that, of course, but the question landed a bit too close to home.
"We don't let her find out," was Nico's response. Like it was that easy.
"And how do we do that, oh fearless leader?" Javi scowled. "She's in our home, and I'm not about to force our people to hide their natures in their own homes."
"We can't have her going to the press." That was Hugh. "And especially not the cops. Since you were stupid enough to fucking kidnap her! What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking that Cole is dying." Nico didn't yell.
He had to remember that the rest of the pack didn't know, and they were trying to keep it that way, but it was difficult.
"Cole put me in charge," he said. "He trusted me, so I need you to trust me.
We clearly were not qualified to treat him, and Mark isn't here.
Did you want me to go to the Iron Runner pack and beg them for a healer?
Did you want me to give up our autonomy to a pack that loves to swallow up others and kill off anyone strong enough to challenge their leadership? "
Hugh held his gaze for a beat and then looked away.
Nico looked over at Reece. "You're the one who said it. Cole will figure out what we do with her when he wakes up."
"If he wakes up," said Javi.
Nico growled and curled his hands around the arms of his chair to keep from jumping at the man.
"We have to think about it," said Reece. "And yeah, he left you in charge, but if he doesn't wake up? That's a different discussion."
The tension in the air was so thick it hurt to breathe.
They were one wrong word away from a leadership challenge, and Nico didn't want to fight any of his fellow betas for a position he had never wanted in the first place.
But if he gave up the leadership now, Elise was at risk.
He had brought her in, and he had to protect her.
She was his responsibility now, in his bed, wearing his clothes and … no, she was just his responsibility.
"What about the Marshalls?" he asked. "Is everything still on with that?"
Hugh stared at him for several seconds before nodding.
"Russell is putting the final touches on everything," said Javi, referencing their contact for the job. "Whatever—or whoever—they're moving, it seems delicate."
"Do we know what they're moving?" Nico asked.
They didn't always know. Sometimes it was people—not in a creepy way, just moving one alpha through Iron Runner's territory without paying tribute, usually.
Or protecting an alpha's kids from being kidnapped and held for ransom. And sometimes it was things.
And then there were the rescue jobs, as Nico liked to think of them. Freeing unwilling members from Iron Runner influence and getting them the fuck out of town without forcing them to pay exorbitant exit costs.
"Russell was pretty tight-lipped," said Javi. "He promised it's nothing explosive or illegal by human standards."
"That leaves a lot of room for what it might be," said Hugh. Javi just shrugged.
"Where's the girl now?" Javi asked, not to be deterred by talk of future business.
"She's sleeping," Nico said. "And I have Aubrey watching the door to my room to make sure she doesn't go anywhere. I'll make sure she doesn't figure anything out," he promised, "and I will be on her the entire time she's here."
Reece snorted. "Yeah, you made that pretty clear."
"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?" Now Nico was out of his seat.
Hugh put a hand on Nico's arm, and across the table, Javi mirrored the action on Reece.
"Keep your cools, assholes," said Hugh. "We're going to get through this thing if it kills us."
"Do you need anything fucking else?" Nico snapped since he couldn't do the damage that he wanted.
Reece scowled, but Javi shook his head. "We're good here."
Nico left the other betas because if he stayed even a moment longer, he was going to punch that scowl off of Reece's face. He stopped by the kitchen on the way up to his room and grabbed a few things. Then he thanked Aubrey and dismissed her before entering his room.
The shower was running, and a few minutes later, Elise came out still wearing the pajamas he had lent her. Now wet, her hair looked darker as it was combed back from her face. His red shirt clung to her damp skin, and the pants still dragged on the floor.
He had found a pair of spare yoga pants in the laundry room and put those on the bed so she could change into them, but he hadn't found her another shirt.
He liked the idea of her wearing something of his—of marking her as his even in that little way.
He told himself it was so the pack would know to keep away.
But it felt like a lie even in his own head.
"I brought you breakfast," he said and set the tray with the cup of coffee, muffin, and fruit down on the table.
"Thanks," Elise said, and she offered him a small smile.
It went straight to his gut. Fuck, he was so screwed. But he watched her eat, with the satisfaction of a man providing for his woman, and decided to let himself enjoy this for as long as she would let him get away with it.