Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
Elise wasn’t sleeping, which was the entire point. She was lying in Nico's massive bed freaking out because she had spent the whole day slinking around Cole's room trying to look like she was healing him when she was metaphorically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Without her healing powers, she couldn't sense what was wrong with him.
Even though she wasn't actively using them, she could definitely feel something nagging at her consciousness. Something she needed magic to fix. And there was no way to use magic when she was surrounded by freaking werewolves.
Elise hadn't been left alone with Cole for even a minute. If one of the guys went on lunch break, another came and took his place. If one of them needed to pee, another stood outside the door.
Cole had to be the alpha. She would expect a werewolf pack to take care of their own, and to guard a member with their life. But this was a little extreme.
Nico, Reece, Javi, and Hugh were his betas. That was good information to have. Possibly useful if her coven sisters ever came and rescued her, but there wasn't much she could do with it now other than remain extra cautious around those guys.
Because everyone knew that the higher up you were in a pack, the more dominant you were, the more volatile your temper was. She had already seen it herself, and she really didn't want to see it again.
Which made what she was planning to do a little insane.
But Elise was running out of options. How many days could she spend pretending she was doing anything useful before the werewolves rid themselves of her in the most final way possible? Two? Three? If she lasted a week with Cole barely hanging on to life, she would be the luckiest woman alive.
And she was already pressing her luck, hoping no one figured out she was a witch.
She tilted her head and watched Nico's sleeping form for several seconds over the DMZ of blankets and pillows she kept piling higher between them.
She feared that one morning she was going to wake up and find herself wrapped around Nico like a lamprey and then have to face the mortification of revealing just how much her body liked his body.
No, thank you.
His chest rose and fell evenly. In sleep, his eyelashes were longer than she had noticed before, and he looked almost relaxed. But she had a feeling that if she even brushed her arm near his he would spring into action.
His chest rose and fell. Once. Twice. Again and again. The rhythm didn’t change.
He was definitely asleep. So this was her only shot.
Elise barely breathed as she eased herself out of her side of the bed and stood up.
She froze again and watched Nico breathe, waiting to see if there was any change.
There wasn’t. Then she walked quietly across the room, backing away from the bed so she never took her eyes off him. And still, Nico didn't stir.
Could she actually get away with this?
Maybe.
But getting out of Nico's room was only the first obstacle. She placed her hand on the doorknob and sent a silent prayer to the universe that no one was guarding the door on the opposite end, and that the door didn't creak.
Success.
She slipped into the hallway and was relieved to find it empty.
Now she had to hope that no one was waiting in Cole's room.
As far as she knew, the betas left him alone overnight.
From what she could tell, they considered Nico's presence near her enough to keep her contained, and no one else in the pack would dare disturb the alpha.
But if she got caught sneaking in, she was working on coming up with a backstory, and she hoped it would miraculously appear in a moment of panic.
But it wasn't needed.
His room was just as empty as she hoped she would find it, with only Cole lying on the bed, his breathing a little labored, and his body covered in sweat.
He didn't look good, but he hadn't looked good since she’d first got there, so she wasn't going to consider this any worse than she'd already seen. And if she could just spend a little time with him alone here, she could fix this.
She knelt beside his bed and grabbed his hand and then paused.
Was this really what she wanted to do?
Werewolves were the traditional enemies of witches.
Witch healers did not heal werewolves. She had studied under several healers to try and improve her craft, and none of them had mentioned shifters, except to tell stories of the terrible wars of generations past, and all of the pain and suffering those shifters had wrought on witches.
Packs like the Iron Runners had special units of witch-hunters, werewolves trained to root out witches and hunt them down in times of conflict.
True, Elise had never actually heard of a witch getting killed by a witch-hunter during her lifetime, but they were definitely real, and fifty years ago, they’d harassed her grandmother’s coven to near extinction.
But this pack wasn’t the Iron Runners. And Nico hadn’t kidnapped her because she was a witch.
Cole groaned, but he didn't rouse.
Maybe it would be smarter to leave him here and let nature take its course.
But at that moment, Elise was a healer with her patient, and it didn't matter that he was a werewolf.
He was a sick man, and he needed help. Help that only she could give.
So she shoved any thoughts of treachery aside and sent a pulse of her magic into him.
When it came back to her, she gasped.
How the hell was he still alive?
Somehow, silver had permeated his bloodstream. It wasn't just in the wound, though it was concentrated there, but it was almost like it was some sort of liquid concentrate that had seeped into his veins and spread throughout his system.
She had never seen anything like that or even heard of it from older texts that she wasn't supposed to be studying.
A shifter's body rejected silver quickly and harshly. Wounds would not clot. They would vomit until it was gone if they ingested it, and they would not stop sweating until they were free of the poison.
Cole definitely had the sweating going, but the wound had clotted, and he hadn't vomited since she'd been there. Which meant something was keeping his body from rejecting the silver.
That gave her a direction to go.
Elise sent more magic into him, this time targeting the silver poison.
She needed to get his body to expel it in any way possible, and though she wasn't familiar with exactly what had been done, she did have training in how to get things like snake venom or other poisons out of someone's system, and the principles were the same.
The fox had been easy compared to this. Healing the fox was like a gentle morning jog on a cool sunny day.
Sinking her magic into Cole was a marathon in a thunderstorm.
His body fought against hers, trying to ward off the magic like it was silver, and she had to dodge around it and sneak past it until she could find the biggest concentration and work on breaking it up.
The hand she was holding got sweatier, which she took as a good sign, and hoped that meant his body was expelling the poison.
Her own stomach roiled as she worked. This was bigger than anything she'd done before, and normally, one of her coven sisters would be there to act as backup and to pull her out of the healing if things started to get too intense.
But that wasn't an option right now. And Elise let herself get lost in the work.
But she wasn't so lost that she didn't hear the door open.
On pure instinct and panic, she tore her magic out of Cole and had to bite her lip to keep from yelping in pain from the backlash. If it hurt her like that, it had to be excruciating for him.
He should be thankful he was still unconscious.
Cole groaned in pain, and Elise hoped that was a good sign. Maybe she had gotten enough of the silver. Maybe he was starting to fight off the poison on his own.
She didn't have to look towards the door to know who it was. Her body seemed to be attuned to Nico's. She took a deep breath and looked his way anyway and almost flinched at the furious expression on his face.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" Nico demanded, stalking towards her and yanking her away from Cole.
Elise gulped and scrambled for that excuse she was supposed to have come up with earlier. "I couldn't sleep," she said, panting a little bit, and that wasn’t an act. She’d used a lot of magic. Could Nico smell it on her? "I was just worried about him, and I came to check his vitals."
That was plausible, she hoped. It wasn't like they had any sort of machine monitoring. And she truly didn't want to wake up one day and find that he had passed in the night.
Nico glared at her. "You are not to be alone with Cole. I thought we made that clear."
He drew in a deep breath, and terror rocked Elise.
The scent of magic was supposed to dissipate quickly. It wasn't a real scent; humans couldn’t smell it. It was magical, and it didn't linger in the air like bacon grease or anything like that. But she had still been performing her healing when Nico opened the door.
Could he smell it? Did he suspect?
She wanted to hide her hands behind her back, like that might have any effect, but she forced herself to remain as calm as she could, which wasn't very calm to be honest, because an angry werewolf, an angry sexy werewolf, was looking at her like he might do violence.
And she wasn't nearly as scared as she should be.
Elise really did not have her head on straight when it came to this guy, and she needed to figure out why.
"I wouldn't hurt him," she said, and tried not to feel guilty about her train of thought before she’d gotten to work. She wouldn't. She was a healer. Healers did not hurt people. That was how it worked. "What did you think I was going to do? Come in here and smother him with a pillow?"
"No," said Nico. "But you can't go sneaking around here. It's not safe.”
“It's a house!" she objected. A human wouldn’t know there were furry killers roaming the halls at all hours or the threat they could pose. "Do you have serial killers walking around or something?"
"It's not just a house," Nico said, but he didn't explain further. "And if someone other than me had caught you …" He trailed off. Then he grabbed her wrist and dragged her towards the door. "You can't be in here tonight," he said.