Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
The conversation with Javi probably could have been a phone call. He didn't hang around much longer after Nico declared that Elise was his mate.
There were a few exclamations of Really? Really? Her? involved. Nico got all growly. Javi ended up grinning, which suggested that he was probably teasing about the whole thing in the first place.
Elise chose to take that as a good sign.
If Javi could accept them, even if he didn't quite understand it, maybe others would be able to too.
Aya, perhaps? Elise hoped she could find a way to make her best friend accept this whole werewolf-boyfriend thing because she didn't want to gain a boyfriend—or a mate, whatever that meant—and lose her closest friend.
Elise was tempted to ask Nico what he meant by calling her his mate.
It felt like a big word. She was pretty sure it was important to shifters, but she'd been really brave over the past few weeks, and that bravery had run out. She was a little too freaked to figure out exactly what it meant.
Their whole relationship was so new, so fragile, and so prone to break at the next sign of trouble that she didn't want him to start making insane declarations that might send her running for the hills.
Not that anything had sent her running for the hills yet. If there was mystical, magical werewolf bullshit going on, maybe she could just roll with it.
Javi had gone back to the pack house to talk to Cole.
He promised to give them a call one way or another to tell them how it went and either invite them there or tell them to run for their lives.
The anticipation was doing a number on Elise's nerves, and Nico had already almost paced a hole in the hotel's carpeting.
When her own cell phone rang, she nearly jumped out of her skin. But Javi would be calling the hotel phone. Her shoulders sank when she read the caller ID.
"What is it?" Nico paused his stalking around for a second to ask.
Elise flashed the phone screen at him, but she couldn't put this off forever. Knowing her coven sisters, she would just be barraged by phone calls if she swiped to ignore. She answered the phone.
Delainey started talking before Elise could even greet her, voice tinny through the speaker. "Get your ass down here and talk to me right now, woman to woman, before I start knocking out windows of this cheap ass motel."
Damn it, Elise thought. Of course one of them would find her. She had no idea how. Her anti-tracking spell was definitely still working. Had Delainey hacked her Uber account?
"Do it, Elise. If you're not down here in five minutes, I'm bringing this conversation to you. Violently." Delainey hung up, and the line beeped as it went dead.
Okay, so she didn't know what room Elise was in or she wouldn't be summoning her downstairs. That was good. Useful. But it didn't solve the problem.
"We can run." Nico was moving toward the window to check the parking lot. "We can just sneak out the back and get out of here."
"I'm not afraid of Delainey." Elise crossed her arms; she was almost tempted to stomp her foot. "She won't hurt me. She's just going to yell."
"I wasn't afraid of Delainey either." Nico turned back from the window. "And then she kidnapped me."
"Yeah, but you're not a witch." Delainey had way more offensive fire power than Elise did, but Elise was more than capable of putting up a shield, especially since she was almost certain Delainey wouldn't be willing to really hurt her.
"How did she find you?" he asked, pacing. "I thought you said she couldn't track you."
Elise went into the settings on her phone, scrolling through the menus.
"Crap. She can't track me by magic, but I forgot to turn off the family tracking in my phone.
We all have it turned on." She toggled that setting off and hoped that Delainey was the only one who had thought to check her location.
"I'm just going to go talk to her," she said, slipping her phone into her pocket. "I promise I can handle this. If I'm not back in twenty minutes, then you could come and try and rescue me."
"Try? I will succeed in rescuing you. I'm not letting her take you out."
Elise resisted the urge to roll her eyes but secretly felt delighted at the protectiveness.
"She's not going to take me out. At worst, she'll take me home.
And that's not happening, I promise. Besides, the room is looking out over the parking lot.
You're going to be able to see us the whole time. Just don't make it obvious."
Nico clutched her shoulders and kissed her soundly. "Don't you dare get hurt." He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes.
"I'll do my best," she promised, squeezing his hand before letting go.
Elise stomped down the hallway, shoulders set, and tried to center her mind.
She needed her focus to deal with Delainey.
She was so freaking pissed at her coven right now that she didn't know that she could be rational in the upcoming conversation.
She wasn't entirely sure that she could get Delainey to see reason and not try to use some magic mojo to try and get Elise to come home against her will.
But Nico was her boyfriend now.
She and Nico were in a relationship, and they both wanted it to be real. They didn't want to have to sneak around and find dark alcoves in the zoo—though that had been super hot—or deal with retaliatory kidnappings back and forth until their respective pack and coven killed each other.
This relationship deserved to live in daylight. She couldn't get every werewolf and every witch in the world to accept them, but if she could just get her coven to tolerate it, that was the first step into making it really, really real.
Delainey would not be her first choice to have this conversation with, even if she hadn't played an instrumental role in kidnapping Nico. Aya would at least hear her out. Briana probably would too.
But Delainey was the one waiting in the parking lot.
She got out of her car when she saw Elise exit the hotel and glared. "Get your ass in, we're going home," Delainey commanded, gesturing sharply toward the passenger door, as if she had any right to speak to Elise that way.
"I'm not going home with you." Elise kept her feet firmly planted. "Not after the shit you pulled."
Delainey's eyes widened. "The shit I pulled?" She took a step away from the car, closer to Elise. "Oh, so I'm the one freeing violent werewolves and inflicting them on the world?”
"I'm not the one kidnapping innocent people!"
"Innocent?" Delainey spat, her lip curling. "He kidnapped you. And you didn't see what he was going to do to those people. For all we know he was going to kidnap them too."
Elise wasn't sure what she meant, then she remembered what Nico had said about getting people out of violent packs and trafficking them out of Iron Runner territory. With his confession about the difficulties of his own childhood, thinking about the rest fell by the wayside.
But she wasn't about to explain that to Delainey. Nico had trusted her with information about his pack and his past, and she would keep it private, just as she knew he would keep information about her coven private, unless there was a direct threat to his people.
"Where's the wolf now?" Delainey demanded, crossing her arms.
"I'm not going to tell you that," Elise said and forced herself not to look back at the hotel.
If Delainey thought she'd just stayed at the hotel overnight to try and get her head on straight, Elise was happy to let her think that.
She didn't know if Delainey was the one who laid the tracking spell on Nico, and she didn't mention it. It was more Serena's style anyway.
Delainey glared at her, and then her eyes widened and she took a step even closer. Not staring at Elise's face, but at her neck. "Is that a fucking hickey?" she asked, pointing at Elise's throat. "Were those fucking Iron Runners telling the truth? You and a wolf? That's disgusting."
Yep, that was exactly the reaction Elise expected to hear.
"Why do you hate the wolves so much?" Elise asked, more tired than angry at this point. "I mean, I get it, they're assholes, but why are we trying to fight some ancient war that has nothing to do with us? Why are we giving in to the stupid ass prejudice that none of us has anything to do with?"
Delainey rolled her eyes. "Oh, it's all big talk now that you want werewolf dick. What? Did you get to feel his knot? Did you find that all hot and sexy? He's a fucking animal."
"He's a man, and what the hell are you talking about?" Her job at the wildlife sanctuary told her enough about veterinary medicine to know what a "knot" was, but she'd had enough sex with Nico to figure out werewolves were all man when they were in bed. "You're the one being gross now."
She felt something like static electricity in the air and realized Delainey was summoning her magic. Elise summoned her own and put up a defensive wall of power in front of her to stop anything that Delainey might do to force her back to the house.
"Listen, you had a moment of temporary insanity.
" Delainey's tone shifted to something softer, trying to cajole Elise into agreement.
"We've all been a little insane before. Maybe we've kissed a vampire.
It doesn't have to be a big thing. You don't have to change your whole identity for it. Just come home."
"You kissed a vampire?" Elise blinked in surprise. She definitely didn't know that about her coven sister.
"It doesn't matter," said Delainey, waving a dismissive hand. "I'm just saying we can drop this whole thing. We can forget it ever happened. I won't even hold it against you that you let him out of the basement. Maybe you were right to do that. Just come home."
"He's my boyfriend." Elise lifted her chin and met Delainey's gaze head on. "And I'm not coming home until you guys can be cool with that. Do you think you can be cool with it?"
Delainey was aghast, and she let out a choking sound. All of her friendly cajoling tone completely disappeared. "I don't even know who you are anymore." She got in the car and pulled away before Elise could try and explain.
Elise was slow on her walk back up to the hotel room and let herself back in. The whole conversation had taken less than ten minutes. Nico was right there when she opened the door. She collapsed into his arms and held on tight as the tears came.
He ran his hand up and down her back, giving her the only comfort he could in that moment.
Elise just wanted to disappear. If she could give up her powers and stop being a witch and just be a regular woman who got to care for the man holding her with nobody making a big deal about it, she would have taken that deal in a second.
But that wasn't how the world worked. There were no demons to make deals with. This was the life they had to live.
She managed to calm herself down. Nico kissed her on the forehead.
"I'm going to go wash my face," she said, pulling away and heading toward the bathroom. She hoped she didn't look like a total mess. She stayed in the bathroom for a little bit longer than she should have. While she was wiping off her face, the phone rang.
By the time she was done, Nico had set the receiver down on the hotel phone. He looked right at her.
"Cole will talk to us. Javi's going to be here in ten minutes."