Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Four days of staying in pack territory, and things were going okay.
Elise's time spent with Nico was great. She got to cuddle with him in bed, go to sleep with him every night, wake up with him every morning, and not fear that they'd be torn apart by his people. She could really get used to that.
But then there were other parts.
The pack house was more than an hour away from the zoo, and Nico had to drive her all that way to drop her off for work and pick her up. Plenty of people had an hour-long commute, she knew, but it was definitely more frustrating than the ten minutes she normally had to commute from the coven house.
Again, totally worth it for the time she got to spend with her new boyfriend, getting to know him and getting to just enjoy what it was like to be in a relationship, even if it was a complicated one.
But worry had been riding her hard.
She'd spent each shift she'd worked at the zoo worried that one of her sisters would come up to her and try to convince her to go home and break up with Nico or use a magic spell to brainwash her into forgetting he had ever existed.
Okay, that last one wasn't likely. That kind of magic was a terrible thing to do to somebody, and Elise didn't hang out with the kind of people who would think to use it. But you didn't really need brainwashing magic when guilt could do half the job.
During the other parts of her shift, she'd been worrying about those Iron Runner wolves who'd caused trouble the last time she and her coven had done a spell together.
She and Nico weren't trying to hide their relationship.
Every day he dropped her off she left the car after giving him a thorough kiss that anyone could see.
The zoo was like the university—neutral territory.
She didn't see any of the Iron Runner pack, but she wouldn't recognize most of them on sight.
Elise had talked to Aya, giving her a call the first night she stayed at the pack house, more out of precaution than anything else.
She didn't know what Delainey planned to tell everybody, and she didn't want to risk them mounting some sort of rescue mission that wasn't needed, getting themselves killed in the process.
Aya had been understandably cautious. She wasn't exactly accepting, but Elise thought if she was given a little bit more time, she might come around.
And now Aya had been able to give the message to the coven: Elise would come back only if they could accept that she was dating a werewolf, and she wasn't going to break up with him.
Then there was that deadline. Six days had seemed like a godsend four days ago.
Now she was staring down the final two days, thankfully a weekend, so she had time to plot and plan, but she had no idea what she was going to do.
Get an apartment, probably. If she couldn't go back to the coven house, she would need a place to stay. Hopefully, she could find something with immediate occupancy.
Was Nico going to be weird about that? He was still offering up his shirts for her to wear even though he was finding appropriately sized pants just like before. Judging by the looks some of the werewolves in the pack had given her, this was definitely a possessive boyfriend/mate thing.
But she liked wearing Nico's clothes, so she didn't mind it. Even if he was weird about her finding her own place, he'd eventually have to be rational.
She couldn't stay with the pack forever. She wasn't a werewolf.
And this thing between them was still so new.
They were in their honeymoon phase, even if it was a bit of a nightmarish honeymoon.
They would eventually want some space from each other.
She couldn't really move in with him after four days of dating.
Especially since Nico kept insisting five-in-one shower gel was a perfectly acceptable kind of soap.
But that morning she had woken up alone and slept a little late, waking to an empty bed. Nico was probably off on werewolf business somewhere. She found herself thankfully alone in the kitchen for breakfast.
The place was like Grand Central Station between the hours of six-thirty and eight-thirty a.m., but closer to nine-thirty it was a little more deserted.
During her involuntary stay with the pack, she hadn't realized just how many people lived in the pack house, but there had to be close to fifty.
Not all of them stayed in the house proper.
Some of them had small cottages on the property or lived a few miles down the road.
But the pack had open access to the house and were in and out all day, every day.
They all knew that she was with Nico. They all knew she was a witch. And most of them stared at her like she was a member of a freak show. She was pretty sure some of them expected her to start cackling maniacally and turn someone into a frog.
That was another thing that Elise wouldn't hate getting away from. She didn't like the stares. She didn't hate them enough to break up with Nico over it, but if she had to deal with it all day, every day, the strain eventually might be too much.
She was looking out the back window and enjoying a cup of coffee when she heard two high-pitched children's voices whispering right outside the door.
"Come on, it's okay," a little girl said.
"No, we're not supposed to go in there." That was from a little boy.
"I'm getting my orange juice." The little girl was adamant.
Two short heads, both with dark, curly brown hair and very similar faces—siblings, maybe even twins—walked in. The little girl had her shoulders held back and her head held high while the boy slunk in like he was waiting for the floor to open up and swallow him.
Ivy, Elise thought, recognizing the kid from a story Nico had told about one of the cubs getting into trouble. And that made the boy her little brother, Eric. Ivy saw Elise sitting by the window and froze, eyes wide. Eric took one look at her and whimpered.
Great. Now Elise was making children cry.
This stay at the werewolf house was going wonderfully.
But Ivy wasn't frozen for long. She marched over to the fridge and opened it up, reaching as high as she could to grab the orange juice on the middle shelf.
She was about eight years old, and she was the height Elise would expect an eight-year-old to be.
Ivy looked toward the cupboard next to the fridge and tested the counter. Elise remembered her childhood well enough to know that this kid was about to try climbing up on the counter to get something she couldn't reach. Then Ivy looked over at her.
"Hey, witch lady!"
Elise looked back at her. "I have a name."
"Yeah, witch lady. I said it. Can you give me a cup? They're too high."
"Two cups," Eric squeaked from wherever he was on the floor. He seemed to be crouching down behind the island.
It was a simple enough request, and Elise was just happy the kids weren't quaking in fear. She got up and grabbed two plastic cups from the shelf and put them down on the counter. Ivy was looking at her strangely.
"Why didn't you use magic?" she asked.
Elise smiled. "I don't normally use magic for things that I can do perfectly well with my hands." She wasn't going to mention the few times she had sent out her intentions and purposely summoned something from across the room when she was too comfortable to get up. Kids didn't need to know that.
"If I had magic, I would use it all the time," said Ivy.
"I'm sure you would be great."
Ivy had two hands on the bottle of orange juice and was looking intently at her cup, and Elise realized this was heading for disaster.
She reached out and held the cup steady and wondered if she should take the bottle of orange juice from the kid when an adult voice shrieked from the entrance to the kitchen.
"What are you doing? Get away from my child!"
Elise let go of the cup and backed up immediately. Ivy set the orange juice down without spilling it—impressive.
"She's helping me with the orange juice, Mom. She got the cup for me." Ivy glared at her mother, Kara, who was standing in the doorway and looked about two seconds away from ripping Elise's throat out for standing anywhere near her children.
"You don't do magic around my children. You don't hurt them. What the hell were you thinking?" Kara spat.
Elise wasn't sure how to respond to this, but Ivy was apparently her legal counsel in this situation and kept talking.
"She didn't do magic, she just grabbed the cup from the cabinet. Why are you being weird, Mom? Elise is nice."
Kara leveled her daughter with a stare so cold the eight-year-old had to feel the ice. "Witches are not nice, Ivy. You stay away from her. She's dangerous." Kara quickly poured two cups of orange juice, handed them to each of the children, and then shepherded them out of the kitchen.
Yeah, Elise needed to get a place of her own.
That interaction wasn't unique. Maybe one day the pack would be used to her presence. Maybe one day they would think she wasn't trying to pull some sort of trick on them. But that day wasn't today.
She sat back down in her seat in a, perhaps unwise, refusal to cede the kitchen. Since she had Cole's permission to be in the house, she was allowed to use the kitchen. She was following the rules. It was the wolves that were being dicks to her.
A few minutes later, Nico came in, poured himself a cup of coffee, and took a seat next to her. "What's wrong?" he asked.
She thought she was keeping her cool, but her hands were clutching her coffee cup so hard she thought she might break the ceramic. She briefly told him what had happened with Kara and the kids.
"It's not a big deal," she said. "I get why she was worried. I'd be worried if some random wolf were around my kids."
"You're not random," Nico told her. "She knows you have permission to be here. She knows you won't hurt anyone. That was uncalled for."
"Maybe." But it had reinforced something she had been thinking for the better part of the day.