Epilogue
Three months later
If someone had told Elise last year that she would be sitting alone in the woods in Southern Basin Pack territory, waiting for a werewolf in his wolfy form to approach her, she would have thought that someone was insane, because there was no way that was going to happen.
But now she was sitting on a picnic blanket with the remnants of dinner, waiting for Nico to pad out of the woods before he took an evening run in his wolf form.
He came out from between the trees. She got a glimpse of the gray and black fur that made up his coat, and the moonlight reflected off of his eyes.
He came and lay down beside her, and she ran her fingers through his fur.
She was again surprised by just how thick it was.
She'd petted dogs before, but there was just so much more fur to a wolf.
Nico made a sound in the back of his throat that meant he definitely liked what she was doing, and so she did it a little bit more.
Even in this form, she could feel that spark of magic she had left inside of him, but it had changed a little, mutated or something, which she didn't know was possible. It felt still like hers, but also like it was a part of him.
She hadn't said anything to Nico, but she wasn't sure that she'd actually be able to pull it out of him painlessly anymore.
It was almost like vines of power were growing out of it and anchoring it deep inside of him.
Nothing painful, nothing dangerous—she had used her magic to check that more than once—but strange.
She couldn't ask anyone else why it might be doing that, and she was pretty sure Nico didn't care as long as he got to carry her magic inside of him. She just let it be.
After several more minutes of petting, Nico bumped his head against her hand and stood up. He nodded towards the forest as his signal that he was about to go for a run.
"Wait," she told him before he could take off. "I want to try something."
He looked at her and waited.
She really wished there was a way they could talk when he was in this form, but she was getting used to understanding his expressions and his body language. Now he was looking at her as if to say, Okay, what?
"You need to trust me," she said.
He huffed out a little wolfy breath and nodded. Of course he trusted her.
"I want to run with you," she said.
He tilted his head to the side, which she interpreted to mean: What are you talking about? You're not a werewolf.
"I want to use my magic to run with you," she explained. "I want to see through your eyes. Will you let me?"
He bobbed his werewolf head up and down.
Elise had been thinking about this for a while now.
She could hear the joy in Nico's howls when he went running, and she saw the way he was full of energy and elated when he got back.
Though there was no way for her to keep up on human feet, and frankly she wasn't too enthused about the idea of having to sprint for miles in the forest, she was pretty sure this would work.
She placed her hand on his head and let her magic seep into him. It found that bit of her that lived in his core. And then she found the spark she was looking for.
Elise closed her eyes and nearly toppled over as she began to look out through his.
"Hold on," she said, "I think I need to sit down for this."
She managed to collapse to one knee before falling to her butt and then decided that lying down might be the better idea.
"Give me a second," she told Nico. She was still resting her fingers on his fur—they had moved more to the side of his head as opposed to the top now. She was pretty sure the connection would hold even if she wasn't touching him. She pulled her hand away and was still looking out through his eyes.
"Okay, I'm good," she said. "You go."
Nico nosed at her for a moment, and she petted him one more time.
"I promise I'm okay. I really want you to go," she said, and he took off running.
And this time, she went with him. She looked out through his eyes and saw a different world than she had ever known, lower to the ground but that wasn't just it. It was just different than seeing through a witch's eyes.
She could almost see the way things smelled and realized that now her sense of smell was actually hooked in with her eyes when she was with Nico like this.
It was strange and disorienting and super freaking cool, and she already knew even two minutes into this run that this was not going to be the only time she asked Nico if she could run with him.
He made it deeper into the forest and tipped back his head and howled, and even though Elise was within his body she could feel her own throat making a somewhat pathetic imitation of a howl at the moon.
And then Nico took off running again, and they sprinted together into the night.
Thank you for reading Taken by the Wolf!