Her only hope for survival was that he kept thinking she was human and he had enough moral compunction not to kill her when she was done.
He pulled his truck up the driveway of a huge house and followed it around to the garage on the side. It was three stories tall and sprawled out in either direction, so big she couldn't take all of it in. A mansion, definitely, with dozens of windows and gray bricks stacked up high. Just how big was his pack?
"Come on," Nico said and got out of the truck.
He waited for her to get out, but Elise glared and pointed at the door. "Child lock."
He looked a bit sheepish at that, which was almost endearing.
No!Elise was not allowed to find her kidnapper cute! It was one thing to think he was hot, that was just an undeniable fact about the way his face and body was shaped. Cutenesswas something worse, something that could worm its way deep inside and make her all weak and tingly.
More weak and tingly.
Nico opened her door and offered her a hand. He had calluses on his thick fingers and a bit of dark hair on the back of his hand along with a thin white scar on one of his knuckles. What could make a werewolf scar? Elise ignored her curiosity and the hand and stepped out on her own.
"Things might seem a little strange here," he said. "But I promise I'll keep you safe."
Yeah, right.
Nico led her through the door in the garage to a mudroom in the back of the house. There were a few jackets hanging on hooks by the door and a dozen pairs of shoes tucked under a bench. It looked so mundane, sonormalthat Elise's brain short circuited for a moment.
There was a hallway that led farther inside, but he took her up a staircase instead. Her feet sunk into the plush, beige carpet that would probably feel really good on bare feet. She hoped she was leaving mud stains. Elise tried to take in as much as she could, but he was moving fast and nothing looked all that out of the ordinary.
It was a big house, sure, but there was nothing particularly wolfy about it.
They walked down another long hallway and past several closed doors that looked more like they belonged in a hotel than a mansion. How many people lived here?
One door was open, and she peeked inside to see a small couch and cooking area, along with a bed. It was more of an apartment than a bedroom.
Interesting. Not useful, but good to know.
They walked down another hallway, this one without any doors along the wall, and ended at a room that seemed bigger,even just from the dimensions of the walls, than the ones they'd passed.
Nico gave her a strange look. He was standing in front of the doors like he was ready to go to battle. "Please," he said. "Even if you don't understand, just help him." He put his hand on the doorknob and opened it.
It was a huge room, definitely the main suite.
The room had a vaulted ceiling that was ten or twelve feet high. The walls were painted a gentle green, and on the opposite side of the giant room, there were French doors that led out onto a balcony, or, they probably did since they were on the second floor. It was too dark for Elise to really tell. A window had been cracked open to let in fresh air, but it hadn't done much to banish the smell of sickness from the room.
And on the bed in the middle of the room was a shifter who was caught between human and animal form. It made her stomach roil to see it. She could count on one hand the times she'deverinteracted with werewolves outside of the harassment she and her coven endured from time to time when they were doing magic at the edge of witch territory.
But she'd never seen one like this. Elise covered her mouth with her hand and didn't need to pretend to look shocked. This man lookedwrong. Where there wasn't fur, his skin was sickly pale, almost gray, and he was covered in a sticky sheen of sweat. His hands were misshapen, fingers too long and nails almost talon-like. And his face?
His face didn't look human. He almost had a snout, though his nose was still covered in skin. It was like his skull was the wrong shape, and she couldn't tell if it was a normal beard or fur that was growing over it, but it wasn't natural.
Her magic surged within her, desperate to be let out, and Elise choked it down. Shecouldn'tdo any healing here, not if she wanted to survive.
But she didn't need to pretend to be horrified by the state the werewolf was in. And she didn't need her magic to tell her that something was monumentallywrong.
Chapter
Six
Nico wassurprised when Elise rushed towards the bed and knelt at Cole's side, running her hand over his arm carefully, as if she was afraid she might hurt him further.
"How long has he been like this?" she asked, looking over him with the cool gaze of a trained professional, and not a human staring down a monster, though he'd seen the way she'd shuddered when she first spotted him.
"It's, uh … um …" Fuck, he was supposed to be thinking of excuses in the car, not sucking down Elise's scent like it was a drug. "He's got a medical condition. The hands and, uh … his face. But it's his abdomen where he was hurt."
