"You are our guest," Nico said. "We won't make you sleep on the floor or in the chair."
Was she really a guest? Because that kidnapping had happened six hours ago, and she was pretty sure they wouldn't let her leave if she walked out the front door.
Not that walking out the front door would do much good. They were miles from the city and probably deep in this pack's territory. She didnotwant to imagine a bunch of shifters chasing her down in the woods.
She was a city girl.
And even if she fully unleashed her magic, she doubted she was up to outrunning a pack.
"It's really okay," she said. "I'm here to look after this guy. Let me look after him."
Nico shifted his grip from touching her shoulder to holding her hand as he guided her up from where she was sitting beside the bed. "Come on," he said, as if she hadn't said anything.
So no luck on alone time with the alpha.
She didn't wave goodbye or anything to the other shifters. They clearly didn't like her, and the feeling was mutual. She might be slightly insane for feeling safer with Nico, but that was the way of things.
He hadn't hurt her. He'd even jumped in to protect her when Reece got all growly and close.
So if she had to choose one of them to hang out with for now, it was Nico.
They didn't walk far. He stopped in front of a door just down the hall from the alpha's and opened it.
For a second, Elise thought it was a guest room. There were hotel-grade decorations on the wall, and all of the surfaces were empty of clutter and personal belongings. But there was a leather jacket hanging over the chair in the far corner of the room and a book cracked open and sitting on its pages on the small table.
There was a small glass of water on the bedside table.
And there was only one bed.
It was a king bed, but still just the one.
And that leather jacket looked Nico-sized.
"Is this your room?" she asked, and it came out a little panicky.
She was trying to sound cool, calm, collected. She was failing miserably.
"It's best for you to stay in here," he said, which wasn't an answer, but it wasn't a denial.
"Are you kidding? This house is huge. Surely you have a guest room or some place I can stay."
If she was stuck in the same room as Nico, she would never be able to sneak away and heal Cole or try and spy around the house. She didn't want a full-time guard.
And that was really the only problem, she told herself.
It definitely wasn't that her body felt like it was on fire every time he came within two feet of her, and it definitely wasn't that her lips tingled, or that she felt sparks running up her arm from where he was holding her hand.
It wascompletelypractical.
"You'll stay in here," Nico repeated, unwilling to argue.
Damn it.
It really did look like a hotel. Did the man have anything personal? She was tempted to ask, but that seemed a little rude, and while hewasher kidnapper anddiddeserve rudeness, Elise was not rude by nature.
So she held that inside.
Nico pointed to a door on the other end of the room. "Bathroom's in there if you want to get cleaned up. I'll find you some pajamas."
