Aubrey looked up at him. "What?"
She was in her mid-20s and was going to college for some sort of master's degree that he always forgot about—social work, public health, musicology, he really wasn't sure. A good beta would've remembered that, but right now he couldn't afford to care. She was even wearing a university sweatshirt that said School of Social Work, which didn't jog his memory in the slightest.
"Keep an eye on the door to my room," he said. "No one goes in or out."
"Is someone in there?" she asked.
Nico just gave her a hard look, and Aubrey looked away. He didn't like to abuse his rank in the pack, but sometimes it had its uses, and he wasn't about to leave Elise to her own devices. Besides, he didn't like to think what would happen if someone else discovered her roaming the halls.
This was the pack's inner sanctum, and they took their security very seriously.
Hugh, Reece, and Javi were waiting in the meeting room downstairs. It looked a bit like a business boardroom with a large table surrounded by chairs and a projector screen on onewall where they could theoretically do video calls or project PowerPoints or whatever it was that business people did.
Mostly they used the projector to play video games but today was not a game day.
Nico took his usual seat and braced for impact.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Reece demanded. He sat directly across from Nico and was brimming with so much anger Nico expected him to explode out of his chair at any moment.
Hugh didn't look at all confused, so he must have been briefed about the situation. Today the sleeves of Hugh's dark, long sleeved T-shirt were pushed up to reveal the tattoos on his arms.
"You brought a fucking human into pack territory," Javi said. He sounded so much angrier than usual. Of them all, Javi was usually the most relaxed. As relaxed as a werewolf beta evercouldbe. "Cole would fucking murder you before he let you do that."
They had gone over this the night before, and Nico didn't see any reason to retread old arguments. It was done. He looked at Hugh. "Any luck finding Mark?"
Hugh shook his head. "I haven't found him, but I did get a little bit more information. Apparently, he and his healer friend are on some meditation retreat they decided to take after they finished whatever training thing they were doing. They don't have their phones with them. And it'll be another couple days before anyone can track him down."
"Fuck." Nico breathed out the word.
He wanted to rail at Mark. How could their healer do that? But life in a werewolf pack was dangerous, and they couldn't be cared for 24/7, not with only one healer.
The Iron Runner pack probably had a whole team of healers and hospital facilities. Everything a pack could hope for. Nico knew they were lucky to have Mark. It was a thankless job beingthe only healer, or the main healer, when your apprentice was a teenager who was eager and unskilled. But he still wanted to rip Mark a new one for disappearing on them.
How could he have left his phone behind?
Asshole.
And a tiny part of him wanted to thank Mark, which was insane.
But if Mark hadn't gone on his little wellness retreat, then Elise wouldn't be sleeping in Nico's bed right now or wearing his pajamas and covered in his scent.
Fuck, he had to stop thinking about that. And then he stopped thinking about everything he wanted to do to her. And all the ways she made his body light up and his cock harden. The reaction he had to her was so strong that he had to wonder: was there something off about her?
He didn't know many humans. He spent his life in the pack. He had been born into a different pack, and most of his contact with the human race was at places like the grocery store or the movie theater—fleeting encounters that told him nothing about their lives other than the fact that they really liked Oreos. There were so many different flavors.
But he was pretty sure most humans would freak out at a person with claws and half a snout. Elise had barely blinked.
"What do we do if she figures out we're wolves?" Reece asked.
Was he reading Nico's mind? Not that werewolves could do that, of course, but the question landed a bit too close to home.
"We don't let her find out," was Nico's response. Like it was that easy.
"And how do we do that, oh fearless leader?" Javi scowled. "She's in our home, and I'm not about to force our people to hide their natures in their own homes."
"We can't have her going to the press." That was Hugh. "And especially not the cops. Since you were stupid enough to fucking kidnap her! What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking that Cole is dying." Nico didn't yell. He had to remember that the rest of the pack didn't know, and they were trying to keep it that way, but it was difficult. "Cole put me in charge," he said. "He trusted me, so I needyouto trust me. We clearly were not qualified to treat him, and Mark isn't here. Did you want me to go to the Iron Runner pack and beg them for a healer? Did you want me to give up our autonomy to a pack that loves to swallow up others and kill off anyone strong enough to challenge their leadership?"
