Of course she failed.
"Tilt your head back." She hoped she sounded professional.
He did, watching her with those intense dark eyes as she gently wiped the blood away. His nose wasn't broken. She could tell that much even without her magic. On a human, the bone might have shattered. But werewolves were built of sterner stuff.
"You shouldn't have gone outside," he said quietly. Way to remind her who the prisoner was here.
She couldn't let herself feel guilty. "I needed fresh air."
"Elise." The way he said her name did things to her. And those things weren't just physical. A traitorous voice in her head insisted that she couldtrusthim. A werewolf! A kidnapping werewolf!
But one that was just as bound by circumstances as she was.
She glanced back at Cole’s strangely shaped, still form for a second and then went back to her work. "I just needed a minute. To breathe. I needed to not feel like …" She trailed off.
"A prisoner?"
She met his gaze. "Yeah."
"I'm sorry." He said like he meant it. "I know this is fucked up. But I need you. Cole needs you."
"So when he wakes up, that's it?" She dabbed at a spot of blood near his temple. "You'll let me go?"
"That's the plan."
"What if he doesn't wake up?"
Nico's jaw tightened. "Let's hope he wakes up." He pushed her hand away and stood up. "Thanks for cleaning me up. You should get back to work on Cole."
Elise wished she could have a minute to herself to get all her roiling feelings under control. But Nico sat on the loveseat just like Javi had. And this time, she didn't think her babysitter was going to leave her unattended for even a second.
She needed to find a way to magically heal Cole. Otherwise, she wasn't getting out of the pack house alive.
Chapter
Ten
Elise wasn’t sleeping,which was the entire point. She was lying in Nico's massive bed freaking out because she had spent the whole day slinking around Cole's room trying to look like she was healing him when she was metaphorically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Without her healing powers, she couldn't sense what was wrong with him.
Even though she wasn't actively using them, she could definitely feel something nagging at her consciousness. Something she needed magic to fix. And there was no way to use magic when she was surrounded by freaking werewolves.
Elise hadn't been left alone with Cole for even a minute. If one of the guys went on lunch break, another came and took his place. If one of them needed to pee, another stood outside the door.
Cole had to be the alpha. She would expect a werewolf pack to take care of their own, and to guard a member with their life. But this was a little extreme.
Nico, Reece, Javi, and Hugh were his betas. That was good information to have. Possibly useful if her coven sisters evercame and rescued her, but there wasn't much she could do with it now other than remain extra cautious around those guys.
Because everyone knew that the higher up you were in a pack, the more dominant you were, the more volatile your temper was. She had already seen it herself, and she really didn't want to see it again.
Which made what she was planning to do a little insane.
But Elise was running out of options. How many days could she spend pretending she was doing anything useful before the werewolves rid themselves of her in the most final way possible? Two? Three? If she lasted a week with Cole barely hanging on to life, she would be the luckiest woman alive.
And she was already pressing her luck, hoping no one figured out she was a witch.
She tilted her head and watched Nico's sleeping form for several seconds over the DMZ of blankets and pillows she kept piling higher between them. She feared that one morning she was going to wake up and find herself wrapped around Nico like a lamprey and then have to face the mortification of revealing just how much her body liked his body.
