No, thank you.
His chest rose and fell evenly. In sleep, his eyelashes were longer than she had noticed before, and he looked almost relaxed. But she had a feeling that if she even brushed her arm near his he would spring into action.
His chest rose and fell. Once. Twice. Again and again. The rhythm didn’t change.
He was definitely asleep. So this was her only shot.
Elise barely breathed as she eased herself out of her side of the bed and stood up. She froze again and watched Nico breathe, waiting to see if there was any change. There wasn’t. Then she walked quietly across the room, backing away from the bed so she never took her eyes off him. And still, Nico didn't stir.
Could she actually get away with this?
Maybe.
But getting out of Nico's room was only the first obstacle. She placed her hand on the doorknob and sent a silent prayer to the universe that no one was guarding the door on the opposite end, and that the door didn't creak.
Success.
She slipped into the hallway and was relieved to find it empty.
Now she had to hope that no one was waiting in Cole's room. As far as she knew, the betas left him alone overnight. From what she could tell, they considered Nico's presence near her enough to keep her contained, and no one else in the pack would dare disturb the alpha. But if she got caught sneaking in, she was working on coming up with a backstory, and she hoped it would miraculously appear in a moment of panic.
But it wasn't needed.
His room was just as empty as she hoped she would find it, with only Cole lying on the bed, his breathing a little labored, and his body covered in sweat.
He didn't look good, but he hadn't looked good since she’d first got there, so she wasn't going to consider this any worse than she'd already seen. And if she could just spend a little time with him alone here, she could fix this.
She knelt beside his bed and grabbed his hand and then paused.
Was this really what she wanted to do?
Werewolves were the traditional enemies of witches. Witch healers did not heal werewolves. She had studied under several healers to try and improve her craft, and none of them had mentioned shifters, except to tell stories of the terrible wars of generations past, and all of the pain and suffering those shifters had wrought on witches.
Packs like the Iron Runners had special units of witch-hunters, werewolves trained to root out witches and hunt them down in times of conflict. True, Elise had never actually heard of a witch getting killed by a witch-hunter during her lifetime, but they were definitely real, and fifty years ago, they’d harassed her grandmother’s coven to near extinction.
But this pack wasn’t the Iron Runners. And Nico hadn’t kidnapped her because she was a witch.
Cole groaned, but he didn't rouse.
Maybe it would be smarter to leave him here and let nature take its course. But at that moment, Elise was a healer with her patient, and it didn't matter that he was a werewolf. He was a sick man, and he needed help. Help that onlyshecould give. So she shoved any thoughts of treachery aside and sent a pulse of her magic into him.
When it came back to her, she gasped.
How the hell was he still alive?
Somehow, silver had permeated his bloodstream. It wasn't just in the wound, though it was concentrated there, but it was almost like it was some sort of liquid concentrate that had seeped into his veins and spread throughout his system.
She had never seen anything like that or even heard of it from older texts that she wasn't supposed to be studying.
A shifter's body rejected silver quickly and harshly. Wounds would not clot. They would vomit until it was gone if they ingested it, and they would not stop sweating until they were free of the poison.
Cole definitely had the sweating going, but the woundhadclotted, and he hadn't vomited since she'd been there. Which meant something was keeping his body from rejecting the silver.
That gave her a direction to go.
Elise sent more magic into him, this time targeting the silver poison. She needed to get his body to expel it in anyway possible, and though she wasn't familiar with exactly what had been done, she did have training in how to get things like snake venom or other poisons out of someone's system, and the principles were the same.
The fox had been easy compared to this. Healing the fox was like a gentle morning jog on a cool sunny day. Sinking her magic into Cole was a marathon in a thunderstorm. His body fought against hers, trying to ward off the magic like it was silver, and she had to dodge around it and sneak past it until she could find the biggest concentration and work on breaking it up.
