A few minutes later, all of that satisfaction was gone once they entered Cole's room.
The sheets were covered in sweat, and when Elise checked the bandage on his abdomen, it was covered in a strange, silvery black substance.
"What the fuck's wrong?" Nico demanded.
Elise pulled back the bandage and checked the wound before grabbing fresh gauze to clean up what was there. She moved quickly and efficiently, not pausing for a second when reaching for fresh gauze or a towel to wipe him off. The wound looked worse now, puckered and inflamed red all around it.
"His body is expelling whatever's inside it," she said. "I think we should probably leave this uncovered for now. If anything more comes out, we don't want to have it sitting against the skin."
"What you did last night, it worked?" he asked. Even talking about it in a roundabout way felt like a betrayal of his pack.
He should have told the others the moment he found out, not dragged Elise back into his room and fucked her like it was the only thing keeping him alive. He never should have evenconsideredkeeping it a secret. Yet here they were.
"It definitely helped," she said.
"He'll get better on his own now?" And Nico knew his ask was a little too hopeful.
Elise stared down at Cole's injury, and her head moved from side to side, but it wasn't exactly a denial. She leaned closer to the bed, one knee resting on the mattress edge as she bent over Cole's torso and studied his wound with pursed lips.
"I can't know without …" She trailed off and let her hand hover over Cole's wound.
Without magicwas what she wasn't saying, but she wasn't asking him if she could do it.
Clearly, she felt uneasy even mentioning it in his presence, and he couldn't bring himself to tell her to use her powers while he was standing right there. Maybe another man would feel like he had some sort of control over the situation if he observed it.
But to Nico, it felt like the final duplicity to his pack.
They needed to know. He couldn't just sit here andlether do it. He was still a werewolf, and she was still a witch. The reality of that was not going to go away. But … there was always a way around certain situations.
"We need breakfast," Nico announced with finality. "I'm going to go downstairs and get some. It will probably take me about thirty minutes. Do you think that's enough time to prepare breakfast?" he asked with a pointed look, and then a look down at Cole just to make sure she got what he was saying.
Elise stared at him with a too-serious expression on her face. She straightened from the bed and turned to face him fully, her bright blue eyes locked on his, her posture rigid.
He wanted to see her smile, not this, but the time for smiles was long past, if it had ever been there at all.
"Some meals take longer to prepare than others," she said carefully. "You can't really know until you're in the kitchen."
At least she understood what he meant.
"Be that as it may, breakfast is going to be ready in thirty minutes, and you need to be prepared for that."
"All right." She nodded, and he forced himself to leave the room. He tried not to think about what it meant to leave her alone with Cole, knowing what she was about to do.
Down in the kitchen, Nico was staring at the pantry as if it might magically make the food for him when Reece walked in the kitchen door.
His hackles immediately went up. He wanted to tell the man to get off the property and never come back, which was ridiculous. Reece was one of his best friends, even if things had been tense over the past few days. He was a trusted beta of the Southern Basin Pack. He just wanted what was best for the pack.
But none of that mattered because if Reece found out Elise was a witch, Nico would have to kill him.
But strangely, Reece was smiling.
"I found Mark," he told Nico. "He's going to be here this afternoon."
Nico should have felt relief. He managed to nod, but a part of him was panicking. Would Mark be able to sense the magical healing that Elise had done on Cole? Would that give her away?
"This is good news, dude," said Reece. "Now we don't have to rely on a fucking human veterinarian anymore."
Right. The veterinarian story.
