"It sounds like whatever hurt you and made you feel all gross worked its way out of your system before we could find Mark and get him back here," Nico offered.
That was sort of true, if you included the fact that Elise had used magic to assist the silver to leave Cole's system. Nico had to keep that secret forever. He had to protect her. And the pack wasn't going to make it easy.
"Do you know what this idiot did while you were passed out?" Reece jabbed a finger Nico's way and seemed about a second away from lunging for him.
Cole's expression was interested but cautious. "What?"
"He brought a human to pack territory," Hugh said as he took his seat and leaned back in the chair. "A veterinarian. He made her take care of you."
"She was cute," Javi added, and Nico couldn't stop the growl in the back of his throat.
Javi grinned at him, and Reece looked ready to tear his spine out.
"I said no doctors," said Cole.
"A veterinarian is not a doctor," Nico replied. Though, was that even technically true? "They aren't doctors for humans," he added. He didn't want to get in the weeds on this one.
"He disobeyed orders," said Reece. "He should be out of this pack."
"Are you challenging him?" Cole turned his full attention to Reece. For all the talk of betrayal, he seemed surprisingly chill. Reece was bristling. But Cole continued speaking. "I left him in charge. He made the call, even though it seems kind of useless. We have to live with it."
Cole leveled his toughest alpha stare at Nico. His eyes were pale, unblinking, and the shadow of his wolf was peeking out. Nico had to resist the urge to bare his throat. "Where is this human now?"
Reece's glare only grew more dour. "Yeah, Nico, where's the human? We haven't seen her in a while."
"I took care of it," he said. "She won't be a problem anymore."
He would never see her again.
She would live her life, he would live his, and he hoped that one day this pain would fade into something that didn't feel like being stabbed every second.
"Did you kill her?" Cole asked carefully.
The pack didn't harm humans—at least they tried not to. That was a pretty strict rule among supernaturals. Even vampires did their best to leave their prey walking around after they fed. It was the only way to ensure their survival, when there were billions of humans with guns and pitchforks and nuclear bombs.
Going on a spree that revealed the existence of the supernatural to the human world was the last thing anyone needed.
But the occasional protective murder, violence to keep the secret safe? Everybody looked the other way when that happened. It was an unfortunate necessity of their existence.
Now Nico understood exactly what Elise was saying when she said thatof courseshe went along with him, an angry werewolf, forcing her into a situation she didn't want to be in.
Right now, he had four angry werewolves staring him down. There was no other choice.
"She's dead," he said, and he felt like he damned himself by answering.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Over the next few days,Elise tried to put Nico out of her mind and threw herself back into her life, hoping things would get back to normal. But she was distracted.
Distracted at home, distracted at work, distracted at the gym, distracted all the time.
When she was at the zoo, she would walk down the hallway where Nico had cornered her. And while she might have expected to be freaked out or have some kind of nightmares about it, she ended up finding herself smiling. She remembered the way he pressed her against the wall and she failed to use her magic against him, like it was some kind of meet-cute and not a kidnapping.
She was wrong in the head. And she totally knew that it was only retrospect that made the whole encounter seem kind of hot because shedidremember the visceral terror that she'd felt when he first found her.
Now it was Aya who was trying to corner her.
