Elise found the magic in the center of herself and sent a pulse of it out into the room, casting a cloaking spell that she probably should have cast the second they got to the hotel.
Hopefully it wasn't too late.
"Not now," she said. "They get to find me when I let them find me."
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Nico must have fallenasleep at some point. The clock read three thirty-seven a.m. when he woke up to find Elise sitting next to him in bed with her hand resting gently on his head, playing with his hair.
I want her to stroke my fur,his wolf thought, and the man agreed.
He wanted her to see his other form so he could preen before her and show her just how mighty of a wolf he was. He wanted her long slender fingers to brush through his fur and offer him the same kind of comfort she was giving him as she petted his hair.
Would she do it or would that be a step too far?
Something had changed between them last night. He knew that. She'd been the one to say it.
It was real, whateveritwas.
But a part of him was afraid that at one point he would take it too far. He would remind her too strongly that he was a werewolf, and she would eventually run away screaming.
She won't,his wolf protested.She's ours.He hoped, beyond all hope, that that was the case.
Her hand stopped playing with his hair as she realized he had woken up.
"I think I know how to break the tracking spell," she said, pulling her hand back to rest in her lap. Her voice was serious rather than triumphant.
He sat up next to her and took her hand, resisting the urge to play with her fingers. "Okay, do it."
She traced a circle on his palm with her thumb and looked contemplative. "You don't even know what I want to do." Her thumb paused mid-circle before starting again. "It's a little crazy, and I need you to trust me."
"I trust you with my life." It was a solemn vow. One he meant to the depths of his very core.
Her eyes widened. "You barely know me. How can you trust me like that? I'm a witch, or did you forget?"
"I'm a werewolf," he reminded her, with a gentle squeeze of her hand. "We've gone over this several times. I thought we established this thing is real. We're in this together. Wearetogether, aren't we?"
And suddenly, they weren't talking about her solution to their magical problem anymore.
Elise swallowed hard, and her thumb stopped moving on his palm entirely. "Are you saying you're my boyfriend now?" Her voice got high, almost squeaky, at the end of the question.
He tucked a fallen strand of blonde hair behind her ear. "If that's the word you want to use, that's the word we'll use," he said.
But secretly, in the depths of his soul, he and his wolf were thinking:mate, mate, mate.
He leaned in and cupped her face and kissed her gently. "So what's the plan, girlfriend?" He pulled back just enough so he could meet her eyes.
She grinned and then had to look away from him as if speaking to him was too difficult after he said that. Her expression grew serious once more. "We need to trick the coven into thinking that you're part of the coven so the spell doesn't trigger."
"Okay." He tilted his head and tried to make sense of that. Maybe it did to a witch. This was definitely not his area of expertise.
She looked at him and braced herself. "I need to leave a spark of my magic inside you. That should be magically the same as if we're holding hands, and the spell won't be able to trigger because, as far as the magic is concerned, you'll be part of me or part of the coven—it all is kind of the same thing."
That sounded interesting.
Nico didn't know a lot about magic. He did his best to stay away from witches because whenever he encountered them, Elise notwithstanding, it ended in violence and bloodshed. If another witch told him that she had to put magic inside of him, well …
