Damn it,Elise thought. Of course one of them would find her. She had no idea how. Her anti-tracking spell was definitely still working. Had Delainey hacked her Uber account?
"Do it, Elise. If you're not down here in five minutes, I'm bringing this conversation to you. Violently." Delainey hung up, and the line beeped as it went dead.
Okay, so she didn't know what room Elise was in or she wouldn't be summoning her downstairs. That was good. Useful. But it didn't solve the problem.
"We can run." Nico was moving toward the window to check the parking lot. "We can just sneak out the back and get out of here."
"I'm not afraid of Delainey." Elise crossed her arms; she was almost tempted to stomp her foot. "She won't hurt me. She's just going to yell."
"I wasn't afraid of Delainey either." Nico turned back from the window. "And then she kidnapped me."
"Yeah, but you're not a witch." Delainey had way more offensive fire power than Elise did, but Elise was more than capable of putting up a shield, especially since she was almost certain Delainey wouldn't be willing to really hurt her.
"How did she find you?" he asked, pacing. "I thought you said she couldn't track you."
Elise went into the settings on her phone, scrolling through the menus. "Crap. She can't track me by magic, but I forgot to turn off the family tracking in my phone. We all have it turned on." She toggled that setting off and hoped that Delainey was the only one who had thought to check her location.
"I'm just going to go talk to her," she said, slipping her phone into her pocket. "I promise I can handle this. If I'm not back in twenty minutes, then you could come and try and rescue me."
"Try? I willsucceedin rescuing you. I'm not letting her take you out."
Elise resisted the urge to roll her eyes but secretly felt delighted at the protectiveness. "She's not going totake me out. At worst, she'll take me home. And that's not happening, I promise. Besides, the room is looking out over the parking lot. You're going to be able to see us the whole time. Just don't make it obvious."
Nico clutched her shoulders and kissed her soundly. "Don't you dare get hurt." He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes.
"I'll do my best," she promised, squeezing his hand before letting go.
Elise stomped down the hallway, shoulders set, and tried to center her mind. She needed her focus to deal with Delainey. She was so freaking pissed at her coven right now that she didn't know that she could be rational in the upcoming conversation. She wasn't entirely sure that she could get Delainey to see reason and not try to use some magic mojo to try and get Elise to come home against her will.
But Nico was her boyfriend now.
She and Nico were in a relationship, and they both wanted it to be real. They didn't want to have to sneak around and find dark alcoves in the zoo—though that had been super hot—or deal with retaliatory kidnappings back and forth until their respective pack and coven killed each other.
This relationship deserved to live in daylight. She couldn't get every werewolf and every witch in the world to accept them, but if she could just get her coven to tolerate it, that was the first step into making it really,reallyreal.
Delainey would not be her first choice to have this conversation with, even if she hadn't played an instrumental role in kidnapping Nico. Aya would at least hear her out. Briana probably would too.
But Delainey was the one waiting in the parking lot.
She got out of her car when she saw Elise exit the hotel and glared. "Get your ass in, we're going home," Delainey commanded, gesturing sharply toward the passenger door, as if she had any right to speak to Elise that way.
"I'm not going home with you." Elise kept her feet firmly planted. "Not after the shit you pulled."
Delainey's eyes widened. "The shitIpulled?" She took a step away from the car, closer to Elise. "Oh, so I'm the one freeing violent werewolves and inflicting them on the world?”
"I'm not the one kidnapping innocent people!"
"Innocent?" Delainey spat, her lip curling. "He kidnapped you. And you didn't see what he was going to do to those people. For all we know he was going to kidnap them too."
Elise wasn't sure what she meant, then she remembered what Nico had said about getting people out of violent packs and trafficking them out of Iron Runner territory. With his confession about the difficulties of his own childhood, thinking about the rest fell by the wayside.
But she wasn't about to explain that to Delainey. Nico had trusted her with information about his pack and his past, and she would keep it private, just as she knew he would keep information about her coven private, unless there was a direct threat to his people.
"Where's the wolf now?" Delainey demanded, crossing her arms.
"I'm not going to tell you that," Elise said and forced herself not to look back at the hotel. If Delainey thought she'd just stayed at the hotel overnight to try and get her head on straight, Elise was happy to let her think that. She didn't know if Delainey was the one who laid the tracking spell on Nico, and she didn't mention it. It was more Serena's style anyway.
Delainey glared at her, and then her eyes widened and she took a step even closer. Not staring at Elise's face, but at her neck. "Is that a fucking hickey?" she asked, pointing at Elise's throat. "Were those fucking Iron Runners telling the truth? You and awolf? That's disgusting."
