Page 10 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

E verything in Asher, including the wolf, wanted to run after her and make sure she was okay, but he held still on the porch since he was the thing she feared.

She’d talked to his wolf.

The only people he knew who could communicate with wolves who weren’t wolves themselves were the true mates of wolves. That could not be what was going on.

She was an animal witch. She spoke to all animals, including, apparently, the magical kind. It meant nothing more than that. It couldn’t mean anything more than that.

When he heard a car start up, he let out a long breath and tried not to think about anything at all. The wolf was close, whether because Asher was wobbling or because she’d called to it, he wasn’t sure, but this was dangerous.

Deliberately, he stood up until he was on two legs and tried to ignore how far off the ground he was and how precarious he felt. The wolf was really close.

He fumbled with the doorknob and realized he’d forgotten the existence of his thumb. He finally gripped the round knob as if he had terrible arthritis in his hand and managed to open it.

He went to his kitchen, not to his bed where he would lie awake and dream, and got out a brown mixture from the fridge. He’d been saving this project for a time when he might really need it. The wolf hated chocolate.

He’d spent a fortune importing whole cacao beans from Ecuador and was slowly rendering them by hand. He could probably get a better result just by buying a damn bar of chocolate, but that was not the point.

He stirred the bowl, annoyed to still find the mixture grainy. He’d already put it through a grinder three times. He knew the industrial kitchens could get it even smoother, but he wasn’t sure how he could.

He glanced over at the mortar and pestle he had for grinding spices, and then back at the grainy mixture of chocolate. Thus far, he’d used a coffee grinder, which only required turning a handle and letting the stones inside do the work, but he wondered…

He pulled the stone over and winced at the scent of the spice residue. He wasted almost half the water in the jug cleaning it out. There was still a faint scent of turmeric, but people put all kinds of weird shit in their chocolate, right?

He put a dollop into the stone bowl and started grinding away.

The wolf hated the sound, but he found it soothing. Perfect.

It was far too small to do the job, but if it worked, he supposed someone made bigger mortars and pestles in the world, right?

He ground and ground, long past the point he thought it was done, before he finally let himself check if it was smooth.

How long had that taken? What time was it?

When he looked out the window, all he could see was the glow of the moon.

He turned back carefully, swiped a finger through the brown goo, and licked it off, bracing for the explosion of bitter flavor.

When he’d first tasted his concoction, he’d been shocked at how terrible it tasted without sugar.

It was smooth. Maybe this was worthy of a bit of sugar to see if he could turn this into a bar.

He’d optimistically bought molds a month ago before he’d realized what it took to get from bean to processed chocolate.

Slowly, he scraped it out of the stone bowl and into a pot, unwilling to waste the smallest milliliter of what he had spent so long creating. As he did, he realized the ground did not feel so far away, and he felt steady on two feet again.

He added the sugar and took the pot to the stove, still warm with a bit of residual coals, when a flash of light cut through the window above the sink.

In a worrying time jump, he found himself on all fours with one hand reaching toward the door. He could only be grateful that it was still a hand.

“Dammit,” he said and climbed carefully to his feet.

Had she broken her word? Was she even now sending her coven after him?

But no, she said she didn’t have a real coven. Did random witches gather and hold hands? Dance under the moon naked? Kill werewolves?

He jumped when someone knocked on the door. He stared at it for a second. He hadn’t heard anyone’s footsteps. How much time was he losing?

“Only one way to find out,” he muttered.

He swung the door open, fully bracing for pain, but it was just Penn standing in the moonlight.

“Hi,” he said.

“Sorry I ran.”

“I don’t blame you.” Why had she come back?

“I didn’t mean to,” she muttered. “It was just…”

“Instinct?”

“Something like that.”

She looked fantastic in the silver light. Her skin was lighter, her hair was darker, her eyes glowed, and he wanted her.

“Holy shit, it smells fantastic!” she said.

“Chocolate,” he said stupidly.

“Can I come in?”

He stepped back, and she didn’t move. She glanced up into the sky. “Why aren’t you running around as a wolf?”

“I thought we established that we were trying to prevent that from happening.”

“No!” She pointed up at the moon. “Don’t you have to change and howl and shit?”

“That’s a myth.”

“Weird.” She stepped across the threshold.

Suddenly, his cabin felt half the size it normally was, like they were standing in a tiny closet together, and running out of air.

He sucked in a breath and closed the door, intensifying the sensation. He squeezed the door handle instead of turning to her.

“So, who said wolves only shift on the full moon?” she asked. Her voice had a brittle quality. She was trying to cover up fear with hearty small talk.

“We weren’t the ones to write the myths,” he said and braced as he faced her.

She was turning in a circle, taking in the bed, kitchen, and stove. She turned back and met his eyes.

“When are you most likely to see a creature at night?” he asked.

“When there’s light.”

He smiled.

“Oh, that’s hilarious.”

“What are you doing here?” The words came out without his permission. He was going to let her small talk into the morning if she wanted to.

“I promised to help. You didn’t break any of your promises, so I can’t break mine.”

“You can, actually. You could just change your mind and never come back.”

She frowned, and he wished he had chairs. The only chairs were on the porch.

“You don’t want to hurt me at all.”

“No.” This had nothing to do with small talk.

“And you’re not some weird outlier of a shifter?”

For lack of anything better to do, he sat on the very edge of his bed so he didn’t tower over her. “What are you asking?”

“Do any shifters want to kill witches?”

“Not that I know.” He considered all the mates his cousins had fallen in love with. “Quite the opposite.”

“What the hell is the opposite?”

He bit his tongue. “Not killing them.”

She looked around and shimmied onto his kitchen counter. She looked over the spread of chocolate-making supplies and absently swiped a finger through the mixture in the big bowl he had yet to smooth.

“I wouldn’t—” he said as she popped her finger into her mouth and coughed and hacked.

“What the hell?”

“Chocolate.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It turns out most people don’t love chocolate. They love sugar.”

She looked over into the bowl. “You’re making chocolate from scratch.”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“It, um, is?”

She looked back at him. “So you weren’t banished for being super violent?”

He laughed. “What? No! I have a pack. Nobody banished me.”

“What?”

“No, they were super pissed when I left.”

“Are they in trouble? Running out of territory? Threatened?”

He didn’t know what she was trying to figure out with these questions. “No. They’re doing great.”

“So you banished yourself.”

He’d never put it in quite those terms. “Yes.”

“And if I fix you, will you go back?”

He opened his mouth and closed it. Would he go back?

Could he go back? Could he slot back in and see the trees flowering in the spring?

Trees did not flower in Colorado; they just spat out leaves.

Then in the fall, they all turned yellow and brown and died, nothing like the foliage of the Appalachians. Could he see that again?

“Yes.”

She stared out the window, but he could tell she wasn’t seeing anything.

Absently, she swiped her finger through the chocolate again and then came back to herself when she put it in her mouth.

He was alone in silence all day for months and years at a time, but how come it sounded so loud when there was another person in it with him?

“Did you banish yourself?” he asked

She turned back to him, an eyebrow raised. “Did I banish myself?”

“Your car has Pennsylvania plates, and you explained you don’t have a coven, just a collection of leftover witches. Leftover from what?”

“The Youngs of Pennsylvania were a coven with territory an hour outside of Philly in Amish country, though we weren’t.” She ran a hand over her nearly shaved scalp. “Obviously. Another coven took us over.”

“You said that.”

“That’s what happened.”

He raised an eyebrow. “If they wanted more power, you were a perk of the territory, not to be banished.”

“You’re right. They wanted me to stay. Had a dude all lined up. It’s not as weird as it sounds. All witches have arranged?—”

“Oh, I know,” Asher said feelingly.

“Forgive me, but how the hell do you know that? I knew nothing about werewolves. I’ve been double-checking the bushes on the full moon, and you know how we find our husbands.”

Unlike most shifters, he grew up with a witch who had fled just such an arranged marriage and married one of his uncles instead. It was she who had shown him the world of magic and what was possible between a shifter and a witch.

He swallowed. “Can I save that story for later?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a happy story, but I have a feeling it will scare you and…” He wanted to do just about anything else in his life besides scare her.

“Forgive me, but I can’t imagine how a story between witches and shifters is anything other than tragedy. I’ve spent exactly five seconds with the spell that made you, but it is the nastiest piece of work I think I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s why we can save the positives for another day.”

He did not want to tell her about fated mates.

He’d witnessed his cousin almost lose the love of his life because he’d put too much faith in magical connections.

Plus, Asher had no way of knowing whether he had any kind of connection with her beyond an obsession with her eyes and the tone of her voice, and his potential salvation.

That was the real problem. Her magic might save him. Nobody was supposed to end up with their guardian angel.

“Okay then, what now?” she asked.

“What would you need to do? For me?” he asked when the silence stretched and pounded between them again.

“The same. Skin to skin, preferably near your heart. The spell is anchored there. Or maybe in your ribs?”

“It’s in my spine. Behind my heart. The part of it that changes the least.”

She gaped at him. “How on earth do you know that?”

He felt the paperclip biting into his palm before he realized he’d grabbed it.

The witches in his life had made a spell to keep him human, and to do it, they had to learn exactly how witches had built shifters in the first place.

Both wolves and humans had similar spines, so the lasting aspects of the magic lived there, though it brushed every cell in his body.

He swallowed and peeled off his shirt as she came and sat down next to him on the bed. Roughly, he considered how much more fun this would be if he were stripping for another reason, but he had no right to even dream of that with her.

As before, she put a hand to his breastbone, and it nearly burned him. She was so hot, or maybe it was the magic.

She closed her eyes, and he braced.

He felt or imagined he felt a tingling from her hand.

His wolf snarled. The beast had been beyond words for years. He knew other shifters could have a conversation, but aside from aggression, he never got anything more from it.

Asher didn’t feel anything different, except that his wolf went from growling and angry to enraged in seconds, and then, for the first time, he felt another alien presence within him.

He knew he had part of a snake, but he’d never felt it. Even when she talked about it, he could not look within and point to the piece of him that was a snake, but now he could feel it coiled in his guts.

The shock knocked him sideways for just long enough for the wolf to see an opening.

In seconds, he was no longer human.

In a practiced move, the wolf leaped out of his jeans, shredding them as it fought its tail free and then skidded to a stop in the center of the kitchen.

That hadn’t happened in years, not since the paperclip spell.

He knew it was just a paperclip. It had been part of a spell, but the magic had long drained away. It was purely symbolic, but somehow he thought it would keep him human.

Long years of eating nothing but squirrels and birds stretched out in his mind. The memories were hazy; he’d been nearly dead inside and had given up any hope of returning to his own body.

That couldn’t happen again.

The wolf swung toward the woman whose name he had already forgotten.

There was something worse than getting stuck as a wolf. He was going to kill her. He was going to kill her, then all the donkeys, and then get stuck as a wolf. And his family would never know and never come for him. He’d made sure of that.

Why hadn’t she run?

She’d run the last time when he’d twitched a muscle wrong. Now he was dripping venom and crazed, and she stood up and stepped forward, hand outstretched.

With the last of his strength, he wheeled the wolf away from her and punched through the front window. Glass carved into his shoulders and his neck.

Fortunately, the pain startled the wolf, and it bolted away from the cabin and the donkeys. It ran and ran until it curled under a tree in the deep woods.

A piece of glass had nicked an artery, and blood was pumping faster than Asher realized.

With his superior healing abilities, he was pretty sure it would heal before he died of blood loss, but it was going to be a near run thing. For a second, he considered just letting it happen, letting his life force drain out on the forest floor.

He tried to make something of his life and had failed utterly. But he couldn’t go, not like this. He’d only just met her.

He told the wolf to lean against the tree, putting pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding. The wolf didn’t understand clotting, but it sensed his intent and did as he said. He stood like that as the wounds closed.

For a moment, he thought of where she might be—how far down the mountain she could reach in her little car, but that was a dangerous thought.