Page 30 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

P enn watched the gray wolf disappear into the trees, taking a piece of her heart with him. Her grief was enormous and surprising.

Yes, she was currently sitting in his home with his family, where she’d moved to be with him. She’d accepted there was some kind of connection between them. The sex was hot as hell. She did like him.

All of that added up to security and the potential for more, but faced with the loss of him, none of it mattered. She swung back to his family and realized she would give all of this up again and again and again if it meant she could have him.

She loved him.

It was too soon, but what else should she call this feeling of absolute devastation? Suddenly, living in the world without any kind of safety and continuity didn’t matter at all.

“This can’t be up to him,” she said to the assembled wolves and witches, strangers all of them until last night, when she’d been reluctant to ask for a glass of water. Now she was begging them for his life. “You have to help him.”

“It’s not as simple as helping him,” the older woman, Kathleen, said slowly. Penn remembered she was the alpha’s mother, a witch.

“It is that simple,” Malcolm said.

“You can’t sacrifice everyone for one man,” Quinn said from beside him, one hand on her belly.

Penn shouldn’t shout at a pregnant woman. That had to be bad. She bit down on her tongue until she could ask in a normal voice, “And if it was your mate?”

Quinn clutched at Malcolm’s arm.

“You can’t just…” Kathleen said. “This is not a dictatorship!”

Malcolm gave a shout of laughter that had Penn shaking in her shoes.

“This is literally a dictatorship. But—” He held up a hand before his mother could explode. “Not in this. We’re going to talk and we’re going to vote.”

“Who is we?” Penn asked, and what favors, blackmail, or threats did she have to do to get them to agree?

“I’ll call the pack,” Malcolm said.

“You cannot risk this!” Kathleen shouted.

“I’m not. I’m asking them if they want to. Everyone can choose for themselves. It’s not just Asher. You know there are more wolves on this land that would like to be rid of the snake, even if Asher were completely fine.”

Kathleen closed her eyes. “Ellis.”

Penn looked around. She didn’t know who Ellis was or why he would be so desperate to get rid of the snake. It couldn’t have been a happy story, but she was grateful to him.

“And the Ryersons, who lost their baby at one year old,” Malcolm said. “And I bet a lot of others who don’t want the pain. It hurts every time, Ma.”

Kathleen swallowed, her eyes still closed. “I know.”

Quinn took a deep breath. “You know what the second thing any wolf has ever said to me after congratulations when they found out I’m pregnant?”

Finally, Kathleen opened her eyes.

“Be careful,” Quinn continued. “Congratulations, be careful.”

“I can’t lose you,” Kathleen said to her son.

“You’re not gonna lose me,” Malcolm said. “‘Cause you’re gonna build the best damn spell in the world. Look, the world is never risk-free. Every time you get in a car, you risk going over the side of a mountain, but it doesn’t happen.”

Quinn shuddered. “That wasn’t the best example…”

Penn arched an eyebrow at yet another story she didn’t know. She’d felt the same when she moved to Colorado, missing half the stories because everyone spoke in a shorthand of incidents and accidents.

“My point is,” Malcolm said, “this is better than random chance. Y’all can control this risk. You can make it better.” He waited, but nobody objected, and he tapped a fist into the opposite palm. “Build the spell. I’ll call the pack.”

“They are going to agree,” Kathleen said hopelessly.

Malcolm wrapped his mother in a hug. “Yeah, they are. And not only for Asher.”

He let her go and strode down the lawn.

Penn cycled through a couple of things to say like: thank you, let’s go, or sorry you lost. She held her tongue, half convinced all of them would sound like gloating.

Kathleen took a deep breath and said, “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go,” Penn echoed, hope soaring.

Kathleen grabbed Penn’s arm in a clawed grip as they started toward the house. “This has to be the best damn spell we’ve ever written, do you understand? We think through every step. We perfect every step.”

She nodded quickly.

“Every step,” Kathleen repeated.

“I want this to work more than anybody,” Penn said, and Kathleen loosened her grip.

“I’m sorry, of course.”

“We can do this.”

“We can’t do this,” Penn said and glanced at the enormous clock in the corner. They were on hour nine.

They’d started by transcribing the spell into a computer so there could be absolutely no confusion, and everyone got a copy. Even that took an hour as they debated punctuation marks versus smudges of dirt on the ancient manuscript.

Then they had to adapt it for snakes, because as awful as this spell was, it made normal wolves, not dire wolves. That took half the day.

None of that compared to the work it was taking to undo it. At this point, Penn wasn’t sure if it even could be done.

Members of Goldie’s family arrived by lunch. They genuinely did not seem at all worried about hanging out on a rival pack’s territory. That was the only weird thing about them, though.

Penn couldn’t help thinking that this was a proper coven.

They all had long, dark hair and towered above everybody.

They looked like a family. They had every talent in four different generations perched on various flat surfaces they could find in the house, bickering amongst themselves with gentle familiarity.

Penn swung between gratitude, shock at seeing so many people helping, and annoyance.

If she never heard another in-joke she didn’t understand again, it would be too soon.

Penn had never been in an official Circle before.

She’d shared power before, of course. Every witch started doing that with her sisters or her cousins roundabout the time they could walk, but she’d never been in the official, twelve-talents Circle of her coven, not that she would ever admit that to the witches arrayed around the dining room table.

She didn’t have to admit it; she was pretty sure they’d already figured it out.

“Our aunt is never gonna go for this,” a woman named Becca said from across the table. She was Goldie’s sister. Penn couldn’t see it. Goldie was a head taller and willowy with a shock of gold hair and the personality of a hedgehog compared to Becca’s sweet disposition.

After a chaotic dinner where everyone had a suggestion, they’d pared down the group doing the planning. Becca’s talent was healing, which Penn honestly hoped would not be a talent they needed, but they were also probably not going to be that lucky.

“We’re not gonna need our aunt,” Goldie said confidently. “Between the two Circles, we have all twelve talents. We don’t need to double up.”

The two women felt like sisters when they talked with a combination of amusement, exasperation, care, and grinding, decades–long patience.

“Do we really want to risk it?” Becca asked.

Goldie tossed her mane of hair. “Oh, come on, you can’t tell me you and your wolf’s power doesn’t dwarf any Circle.”

Penn swallowed. Becca was married to a wolf and had two children who both had magic and wolves themselves, even the boy. No one else thought that tilted the world on its axis. They were playing outside now with some of the pack children.

Penn wasn’t sure if she genuinely wanted kids, or if the expectations of the coven had seeped so deeply into her psyche that the idea of not wanting kids was unthinkable.

It was the main duty of any witch: to make more witches.

She thought of Asher and children with his light hair and her eyes and felt a surprising wave of grief for children who had yet to exist.

“We go with the people who want to be here,” one of the Abbott witches said, the tallest one with bracelets all over her arms. Penn had heard all their names and promptly forgotten them. She remembered it was a boy’s name. Billy? Charlie! She was a divination witch, so her words held more weight.

A pot clattered, and she glanced into the kitchen with a sigh. Kathleen was the only one who wasn’t helping. She started cooking around ten in the morning, and even though she’d whipped up both lunch and dinner for at least forty people between the pack and the visiting coven, she was still at it.

If this went wrong, the old lady would never forgive her. Penn had been trying not to think of it all day, but the terror of what she was risking flooded back into her mind.

If she were wrong, there would be no way to stay here. Asher would be gone, and a dire wolf pack with venom-dripping fangs that were probably still functional would blame her.

She put it away again. Genuinely, none of that mattered. The chance for a life with him was worth everything.

“And you really shared power through the wolves?” Charlie asked.

They all turned to Quinn, the only witch who’d ever messed with this spell before. “I pulled on Kathleen through Malcolm. It felt totally normal.”

“It didn’t hurt?” Charlie demanded.

Kathleen abandoned her pot and stood at the edge of the dining room. “It felt like a Circle. I shared power with my mate and my sons for decades. It felt exactly like that.”

“I can’t even imagine that much power,” Charlie murmured.

This is about a human being. Penn wanted to shout.

A human being and a wolf, and a snake who are having a really bad day.

They were treating this as a challenge and a chance for power.

She bit her tongue. Why did it matter why they were doing it?

Because if the going gets tough, who will they protect?

Charlie leaned over to grab a marker off the table. “Can I use this?”

Kathleen nodded, and Charlie turned to the wall and drew a big circle.

Penn squawked, but Kathleen just laughed. “I’m a potion witch. Do whatever you want to the wall.”