Page 7 of His Whispered Witch

She spun around in a circle, buffeted by accusations with just enough empathy magic to catch the ugly undertones.

“No drugs! I just talked through some things with Silver here.”

Silver ignored his name. Fortunately, the donkey wasn’t fussed by all the shouting humans around it. It had a pretty sweet disposition for a donkey.

“We’ve been training for this our entire lives!” Gary said. “How dare you!”

“We have to test the donkey. And Gary! What did you take?”

Somebody sidled up beside her. “Can I get some?”

The accusations horrified her. “It was nothing!”

She pulled away when she felt a hand on her arm but stopped when she saw it was Annie.

“We have to go,” Annie said urgently.

“I have to explain!” Penn said.

Annie shook her head. “We have to go!”

Penn spun around to see the werewolf and more of his family—blond, tall, and brimming with animal magic—bearing down toward them, muttering about cheaters.

Penn closed her eyes. “How is this happening again?”

If she brought a pack of wolves down on her new coven…

The most unfair part of this was that if there were werewolves racing donkeys, they really were cheating. You stick a wolf behind a donkey, it’s going to go as fast as you want for as long as it can, but that was beside the point. If this got worse, she would have to run again. There would be no choice.

She staggered away and lost herself in the crowds. She really didn’t want to test that treaty. She’d read it once in kindergarten and hadn’t thought of it again until today.

“The wolves don’t know I’m a witch,” she muttered. “They don’t know me.”

“Yeah, they know me,” Annie whispered.

Penn looked down at her, surprised. “A pack of werewolves your family avoids at all costs knows you. Personally?” All ofAnnie’s freckles disappeared in a fiery blush, and Penn couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder. There was a story here.

She sighed. It was one she didn’t have any right to, and Annie didn’t seem at all keen to share.

As they struggled to get to their truck, Penn shook her head. How was this her life?

Six months ago, Penn had a respected position in her coven in Pennsylvania, consulting for huge dairy farms and being paid ridiculous amounts of money as an animal husbandry expert with no need for fake titles or business cards because everyone knew you came to the Youngs if you were having unspecified issues with your herd.

Now she was a fugitive from her own family in a tiny town in the Rockies being accused of giving performance drugs to an ass while evading werewolves.

How had it already gone wrong so fast?

At the moment, she doubted she’d get any new customers out of this day and might get actively banned from ever working with animals again.

Then where would she go?

She shook that thought off.

She’d learned not to ask that question.

But seriously? Where would she go?

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