Page 86 of His Whispered Witch

“Buddy, sometimes you get to be the conquering hero and sometimes you get to be the damsel in distress.”

“Hey,” Penn said. “I object on behalf of damsels.”

“No!” Asher insisted. That wasn’t the most important part of his objection. He had to talk. “Please.” His throat seized.

Malcolm shrugged. “So not only can we not help, somehow, you’re gonna prevent us from doing it for ourselves, and die up here ‘cause you’re so self-sacrificing and that’s automatically gonna be better, is that right?” Some of the old impatience and fury was in his voice from when they were both young and powerless.

Asher played back his words in his head and could find no fault with them. “Yes?”

Malcolm threw up his hands and walked away.

“Why don’t you try?” he threw back at Penn, and Asher closed his eyes to fight down an urge to shift. He’d tried to explain.

When he opened them, he was alone with his mate, who spread her hands wide. “I don’t know what to say.”

He scrambled toward her, wanting to wrap her in his arms, but he’d been living as a wolf in a den, and he could feel the dirt sticking to his skin, so he just reached for her hand. He took a couple of deep breaths, swallowing convulsively. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“I know. Honestly, I feel terrible for even suggesting it. I didn’t know how dangerous it would be. But we’ve fixed that. It’s not like it’s a coin toss. The risks are low.”

“But not zero. Not zero, that we would end up without wolves or even dead.”

“When I got back to the land,” Malcolm said quietly, and they both spun. He’d only gone as far as the edge of the clearing. His back was still turned to them, and it looked like he was talking to the trees. “I didn’t know what the hell an alpha was. We didn’t exactly have the best example.”

Asher shuddered, thinking of Malcolm’s father slowly losing his grip on reality and the pack.

“I thought it was about strength and top-down orders and keeping everybody safe.” He finally turned. “Of course, by my definition of safe, by my means.”

Asher took a deep breath and scraped the edges of himself together enough to joke, “Glad I missed that asshole.”

Malcolm’s shoulders hitched with a laugh.

“I didn’t realize the alpha was the most powerless position in the pack. My role is really one of those air mattresses they put at the bottom of burning buildings in case somebody jumps. I’m a few inches of fabric between everyone else and the ground. So it’s not like I don’t get how much you don’t wanna do this, but from where I’m standing, all you’re trying to do is avoid living with the consequences if it goes wrong. And yeah, they would suck. But I think that’s a better sacrifice than forcing us to do it instead—grieve you with all the guilt of knowing we could’ve helped. That shouldn’t be ours to carry.”

The words seared through Asher. He thought this was a noble thing to do: remove himself from the situation and spare them an impossible decision. They could die. Did they not understand they could die?

But they wanted to. Or at least, they wanted to risk it, if it helped him. Theycouldlive with that. Malcolm was absolutely right; he was taking that choice away because he didn’t want to live with it if they failed.

He turned back to Penn.

“I love you,” he said, and clicked his teeth together, shocked. It wasn’t at all what he meant to say.

She looked shocked, too.

“It’s too fast. I’m sorry. We don’t know each other.”

Shock transformed into laughter. “You’re funny. You’re beautiful. You sacrifice everything to keep your family safe. What the hell else do I need to know about you? I love you, too. And so does your entire pack. Don’t throw that away. You have no idea how rare and precious that is.”

He smiled ruefully. “I think I have a little bit of an idea.”

She threw her arms around him. He resisted for half a second until his hands wrapped around her back.

“Yes or no, dude,” Malcolm said slowly. “That’s all I need from you. Not a yes or no for the pack. Doyouwant them to try or not?”

Penn squeezed him even harder, as if she could force the word out of the depths of him.

“Yes,” he said, even as his heart cracked.

He wanted to give and give and give to Penn until she never felt alone again in the world. He wanted to come home fixed, happy, and needing nothing from anybody.

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