Page 17 of His Whispered Witch

That broke her brain. It killed everything she knew about the history of her family and her world.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you…” Did she believe him? She didn’t know him from Adam. How could she trust him? She was sitting alone in the woods with a shifter who had volunteered the fact that there was something seriously wrong with his wolf.

“You can just pretend it’s true,” he said. “The story can be whatever you want it to be.”

“Why? Why would any witch do that to some random dude?” She also wanted to ask how, but she thought that question would probably not go over well.

“Protection? That’s the prevailing theory.”

The magic had to be immense to change the very essence of a human being. She couldn’t fathom that kind of power, nor that kind of fear.

“So, if your wolf is made of magic, has the magic gone wrong? ‘Cause if so, you really need to find a coven. I am alone.”

He frowned. “I thought a coven ruled Silver Spring.”

She smiled ruefully. “What is a coven, really?”

He scratched his head. “Is that a philosophical question?”

“No. It’s got a genuine answer. It’s thirteen witches from the same family with different talents who can join magics together. Well, there are only twelve talents, and then somebody to lead the whole thing. Never mind. That’s not important. There are witches in Silver Spring, a lot of us, actually.” Way more than thirteen. “But we’re not from the same family, and we have overlapping talents, though no one else has animal magic. They were quite happy when I showed up. But we can’t join together. They’re working on it.”

She tried not to think about the fact that she would never feel that again, the power building and building, so much greater than the sum of its parts. She’d never feel the warm embrace of wards around the land, knowing nothing could get through to harm her.

“What happened to your family?” He swallowed. “Was it… Was it shifters?”

“No. It was another coven. It wasn’t violent. Everyone is still alive. We just couldn’t keep the wards up, and we didn’t have enough talent left. Everything’s kind of falling apart, you know? I mean, for every coven, not just ours.”

“For the packs as well. Fewer and fewer kids are born with wolves. It’s why—” he stopped abruptly and got a funny look on his face, like he’d just eaten a lemon.

“Why what?”

“Nothing.”

From the look of him, it was the opposite of nothing, but she couldn’t make him tell her.

“That’s not the most important part of the story,” he said.

“It’s not important how you got your wolf?”

“I mean, it matters ‘cause none of this makes sense without knowing that, but the important part of the story is the alpha.”

She leaned forward despite herself. “So there really is a leader of wolves?”

“It’s more often a pair. A couple. But my fa… We only had the alpha. His wife died, and he got dementia. It turns out it’s not great for a man with a giant predator inside to lose the human half of his mind.”

She quailed. What could she do about that?

“Don’t worry. He’s dead too,” he said, reading her face.

“Oh good,” she said faintly.

“But when more powerful wolves issue an edict, the less powerful wolves have to follow them. They have to. I don’t know whether it’s part of the magic or part of the wolf or what. But it’s not fun.”

“I bet.”

He was silent for a while as he gazed out into the deepening dark. She was going to have to drive down those curvy roads with her tiny car and its tiny headlights, which she hated. She put that aside. That would not be the hardest thing she did tonight by a long shot, it sounded like. She had no idea where this story was going next, but she really hated the beginning.

“My—the alpha didn’t like me. Targeted me. Don’t know why.”

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