Page 18 of His Whispered Witch

He knew why, but how did she know he was lying? As bad as the story was, it sounded like she wasn’t going to get all of it, or even the most important parts, and that was worse.

“Anyway, I spent five years as a wolf.”

“Okay?” She waited for more. Was that the climax?

“That’s not supposed to happen,” he said mildly.

“So, a shifter who doesn’t shift… What happens?” Her imagination failed her again.

“The human is supposed to be in control. Always. Even as a wolf, we can wrest it away. The children who don’t learn that are killed.”

“What?” she shouted, jumping up.

She didn’t have murdering children on her bingo card.

“It’s for the best. They’re dangerous predators. It’s not like we slit their throats when they’re two. They try for years. What part ofwolfpack wasn’t clear?”

He sounded angry, and she sat down, aware that she’d asked him for this story. She was also aware this was incredibly hard for him, and he didn’t have to do it. She had no idea what life was like for his family. There were a lot of things about a coven that would horrify outsiders, like the communal living, the pooled money, the arranged marriages, and the control the matriarchy had over everyone, but it worked for them. When you had the kind of power that witches had, there had to be guardrails. And as dangerous as her power was, it still didn’t come with teeth.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be. It’s just, they should have put me down.”

“When you didn’t shift?”

“But they didn’t. And when we finally got a new alpha...”

She braced.

“No, he’s awesome.” Asher laughed quietly. “When he’s not the worst person in the world. Anyway, he forced me back, kept me human.”

“That’s great,” she said sincerely. She didn’t know why she felt an unbearable sense of grief at the idea of losing this man.

“That was not the word I used then.” He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Or for a very long time.”

She swallowed. “Or now?”

“Sometimes now. My wolf wasn’t right after that. It had lived too long with too much power. And now it’s hard to control.”

That seemed like a massive understatement, if his white knuckles on the arms of the rocking chair were any sort of tell. Automatically, she scooted her chair away from him across the porch. The sound of wood screeching against a nail was loud in the night.

“Hard to control,” he said with a small smile, “but not impossible. I’m not going to eat you. That’s part of the deal, after all.”

She deeply felt how useless that declaration was in a world with uncontrolled shifters. She had no guarantee he could keep that promise.

“So, you want me to, what? Talk to him?”

“Oh, I talk to him. I had hoped…” He trailed off again. She got the impression he didn’t talk to many people. She smirked, amused with herself. She was a real Nancy Drew to figure that one out.

“Hoped what?” she asked at last.

“I had hoped that he might actually listen to you. Or I had hoped that perhaps you would hear. He doesn’t talk to me. I don’t know what’s wrong, but he’s miserable. If there’s a wound to be healed or part of the spell to be fixed or something, I’d like to try. Now that I say it, it sounds ridiculous. You don’t know me. You’ve never met a shifter before, and somehow you’re gonna know exactly how to fix one? But I had, um, hoped.”

She took a deep breath. “You’re right. I have no idea what I can do, but if your wolf really is an animal, I can try.”

Finally, he met her eyes. “Thank you.”

Two simple words she’d heard a thousand times, yet it felt like she’d never heard them before in her life.

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