Page 70 of His Whispered Witch

Was she really going to stay here? She’d lived in houses with multiple families before. It was insane chaos. No one had anyprivacy, and that would be even worse in a wolf pack, where they had superhearing.

But the thought of leaving and going to some tiny cabin in the woods broke her heart. They’d just casually invited her into the heart of the pack, something that had never happened in any of the covens she’d lived in. She’d always been on the outskirts, a valued member, but never anywhere near power.

“Sleep well,” Quinn said finally and trod away.

Asher stepped across the threshold and hit the lights as he carefully closed the door.

The overhead lamp glowed. Penn spun in a circle. It was a surprisingly big room with another door to the right.

There was a double bed with a dark plaid quilt centered under a window. Dressers and a desk ran along the walls. In the corner next to the bed, two armchairs faced each other.

She let Oz down onto the seat of the chair at the desk and shoved it in so that he would have a dark, quiet place to hide.

“He is not gonna have his own little, um, home?” Asher asked. He hadn’t moved from the door.

“He has acage, but he doesn’t need one tonight.”

“And he’s not gonna come running into bed?”

She tapped her temple. “Animal witch, remember. He goes where I tell him. And besides, this is better for him; it’s nice and protected. He won’t want to move.”

She ran her hand over the desk. There was a battered baseball glove and ball in one corner, and a poster of a baseball star she didn’t recognize on the wall. She turned back to see a huge landscape painting on the opposite wall. It was an incongruous touch in a room of a typical young man.

“You really want to live here?” he asked. He still hadn’t moved.

“Yes?”

“Not randomly on the land, but here. With me.”

Penn grimaced. They really hadn’t had this conversation yet, had they? She tried to believe and hope that she was moving toward a future and not fleeing the intolerable past, that this was an affirmative move and not a desperate one. Most of her believed it. Most.

“I want to want to be here.”

He sucked in a breath. “God, I hear that.”

She hadn’t meant it like that, but it hurt to see the pain flash across his face. She meant in this room, not in the world.

She hurried over to him but stopped short. She wanted to touch him but didn’t want to hurt him.

He took another deep breath and summoned a smile. “How about we want to want to be here for a little bit longer, and I can have faith someday we will just want to be here…”

She stepped into his arms and hugged him tight, surprised all over by the heat he gave off.

A sudden thought occurred, and she pulled back. “They’re not going to hear?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I mean, probably something, but it’s an incredibly well-soundproofed house.” He knocked on the door behind him, and instead of hollow wood, she heard a dull thump. They’d filled the door with something, and there wasn’t the slightest bit of light escaping around the frame.

“But they’re still gonna hear something,” he repeated. “We don’t have to be here. We’ve got a lot of buildings. There were more of us once.”

Penn huffed. Yes, she supposed there would be, but getting a wolf and a snake and a kid to adulthood in one body seemed rife for disaster.

“We don’t have to live here,” she said.

“I just never imagined you would want to,” he whispered.

“Which means you do,” she said, and laughed. “Are we going to accommodate each other into shitneitherof us wants? Tell me what you want.”

He squinted at her, but his mouth was curved. “You first.”

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