He swallowed. “Can I save that story for later?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a happy story, but I have a feeling it will scare you and…” He wanted to do just about anything else in his life besides scare her.
“Forgive me, but I can’t imagine how a story between witches and shifters is anything other than tragedy. I’ve spent exactly five seconds with the spell that made you, but it is the nastiest piece of work I think I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s why we can save the positives for another day.”
He did not want to tell her about fated mates. He’d witnessed his cousin almost lose the love of his life because he’d put too much faith in magical connections. Plus, Asher had no way of knowing whether he had any kind of connection with her beyond an obsession with her eyes and the tone of her voice, and his potential salvation.
That was the real problem. Her magic might save him. Nobody was supposed to end up with their guardian angel.
“Okay then, what now?” she asked.
“What would you need to do? For me?” he asked when the silence stretched and pounded between them again.
“The same. Skin to skin, preferably near your heart. The spell is anchored there. Or maybe in your ribs?”
“It’s in my spine. Behind my heart. The part of it that changes the least.”
She gaped at him. “How on earth do you know that?”
He felt the paperclip biting into his palm before he realized he’d grabbed it. The witches in his life had made a spell to keep him human, and to do it, they had to learn exactly how witches had built shifters in the first place. Both wolves and humans had similar spines, so the lasting aspects of the magic lived there, though it brushed every cell in his body.
He swallowed and peeled off his shirt as she came and sat down next to him on the bed. Roughly, he considered how much more fun this would be if he were stripping for another reason, but he had no right to even dream of that with her.
As before, she put a hand to his breastbone, and it nearly burned him. She was so hot, or maybe it was the magic.
She closed her eyes, and he braced.
He felt or imagined he felt a tingling from her hand.
His wolf snarled. The beast had been beyond words for years. He knew other shifters could have a conversation, but aside from aggression, he never got anything more from it.
Asher didn’t feel anything different, except that his wolf went from growling and angry to enraged in seconds, and then, for the first time, he felt another alien presence within him.
He knew he had part of a snake, but he’d never felt it. Even when she talked about it, he could not look within and point to the piece of him that was a snake, but now he could feel it coiled in his guts.
The shock knocked him sideways for just long enough for the wolf to see an opening.
In seconds, he was no longer human.
In a practiced move, the wolf leaped out of his jeans, shredding them as it fought its tail free and then skidded to a stop in the center of the kitchen.
That hadn’t happened in years, not since the paperclip spell.
He knew it was just a paperclip. It had been part of a spell, but the magic had long drained away. It was purely symbolic, but somehow he thought it would keep him human.
Long years of eating nothing but squirrels and birds stretched out in his mind. The memories were hazy; he’d been nearly dead inside and had given up any hope of returning to his own body.
That couldn’t happen again.
The wolf swung toward the woman whose name he had already forgotten.
There was something worse than getting stuck as a wolf. He was going to kill her. He was going to kill her, then all the donkeys, and then get stuck as a wolf. And his family would never know and never come for him. He’d made sure of that.
Why hadn’t she run?
