Legendary Beast
Legendary Beast
Barbara J. Hancock
She slept…his love didn’tOnce upon a time, Madeline was trapped in an enchanted sleep, her baby wrapped tight in her arms. Then the white wolf woke her, and her son disappeared.For centuries, Lev Romanov searched for his wife and their child, and the search drove him half-mad. Can Madeline trust the wolf to be the man who can help her save their son.
She slept...
...his love didn’t
Once upon a time, Madeline was trapped in an enchanted sleep, her baby wrapped tight in her arms. Then the white wolf woke her, and her son disappeared. For centuries, Lev Romanov searched for his wife and their child, and the search drove him half-mad. Can Madeline trust the wolf to be the man who can help her save their son?
BARBARA J. HANCOCK lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where her daily walk takes her to the edge of the wilderness and back again. When Barbara isn’t writing modern gothic romance that embraces the shadows with a unique blend of heat and heart, she can be found wrangling twin boys and spoiling her pets.
Also by Barbara J. Hancock (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Brimstone Seduction
Brimstone Bride
Brimstone Prince
Legendary Shifter
Legendary Wolf
Legendary Beast
Darkening Around Me
Silent Is the House
The Girl in Blue
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Legendary Beast
Barbara J. Hancock
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08216-7
LEGENDARY BEAST
© 2018 Barbara J. Hancock
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For the lovers who mean it
when they pledge their hearts “forever.”
Contents
Cover (#ub581ca53-fe1b-5056-aae6-a4dbfd087ee9)
Back Cover Text (#udcac2421-f164-5c12-a58d-e5f44549e86a)
About the Author (#uc7961c8c-f3c7-5cce-bf9a-786bddfc146e)
Booklist (#u09f3966a-6e6b-5019-bad8-426c338fc4ba)
Title Page (#u7cf6bd95-e1cd-53b3-9029-58b20ca12167)
Copyright (#uc53dc5b5-f154-5e43-9c0d-a343d61c1691)
Dedication (#u6c5c5dff-0c07-5078-b2c1-fc7af75a991d)
Prologue (#u9a9c327c-361f-5feb-a33e-36e6e2359825)
Chapter 1 (#u610bd171-1197-55d9-a961-d03e10f9dc64)
Chapter 2 (#u8c302971-54cd-5c82-997f-39f686802c53)
Chapter 3 (#u25f94ae2-4b9e-51f7-9360-d85bbbaf0748)
Chapter 4 (#u96134227-fc6d-5167-828d-4eea57029e77)
Chapter 5 (#u6d01e8e2-6d4b-57b6-ba7e-1f5dff4c8a45)
Chapter 6 (#u0baf7428-909a-5677-85e5-cd89d9e725b2)
Chapter 7 (#u51659b06-ef6e-52e2-b0f8-c7be54655638)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Madeline woke to the sound of a howl. The horrible cry trailed off and died out. Coughs racked her body, and her raw throat throbbed. The terrible noise had ripped its way out of her own chest. She struggled to breathe. The howl had been too big and too rough for her throat. It had ripped through her throat so that every breath that followed was a harsh rasp.
Seconds later, terror caused even those shallow breaths to catch. She forgot the rude awakening and the raw pain in her throat.
The baby was gone.
Trevor. Was. Gone.
She struggled to open her eyes. The world that met her was blurry and vague. She could feel the loss of the baby better than she could see her empty arms. His weight against her chest was missing.
She’d held him for such a long time.
But another familiar weight was still beside her.
Madeline reached for the ruby sword. The gem in its hilt flickered weakly, oddly illuminating her blurred surroundings. When her fingers closed around it, its red light flared. She could suddenly make out her strange crystalline bed. Someone or something had shattered the enclosure and taken her child.
The sword vibrated with power, but she held it easily, from practice and skill. The scarlet light grew and became an aura around her whole body as she rose.
She wasn’t dressed for battle. Her gown and kirtle were much more cumbersome than the leggings and tunic she would have worn for fighting. But it didn’t matter. There was no time to search for more practical clothes. Trevor was gone, and she could sense a great and horrible danger bearing down on her.
Crystal shards fell away from her as she stood. Madeline could barely make out the tangle of bushes around her, though the scent of roses filled the air. But none of those sensations mattered. She was pulled out of the garden as if by an invisible hand toward the threat she sensed.
She was a warrior. Every instinct she possessed drove her forward. Her vision was still blurry; her heart pounded painfully beneath her breast. Her throat felt as if it had been torn apart by her howling scream. But she brandished her ruby sword and made her way to the battle that waited for her.
“Lev, no!” someone shouted.
The meaning of the shout didn’t penetrate her understanding. Her attention was focused on a great and terrible beast on the edge of a cliff as she climbed up a steep rise above the garden where she’d been sleeping. Everything else was indistinct to her perceptions except the massive figure of a monstrous white wolf that snarled and growled and threatened the people nearby.
Rain began to fall. It plastered the wolf’s hair against his giant body, and even though the red aura of her ruby sword deflected much of the moisture from her face, her vision was even more obscured as the rain hit the barrier of energy and became rivulets of water in front of her eyes.
The tempestuous storm and the creature’s sudden loud and long howl seemed to echo the tumult in her own chest. She had to clamp her jaw against the urge to howl again along with the beast, as his sound made the very ground on which she stood vibrate.
Madeline raised her blade against the monster and against the fury that threatened to tear her body apart because she couldn’t contain the enormity of it all.
But then the white wolf was gone.
Her anger didn’t disappear, but a pain so intense it overshadowed any she had felt before joined it. Her sword arm weakened beneath the onslaught of emotion, and she lowered it until the tip of her blade met the ground so that the mighty ruby blade became more cane than weapon. It was the only thing keeping her on her feet.
Until a warm body braced against hers on the other side.
Trevor was gone. The white wolf was gone. Her numb fingers no longer held the ruby blade. The same person who helped her to stay on her feet had taken the blade from her and tossed it aside. It was lying on the ground, several feet away. The protection of its red aura was gone. Rain pelted her face and soaked through her hair and her dress.
And then a cold, calm, powerful presence was also there. All the terrible, overwhelming pain was soothed away by a cool psychic touch inside her mind. Her legs gave out beneath her, but it didn’t matter. The cool presence approached and took her weight from the smaller, warmer one.
Vasilisa and her daughter, Anna. The knowledge of their names was placed in her mind by the cool presence. Her thoughts were as hazy as her vision and as impossible to process, but the explanation calmed her slightly. She should trust her queen. Her instincts were screaming other things, but they were rusty from disuse, and the psychic touch chilled them into silence.
Madeline accepted the coolness in her mind. It came from the woman who held her on her feet, Vasilisa. She exuded an aura that numbed all else. Vasilisa turned Madeline, and they walked away together. But Madeline wasn’t entirely soothed. She had failed. She hadn’t killed the white wolf. The monstrous beast must have been the terrible threat that had woken her.
And now he had escaped.
Her mind was able to hold on to only one clear thought: wherever Trevor had gone, he wouldn’t be safe until the white wolf was destroyed.
Chapter 1 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Madeline’s fingers were smudged with charcoal from the hundredth pencil she’d worn down to a nub. She used her thumb and forefinger to blend the shadows around the figure of the white wolf she’d drawn. He was large on the page. Much bigger than a natural wolf. As always, he loomed, ready to pounce. She’d lost count of how many times she’d committed her memory of him to paper. No matter how many pages she filled with his savage likeness, she never exorcised him from her mind.
Good. She needed to remember so she would be prepared to protect Trevor if the white wolf should ever return.
That stormy day she’d first woken after hundreds of years, it had been Vasilisa who had broken the crystal chamber that had been her bed for so long. The queen had taken Trevor from her arms to keep him safe while Madeline confronted the threat of the white wolf. It had been horrible to wake up and find her baby gone, but she was glad the queen had protected him from harm.
Vasilisa had been the cool presence that had helped her. Madeline’s body had woken from a long illness, but her mind hadn’t. Every sight that met her eyes had dazzled and confused her.
The queen encouraged her drawings. She said the sketches came from the recesses of her mind that were still sleeping. Besides the wolf, there were sketches of a life she’d forgotten—a life very unlike the world she had woken to on Vasilisa’s island, Krajina.
Vasilisa was the Light Volkhvy queen, and Madeline had trusted her from the moment she realized it had been the queen who protected Trevor from the white wolf. Her queen. Her beloved liege. Vasilisa had rushed to break the crystal and take the baby from Madeline’s arms when the white wolf appeared on the island. His appearance had woken Madeline too harshly from her long sleep. She had risen to face his attack, but she hadn’t been strong enough. Vasilisa had explained everything as she helped Madeline recover. Healthy food and exercise seemed to clear her head a little more each day. As her health improved, Vasilisa gently tried to help Madeline recover the memories she’d lost.
But, most of all, the queen had continued to take care of Madeline’s infant son, who was still sleeping. She’d explained that Trevor needed to wake up slowly, and that soon he would be smiling, gurgling and grasping Madeline’s finger once more.
Madeline had forgotten a great many things, but she hadn’t forgotten her baby.
Trevor, the white wolf and her ruby sword—everything else in this strange new world she had to relearn, but not those things. Knowledge of them flashed behind her eyes with every blink and pounded in her chest with every beat of her heart.
Madeline finished the sketch and pulled her blackened fingers away from the page. The white wolf’s snarl was threatening, even though she’d created it herself with charcoal and paper. She calmly looked into the beast’s eyes for a few moments. Remembering his savagery made her stronger.
She had quickly come to love Vasilisa, who treated her as a daughter and Trevor as a beloved grandchild. But she wouldn’t depend on the queen to keep Trevor safe. Madeline was his mother. Facing the threat of the white wolf was her responsibility, and she was determined to be ready.
She closed the sketchbook and placed it on the window ledge that overlooked the ocean below.
Vasilisa was walking on the beach. She held a tiny bundle in her arms—Trevor. Even far away from her breast, Madeline could feel the tug of the invisible heartstrings that held her and her baby together. Yet she trusted the queen with him; Vasilisa visited with him every day, often taking him on walks beneath the Mediterranean sun.
The queen’s footsteps took her and the baby closer and closer to the cliff where the white wolf had appeared. Though Madeline trusted Vasilisa entirely, her breath still came quicker and her pulse leaped in her throat.
Vasilisa said the white wolf had once been her champion, but he had become a wild and savage monster that couldn’t be trusted any longer.
Madeline looked from the empty cliff down to the kind queen, who crooned to the sleeping baby she held against her chest. Queen Vasilisa’s enemies were Madeline’s enemies. It was a truth she felt to her bones.
She stepped back from the window and stretched before dropping down to the floor. She caught her weight with her hands and then pressed up and down until her shoulders protested from the effort. Then she pressed up and down a dozen times more.
When she’d woken up, her vision had been blurry and weak, but her instincts had driven her to rise and climb to the top of a cliff, where she’d found the white wolf. His presence had drawn her like a magnet—a terrifying magnet with vicious teeth and glowing red eyes.
She’d confronted the wolf with the ruby sword in her hands, but she hadn’t killed him. When he’d shifted into his human form, she’d been taken by surprise. Then Vasilisa had appeared to bring her back to the palace, along with Trevor. The white wolf’s brother had taken the beast back to his home.
Letting them go had been a mistake.
But her weakness that morning had only guaranteed she would work hard to heal so she could fight the white wolf another day.
Madeline brought her legs up beneath her and used them to lift her body back to a standing position with her arms outstretched. She exercised in secret because she didn’t want Vasilisa to worry she was overexerting herself. She grew stronger every day. Her arms, back and legs were responding to her efforts. Madeline straightened her shirt and stepped back to the window. She smoothed her hair back from her face.
The queen was heading back to the palace. As she came nearer, Madeline turned to go outside and meet them. In midmorning, she always sang to Trevor and watched his little face for signs of waking.
A sudden quaking of the earth beneath Madeline’s feet shook the entire palace and sent her to her knees. It was a testament to her persistence in recovering that she was able to leap back up again within seconds. As soon as she was back on her feet, she raced to the window, but the beach was empty, as was the stone stairway that led from the sand up to the palace portico.
Vasilisa and Trevor were gone.
Her gaze flew up from the sand to the cliff, but it was also deserted.
If the white wolf had returned, he hadn’t appeared in the same place as last time.
Madeline abandoned the window, but before she could make it to the door of her room, the screams had already begun. She wrenched open the door anyway and headed toward the noise of battle. She didn’t have the ruby sword by her side, and she was far from as strong as she could be, but she’d fight for Trevor with her bare hands if she had to.
He was all she had left of a life she couldn’t remember.
The palace was under attack, but it wasn’t the white wolf. Madeline searched for Trevor as witches all around her battled each other with bolts of energy from their hands. The transformation of the beautiful Mediterranean palace into a battlefield jarred her already tender senses, but she didn’t allow the shock to slow her down. She wasn’t Volkhvy, and her sword was gone, but she was quicker on her feet than she would have been because of her secret exercise regimen. She used that quickness to dodge and weave and make her way around the fighting witches.
As she ran, she noted that the witches who had attacked Vasilisa’s palace had black marks on their foreheads. Were all Dark Volkhvy marked? She couldn’t remember.
She only knew Vasilisa’s enemies were her enemies. She memorized the mark for later reference, but for now, she had to find Trevor and keep her baby from harm.
“This way,” a voice whispered from one of Vasilisa’s sitting rooms. Madeline reacted just in time, sliding inside the narrowly opened door before a contingent of marked Volkhvy could see her. She blinked when the door clicked shut, enveloping her in darkness. The marked Volkhvy ran by, their booted feet ringing down the hall.
“I’m looking for Trevor,” Madeline said into the darkness.
“They’ve taken him. And the queen. Her last order was that I should keep you safe,” the voice explained.
Madeline could finally make out one of Vasilisa’s older servants. The woman allowed the energy in her fingers to glow only slightly, lighting up the room enough to illuminate her face.
“No,” Madeline said. “I can help them.”
The servant reached out and touched Madeline’s cheek with her cold fingers. The violet glow of energy felt tingly on Madeline’s skin.
“You can’t help them alone,” the servant said. “Sleep now. Then you can seek the white wolf’s help.”
Madeline had slept over a thousand years during her illness. She resisted the sudden cool fog that claimed her mind with the servant’s touch to no avail. She slipped into an unconsciousness that was as dark and deep as before, but it wasn’t as silent. As her body crumpled, the last thing she felt was the servant lowering her to the floor and the last thing she heard was the white wolf’s howl. His cry echoed through her soul in an endless protest against losing loved ones to the evil Volkhvy.
Her journey from the Light Volkhvy island of Krajina had been long. Without the use of Vasilisa’s more powerful abilities, Madeline had been dependent on Vasilia’s followers and their help in procuring human modes of transportation. There had been a boat and a stormy, rough passage by sea. Following that, she had flown in a plane that seemed to her as magical as Vasilisa herself. But the length of her travels had caused her body to ache nearly as much as her heart. The soreness reached all the way to her bones and deeper still. The jarring movement of the final leg on a train that carried her closer and closer to her destination didn’t help. Not nearly as quiet as the plane’s flight, the constant metallic screeches of the train strained her ears.
Only her sketches soothed her.
She finished a particularly menacing charcoal drawing of the white wolf, and then she closed her sketchbook and pushed it into the backpack that sat beside her in an empty seat. She put the pencil in a side pocket of her pack, even though it was probably spent. It rattled against a handful of others that had been used up. She had a few good ones left—soon she would sharpen another and sketch some more.
Soon.
Trevor and Vasilisa had been ruthlessly ripped from her life by an attack that had taken even the queen of all Light witches by surprise because it had been perpetuated by a traitorous Light Volkhvy who had turned to the Dark. Vasilisa had told her that long ago she’d been a warrior for the Light. Madeline felt that truth in her heart, but it wasn’t echoed by any sort of ability in her muscles and mind. She hadn’t been prepared for the old servant who had knocked her out and hidden her from the fight.
She’d failed to protect her son. She’d failed to help the witch queen who had done so much for her.
“Care for some tea, miss?” an older woman sitting across from her asked. She poured herself a cup from a steaming metal container as Madeline shook her head. Her stomach was too knotted to keep the liquid down.
She’d put her sketchbook away and zipped her backpack closed, but the white wolf’s snarl was still vivid in her memory as the train took her closer and closer to the monster himself.
Lev Romanov.
She didn’t know him. She couldn’t remember him at all. But Vasilisa had told her the legend of the Romanov wolves. The Light Volkhvy queen had created champion shape-shifters to help her stand against the Dark. She had forged three enchanted swords to be wielded by their warrior mates.
Madeline’s heart beat too quickly in her chest, and her breathing was shallow. As usual, when she wasn’t sketching, she wasn’t sure what to do with the adrenaline that urged her to some vague action. She had forgotten too much for too long. Vasilisa had encouraged her to take her time. She’d told her to remember how to live first. The simple mundane tasks of daily life that so many took for granted had challenged Madeline for months.
But now she must do so much more.
She had to save Trevor.
Her secret exercises seemed silly now, poor preparation for what lay ahead. She was physically stronger, but her memory loss left her vulnerable.
Her arms were empty. She needed to sketch or she would go mad. She clenched her smudged fingers into fists and placed them on her lap. She only had a few pencils left, and she needed to ration out the precious charcoal as a starving man would his last crumbs of bread.
Vasilisa had urged her to take her time to recover all she had lost, but her time had run out.
“Here. You look like you could use a hot drink more than I could,” the old woman insisted.
Now that her sketchbook was tucked away, Madeline really looked at the woman across from her for the first time. She raised her hand to accept the proffered cup as the older passenger nodded in approval.
But something was wrong. The woman wasn’t as old as she had seemed. Her hair wasn’t gray. It was white like Vasilisa’s, and her eyes were sharp, not elderly and vague as they focused keenly on the cup in Madeline’s hands.
Steam rose from the hot tea, but as she brought the cup closer to her face, its wafting fragrance wasn’t the aromatic scent of strong tea she expected. Instead, an unpleasant bitter scent assailed her. Madeline’s nose crinkled, and she lowered the cup without sipping.
“There’s something bad in your tea,” she gasped as her eyes watered.
The woman grabbed the cup from Madeline’s fingers before she could drop it. She raised it to her own face and sniffed.
“I only smell tea. Nothing else. You can’t possibly smell the poison. Not unless...” The woman’s eyes widened, and she rose so quickly that the bad tea slopped on the floor. “They told me it was safe to approach you alone. They said you’d lost your connection to the wolf.”
Madeline sat frozen as the woman’s movements caused a black mark on her forehead to be revealed. She’d seen the same mark on the foreheads of the corrupt Volkhvy who had attacked Vasilisa’s island. She’d sketched the ashy flower all around the wolf drawings in her pad.
“My son. Where is my son?” Madeline asked. Her sharp demand caused the other passengers to shuffle and murmur. She and the witch who had apparently tried to poison her were now the objects of everyone’s attention.
But the Volkhvy was already backing away. Her eyes were round with fear.
“It doesn’t matter. Your connection to the wolf won’t stop us. I’ll be back, and next time I won’t be alone,” the marked witch threatened. She continued to back away toward the door, her gaze spinning wildly around the passenger car as if she expected the savage white wolf to suddenly spring from thin air.
Madeline knew there was no wolf connection coming to her rescue, but before she could rise and go after the witch, armed with nothing but a sketchbook, the train entered a tunnel. The darkness wasn’t complete, but it was enough cover for the Volkhvy assassin to disappear.
When the train exited the tunnel and daylight streamed through its windows once more, the sun found Madeline clutching her backpack to her chest as if it was the baby she’d lost.
Her uncertainty in her abilities didn’t matter. The assassin’s fear meant she was on the right path. The white wolf was her only hope.
The savage wolf was a shape-shifter, and at one time he had been her husband. In this whole wide world she navigated alone, there was only one other who might be able to help her save Trevor from the marked Volkhvy who had stolen him away.
His father.
Vasilisa said he was wild and he couldn’t be trusted, but Madeline had no one else to turn to for help.
Chapter 2 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Lev had thrown most of the furniture out of the tower room. Niceties enraged him. He was currently dissatisfied with the shredded bed he’d kept in the middle of the room. The gemlike stained-glass windows he’d shattered with his fists lay all around the floor in glittering shards, while the biting wind howled through the ramparts and into the room he’d opened to the elements outside. The cold air didn’t bother him. He welcomed it. He craved discomfort. In fact, he wanted to run away from the care and concern of everyone around him, but reduced to two legs and two feet cut by the glass he’d walked over as he paced back and forth for days, how far could he possibly go?
Not far enough. Never far enough.
On four legs, he’d finally found her. She had greeted him as an enemy. She had raised the ruby sword against him...and he’d wanted its blade to fall. He’d stood on the edge of the cliff as the white wolf, and then he’d kneeled there as a broken man. He deserved her hatred. He should have thrown himself into the raging sea far below the cliff’s edge.
But Soren had brought him home.
Bronwal. The Carpathian castle Vasilisa had built for her enchanted warriors so long ago. It still stood. Only now it remained ever-manifest in an isolated mountain pass where once it had come from the Ether because of Vasilisa’s curse.
His twin brother wouldn’t give up on him. He never had. As the red wolf, Soren had been relentless in his pursuit. If Lev could have shifted back into his wolf form in those moments, he would have fought Soren tooth and nail to remain at Madeline’s mercy.
But the shift wouldn’t come to him no matter how hard he tried to summon it.
He was still a man. He’d been trapped in his human form since the day he’d found Madeline on Vasilisa’s island. His human body was unrecognizable to him. He’d been a battle-hardened warrior in long-ago days he could barely remember. He’d lived a demanding life in the saddle and on the battlefield, even when he wasn’t a wolf. But none of that had compared to the relentless life he’d lived for hundreds of years as the white wolf. That life was written on his scarred skin and ruthlessly toned physique. Only now could he look back and realize he’d been as relentless as Soren. The red wolf had hunted him. The white wolf had hunted for his lost wife and child even after he’d forgotten their faces and names.
Witches had done this to him. They had tortured him for centuries by taking his family and leaving him with a mad hunger for his wife and son that couldn’t be satiated no matter how much blood he spilled. He’d thought them dead. He’d searched anyway.
Never resting. Never stopping. Never giving up.
Only to discover his long-lost love hated him when he finally found her. It was a suitable end to his legendary tale. The only one he deserved. He hadn’t protected Madeline or Trevor from Vasilisa. He had howled and howled against the Volkhvy queen, but he had never been able to find the family she’d stolen from him. And still he howled. He couldn’t shift and he couldn’t leave Bronwal, not while Madeline, Trevor, Soren and his entire family were at the mercy of witches.
Lev jumped up from the bed and wrenched one of its solid posters free from its frame. His long years as the white wolf had given him incredible strength. His muscles were lean and firm and roped with veins. They bulged as he tore apart the bed and flung its pieces down the winding stairs.
He had felt her fear. It had been a part of him. It had driven him back into the human form he’d shunned for hundreds of years.
Servants would come. They would clear the busted wood away. They would bring him food and drink. They would bring him clothes to replace the shirts and trousers he tore from his skin. They would try to bathe him and bandage the wounds on his feet.
But his rage always won in the end. They always ran away and left him alone. Even his devoted brother, Soren, when he came to check on Lev like clockwork every night, would eventually leave him to howl alone at the too-distant moon.
He’d lived with torment for many years, but it was far worse now that he had felt Madeline’s fear.
Without the help of some of Vasilisa’s loyal servants, who had also survived the attack, Madeline never would have found Bronwal. The servants had given her the money she would need and explained how to use it. In spite of her illness, she was quick-witted and only needed to see or hear something once to understand how to do it herself. They explained that at one time, there had been a mirror portal between Krajina and the Romanovs’ castle, but it had been destroyed.
Madeline was desperate to save Trevor, but she was also terrified to see the white wolf again. The long journey helped to prepare her for what she might have to face. Still, once she hiked to the protected pass where the castle the world had forgotten stood, she stared up at its towered heights with trepidation.
The sword seemed like a dream. Her ability to wield it seemed like a joke. Her hands seemed much more suited to charcoal pencils than deadlier things. But she no longer had the luxury of taking the time to rediscover herself. It was time to decide who she would be. Right here. Right now.
Madeline decided she would be the person who saved her son.
She had dreaded seeing the white wolf again. She hadn’t stopped to imagine what it would be like for all the other citizens of Bronwal to welcome her “home.” She recognized no one. For her, it was exactly as if she’d approached the castle for the first time. She wondered at its breadth and depth. She marveled at its immensity. Only Volkhvy enchantments could have kept it hidden from the outside world for so long.
But by far, it was the whispers and exclamations and expressions on people’s faces that seemed like the greatest barrier between her and the shape-shifter she sought.
“Please, ma’am. Wait here,” an elderly servant advised.
The great hall she entered was cavernous, but its details were swallowed up in shadows.
When someone came to meet her, Madeline finally saw her first familiar face. It was one of the people the white wolf had threatened on the cliff during the storm when she’d woken up to confront him—the warm presence that had taken the sword from her numb fingers.
This was Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess, and Vasilisa’s daughter.
“We didn’t expect you so soon,” the curvy, dark-haired woman said. Her hair tumbled around her face in a chestnut cap of curls. And her lush figure was enhanced by the obvious swell of pregnancy that rounded out the loose tunic she wore. In her arms, she carried a long bundle wrapped in scarlet cloth. The cloth was embroidered with thorny vines. For some reason, the design made Madeline’s heartbeat quicken.
“I’m surprised you expected me at all, but I have no choice. Marked Volkhvy attacked Krajina. They’ve taken Trevor and Vasilisa,” Madeline said. The other woman’s eyes widened and her face blanched. Madeline’s urgency for her son had caused her to be inconsiderate. She should have been gentler when she told Anna about her mother’s kidnapping.
“I marked them. They’re worse than Dark Volkhvy. They were once Light, but they’ve been corrupted by their thirst for power,” Anna said. “You’ve come for Lev’s help,” she continued in a softer tone. She had frozen several steps away. She held the scarlet bundle with one hand while the other had fallen on her stomach as if she was protecting her own baby from harm. “He hasn’t recovered. He might never recover. He is still...lost,” Anna warned.
It hadn’t been concern for her mother that made Anna Romanov go suddenly pale. It had been the very idea that Madeline was here to seek out the white wolf’s help.
She didn’t need the other woman’s fear to remind her of the white wolf’s ferocity. She had sketched his snarl a thousand times from her memories of that day on the cliff. Anna’s fears put hers in perspective. She was more afraid for Trevor than she was of the wolf. She was ready to face him. She had to be.
“I’m also lost. I can’t remember my former life. Vasilisa said my recovery would take time, but I no longer have that luxury. I’m here because I can’t rescue my baby alone,” Madeline said.
“Soren can help. And Ivan. They can help you,” Anna said. “Elena and I—”
“No. The black wolf and the red wolf have to protect their own families. You’re ready to have a baby yourself, and Vasilisa told me that Elena has a newborn,” Madeline said.
“I don’t think Lev will help you,” Anna said. “I don’t think he can.” Her grip on the scarlet bundle was white-knuckled as she spoke, and she took another step toward Madeline, as if she would try to persuade her to go away.
“I’m not here to ask for his help,” Madeline said. “I’m here to demand it.”
Anna paused again. She was shorter than Madeline by half a dozen inches, but even though she was forced to tilt her chin to meet Madeline’s eyes, her direct green gaze still seemed formidable. It took all of Madeline’s will not to back down. For Trevor she stood. For Trevor she didn’t resist when Anna raised the bundle between them and held it horizontally supported on her forearms. The scarlet cloth fell aside to reveal what had been nestled carefully in its soft folds.
Madeline recognized the ruby sword. She reached for it automatically as if she could do nothing else, but when her fingers brushed over the large ruby in the sword’s hilt, nothing happened. It didn’t wake to greet her. It was dark and dull, more grayish black than red, as if it was tarnished by shadows.
Her hands dropped away from the one thing she remembered besides her baby and the white wolf. Its darkness seemed like a rejection. She wasn’t the woman she used to be, and the sword knew it. She wasn’t a brave warrior who had fought for the Light Volkhvy and Queen Vasilisa. She was a confused woman weakened by her long illness and her memory loss.
But she didn’t back away.
“I wondered at its dormancy. I thought maybe it would wake in your presence,” Anna said. She didn’t wrap the cloth back around the sword. She still seemed to watch and wait for some sign that the ruby wasn’t dead.
“I didn’t come for the sword. I came for the white wolf,” Madeline said. Her concerns over her memory loss had risen with her frantic heartbeat to fill her chest and then her throat with a tight heat she could barely speak around. But she wouldn’t allow it to stop her.
“Lev is in the tower room,” Anna replied. “Or what’s left of it. I’ll take you to the stairs. That’s as far as I’m able to go. He rages at the sight of me. Or any Volkhvy. Maybe you’ll receive a better welcome.”
Her tone didn’t sound hopeful. Madeline swallowed against the knot of fear that had solidified at the back of her throat.
Anna turned. She led the way out of the room and toward the back of the castle. Madeline took a deep breath to try to dispel the tightness in her chest and followed. When they came to a large archway that framed the beginning of a spiral staircase, the pregnant woman paused and then stepped aside to make way for Madeline. The stone stairway twisted up and around until its treads curved out of sight.
Anna still held the sword out in front of her as if it was an offering for Madeline. Madeline refused it as she stepped forward.
“Whatever you find at the top of the stairs, you should know that he never stopped searching for you,” Anna said. “He never rested in all the years you were sleeping.”
Madeline paused for a moment. Her back was turned to Anna, but she heard. She also doubted. Vasilisa had warned her that the white wolf was feral. She’d woken to his rage. If he had looked for her and Trevor, he hadn’t had benevolent intentions.
Madeline climbed the stairs. This time, she wouldn’t raise a sword against the white wolf as she had done on the edge of Krajina’s sea cliff. The sword was as closed off and dead to her as her past was to her mind and heart. She only had her love for Trevor to guide her and strengthen her as she climbed up toward the tower room. Her maternal feelings offset her fear. She didn’t know what she would find at the top of the stairs, but she knew she had to try.
Soft electric torches glowed from the soot-blackened walls where flaming torches used to be. Madeline could almost see them flickering. She could almost remember the scent of scorched tallow-soaked cloth as she forced herself to take step after step toward her greatest nightmare.
But any gentler memories were overwhelmed in her mind by visions of the white wolf’s snarl and his red glowing eyes. He was a massive monster with long fearsome fangs and bloodstained fur. She had been filled with the absolute certainty that a dangerous presence had threatened her and Trevor and everyone else there that day. Madeline’s response had been visceral, from the howl that had woken her up as it ripped itself from her body, to the intent that had claimed her to lash out with her sword and kill the beast that seemed to be the only threat she could see.
Anna had stopped her. The white wolf’s shift had stopped her. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to strike at the man as the rain fell and the wind whipped around them. She’d been racked by an internal storm as fierce as the one that tossed the ocean and the atmosphere around Krajina.
The ferocity of her emotion had seemed too big for her body to contain, until Vasilisa had soothed it away with her cool magic.
As she neared the top of the stairs, Madeline had to step around and over the busted-up debris and shredded remains of furniture and clothes. Feathers from pillows that had been torn apart swirled up and floated down around her feet like snow. Ripped-up pages of books joined this feather “snow” to cover the stairs.
And still she climbed.
Her body was heavy. The uncertainty in her chest and throat had expanded until it seemed to flow through her veins to every part of her. Her legs felt weighted down, but she moved them anyway. Her heightened anxiety pressed against her shoulders as if it tried to hold her back. She ignored the pressure. Once again, it seemed as if her body could barely contain the emotions it tried to feel.
But her discomfort and the danger she faced didn’t matter.
Trevor, Trevor, Trevor, Trevor.
He was all that mattered.
Each ringing step of her boots on the stone staircase seemed to echo with her baby’s name. She only paused when she came to the top and found a door torn from its hinges and lying to the side. The door had been crafted with heavy wood on its bottom half and scrolled iron bars on its top half, but for all its sturdy artisan construction, it had been busted loose and practically splintered by whatever force had shoved it aside.
“Go away. I want nothing. I need nothing. How many times do I have to tell you to allow me to bleed?”
Every ounce of trepidation that had filled Madeline’s body drained away when she heard the ragged rough voice ring out and echo down the stairs. Its deep reverberations flowed through her like rushing waters, leaving her hollowed out in their wake. For long seconds, she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t anything. She was only an empty husk that might float down to settle with the feathers and torn papers on the stairs.
And then a basket whizzed past her head. Bandages and tape spilled from it, and the whole mess bounced down the stairs and out of sight. Silence fell, broken only by Madeline’s own respiration. Her breathing was quicker than it should have been. She’d thought the fear was gone, but she found it again, a more silent, calmer disquiet than the overwhelming emotion of before.
She was certain that she was in trouble. She was also certain she would face any trouble imaginable to save her son.
This time it was easier to take the last few steps that brought her into the tower room. She only had to reach up and hold the straps of her backpack and put one foot in front of the other.
And then she saw him again. For the first time in six months.
The trash on the stairs should have prepared her for what she would find, but her breath caught in her throat in a gasp when she saw Lev Romanov. Her fingers went numb on the straps of her bag, and her knees wobbled. She willed her joints to turn to steel, and she managed to stay on her feet.
She’d seen him on the cliff, completely nude and kneeling in the rain. According to Queen Vasilisa, she’d known and loved him, and if that was so, she’d certainly seen him thousands of times before.
Yet she was certain the man before her would have been a stranger even to the warrior she used to be.
He was braced for battle in the middle of the room, with his feet planted wide and his fists clenched at his sides. He wore only torn and bloody trousers low on lean hips. The rest of him was bare. And every inch of his exposed flesh was tensed and hard with ropy muscles that seemed to scream from past exertions she couldn’t imagine. He also had fine white scars etched all over his arms, chest and abdomen. The marks seemed impossible because his flesh appeared too hard to brand. He was stone, a living, breathing statue to commemorate where a man used to be.
He glared at her with intense blue eyes that blazed from behind a shocking white streak of hair. The rest of his hair was blond. It fell in wild locks all around his face and shoulders. His beard was as untamed as his hair.
She couldn’t read his expression. The set of his features was hidden. But the set of his body was not. He stood as if he was in midbattle, always in midbattle, prepared for the next blow and the one after that.
The meaning of his words, the bandages and the blood finally hit her, and Madeline breathed out a long shaky sigh. He was hurt. The blood on his ripped trousers was his own. His feet were crimson, and the flagstones on the floor were marked by his bloodied footsteps. A cold breeze filled the room, and there was glass from the broken windows all over the floor.
“No. I will not allow you to bleed. Nor will I go away and leave you alone. Trevor needs the white wolf to save him,” Madeline said. Her voice sounded almost as rough as his had sounded. As if she hadn’t spoken in an age. But at least it didn’t tremble. She was shaken to her core by Lev Romanov’s appearance, but her voice was firm.
She wasn’t prepared for the savage man in the middle of the room to approach her right away, though she should have been. He was obviously racked by adrenaline and fully committed to waging a war only he could see.
He moved too quickly. Between one stunned blink and the next, he had crossed to her and taken her shoulders in his hands. His grip was too fierce. His fingers pressed into her flesh to hold her in place as he intently examined her face. And it wasn’t only his hardness or his hold that was intimidating. He was well over six feet tall, and she was too used to being the tallest person in the room.
Suddenly, she was small and soft in comparison to him. She was also not nearly as braced for anything as she’d thought she was. He was midbattle. Her fight had just begun.
“Madeline,” he said, and it sounded like a secret they would share, but she couldn’t grasp its meaning. The intensity of his gaze was suddenly fully focused on her face. He scanned her features as if he would memorize them. She was caught and held by his blue eyes, just as he held her with his hands as if he would never let her go.
For weeks, she’d been handled with care by Vasilisa and the entire palace of Volkhvy. She’d been given time and space and consideration as she’d tried to understand the world around her.
Lev Romanov met her with an urgency that stunned her. He was wild with some need she couldn’t begin to understand, when all else was confusion. He fought something with every rise and fall of his broad chest. His fight showed in the grip of his hands and the tension in his entire body.
He pulled her closer, the better to look deep into her eyes, but the move also brought her nearer to his large body. She had seen him nude in the rain, but her vision had been blurred. Here, now, only inches from her, she saw him clearly—every scar, every angle, every plane—and it was all too sudden and intimate for her senses, which had been sleeping for a very long time.
Her breathing had gone shallow, but the scent of the wind trapped in his hair still filled her nose. The room was chilly, but his masculine body heat enveloped her where they stood.
This man had thrown everyone and everything out of his room, but now he grabbed her and pulled her close. He looked deeply into her eyes as if he was preparing to...
Her insecurity over her memory loss flared back to life and resonated all the way to her bones.
“I don’t remember you at all,” Madeline said. “I’m not here for you. I’m here for Trevor. He needs the white wolf.”
Her heart pounded, and the fear crowded out all else that might have been long ago and far away. She needed this savage stranger to help her. She didn’t need to remember him or what they had shared.
His hands tightened for a split second and then released just before she cried out in pain. The sudden squeeze had been reflexive. He noted her pain and let her go as suddenly as the spasm had begun. She thought she saw regret flash in his eyes, but then he dipped his head, and his hair was in the way. Did he use his wild mane as a shield between them? If so, it was only somewhat effective, considering the rest of him was exposed.
“The white wolf is gone,” Lev said. “I can’t shift. I can’t help you. This human body has me again, and it won’t let me go.”
Chapter 3 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Madeline shivered as he stepped away, taking all his feral body heat with him. This was the fight she’d sensed in him. He battled the hold of his human form second by second, minute by minute. He fought to shift, and he’d been fighting since she’d seen him on Krajina. But the white wolf was close beneath the surface of his scarred skin. She could feel its ferocity, and she had seen the glimmer of wildness in Lev’s eyes. She could sense the potential beast, barely contained.
The wolf was still there in him. She was certain of it. But needing the white wolf’s help and wanting him to appear were two very different things.
“It doesn’t matter. You are the white wolf. Whether you have four legs or two. And Trevor needs you,” Madeline said.
“You know who the babe is to me? Who you once were to me?” Lev asked. His stance had gone deceptively distant. He’d taken several steps back. She could still see his tension. She could still feel his attention on her face, even though his hair hid his eyes.
“Vasilisa told me everything. That we were together once, but that the Romanovs betrayed her. She protected Trevor and me during a long illness,” Madeline said.
“An illness? You think the Volkhvy queen saved you,” Lev said hoarsely. He stepped toward her once more, without even seeming to realize he moved. “It isn’t only our son you want to save. You want me to help you save the witch.”
The tension in his body had gone so tight and so still that he had truly become a living statue. It seemed as if his scars were cracks in a marbleized form, and he might shatter into a million pieces if she said the wrong thing. Anna had said he hated all Volkhvy, but surely he would be grateful to the queen who had saved his former wife and his son?
“The ruby sword is dead and I don’t remember how to wield it, but I’m awake now and I’m going after the Volkhvy that took my son,” Madeline said. “I want you to go with me, but if you refuse, I’ll go alone.”
Her bag had been knocked crooked on her shoulders by Lev’s strong grip on her arms. When she tried to straighten it, the zipper of its main compartment gaped open and her sketchbook fell on the floor. Before Madeline could stoop to retrieve it, Lev moved to scoop it up himself.
Madeline bit her lip against the cry of distress that rose to her lips, as if her prize possession had been stolen right before her eyes. Only Lev wasn’t stealing it. He wasn’t ripping it up to fling down the stairs. He was flipping through it. He turned and examined page after page of the sketches she’d drawn of the white wolf. Her every charcoal stroke had been infused with the overwhelming feeling of danger and the threat she’d woken to that day.
His attention was riveted on the sketches. She allowed the hand that had reflexively risen to retrieve the sketchbook from him to fall back to her side.
She’d tried to be brave, but now he knew her deepest fears. They were displayed in drawing after drawing. He had searched her eyes for the warrior he had known. But here was evidence that the warrior was gone. In her place was someone mired in doubt and confusion, along with a deep, abiding helplessness she didn’t know how to dispel. She could only press her way through it and hope to come out on the other side triumphant. For Trevor.
“You came anyway,” Lev said after he had flipped to the last page. He slowly and carefully handed the book back to her, and Madeline took it from him. If possible, his calmness made her more nervous than his tension. She tucked the sketchbook back into her bag. “You came in spite of your fear.”
“Vasilisa told me that witches fear only one thing—the Romanov wolves,” Madeline said. “There’s only one thing I fear as well—failing to save my child.”
I’m awake now.
Every word she uttered pierced his gut with relentless blades of guilt. She didn’t remember him. She didn’t remember the life they’d lived. It had been so long ago. Even for him, running and fighting and searching, always searching, seemed much more immediate in his memories.
But he could see fear in her eyes, and that was the most cutting observation of all. Her fear stabbed into him, and its sharpness sliced away all other concerns. Her eyes no longer glimmered with the scarlet power of the enchanted ruby. Instead, they shimmered with unshed tears. She had come back to Bronwal. She had climbed the stairs that most were afraid to tread. She had trembled in his hands, and he had felt her fragility beneath his rough fingers.
He flexed those fingers now, as if he could force them to forget the warmth of her when they’d just been reminded after centuries of loss.
Her body was different. Her muscles had weakened during the long, enchanted sleep. But her body’s weakness wasn’t reflected in her eyes in spite of her fear. It also wasn’t reflected in her actions. She was afraid of the beast that lived beneath his skin, but that hadn’t stopped her from seeking his help.
Madeline was still a warrior.
She wasn’t his warrior. She wasn’t the ruby warrior. But she was prepared to fight. Her fear didn’t diminish her determination or her bravery. It only complicated what must be done. He’d barely contained the howl that wanted to rip from his depths when she mentioned Vasilisa. Only the knowledge that Madeline was confused and vulnerable kept him from raging against the evil queen. That Madeline might never understand what the witch had done to them was another stinging cut against his scarred skin.
He deserved the pain.
He hadn’t saved them. He had failed Madeline and Trevor, but he wouldn’t fail them again. He would help her go after the Volkhvy that had kidnapped the baby. He would help Madeline save Trevor.
But he wouldn’t save Vasilisa.
His family had to be protected from the evil queen. Yet seeing Madeline again revealed a deeper, darker truth he had to face. She had filled an entire book with sketches of his monstrous snarl, and yet she had still sought him out. She had undertaken an epic journey for a woman out of her own time and place, and she had faced him as he stood, bloody and savage, to “greet” her. He would never forget the fear in her eyes. Paired with the fear he’d felt that morning on the cliff, it was a truth he could no longer fight. He would help her save Trevor. He would kill Vasilisa, and then he would leave.
He would never forget the feel of her arms and the way he had made her flinch with the tightness of his grip.
Even if he could never shift again, he needed to protect his family from the savagery of the white wolf that had settled in to live beneath his scarred skin.
Madeline watched as he decided to help her. She saw him soften and then harden once more. His shoulders slumped for only a moment before they were again stiff and straight and seemingly made of stone.
“I will find him,” Lev said. His certainty was as solid as his lean, strong body. His scars stood out against his flexed muscles as his fists clenched.
Suddenly, adrenaline flowed in a cool rush beneath her skin. She gripped the straps of her backpack to hide the trembling in her hands. She’d made the white wolf a part of her life again, if only for a short time. That frightened her, mainly because she hadn’t reclaimed the memories she needed to be strong enough to face him, but now she had to be concerned over something else: the way Lev Romanov made her feel.
His vivid blue irises blazed from behind the shock of white in his hair. His gaze was full of secrets about the woman she’d been. Those secrets called to her, but she had to ignore them. She had to ignore the tingling in her arms where this stranger had grabbed her, a tingling that had nothing to do with adrenaline and everything to do with his feral warmth.
He was a beast. The trashed room declared it. The sketches in her backpack were further evidence. As were the bruises he’d no doubt left on her skin with his urgency.
He vowed to find their son and help her save him, but she could only wonder, who would save Lev Romanov? He said he could no longer shift, but it was obvious that the white wolf would never let him go.
Madeline set her jaw and firmed her spine. She pressed her mouth into a hard, thin line to keep from betraying her nerves by nibbling her bottom lip. The move was a mistake. His attention fell from her eyes to her lips and lingered there. This should have meant nothing to her, but her heartbeat stuttered and the nerves in the pit of her stomach whirled out of control.
Because he didn’t look at her lips like a stranger would. He looked as if he remembered the taste of her kisses from long ago, and parts of her had suddenly leaped to life, longing to remember, too.
Anna Romanov was waiting when Madeline came back down the stairs. She stood at the ready at the base of the spiraling stone stairway, as if she’d been prepared to do battle should the beast in Bronwal’s tower choose to attack her guest. The sword she’d offered to Madeline in outstretched arms was now held by its hilt at Anna’s side, but its ruby stone was still dark and gray.
“I thought maybe it would wake when you spoke with Lev, but it still sleeps. Not so much as a flicker,” Anna informed her. “It gleamed when you wielded it on Krajina with a fierce ruby light.”
“I remember. That moment on the cliff is all I recall. Nothing more,” Madeline said. “But I will take the sword. The white wolf has agreed to help me save my son. I won’t travel with him unarmed.”
She reached for the hilt of the ruby blade, and Anna released it into her hands. Unlike before, it was heavy and awkward in her grip. She held it vertically with both hands at her waist and the blade extended in front of her breasts and face until the tip stretched beyond the top of her head. She looked from the hilt in her hands up to the sword’s sharp point, and then she lowered her gaze to meet Anna’s on either side of the sharp blade. Anna reached to place her hands over Madeline’s on the hilt. The dark ruby stayed gray above their fingers, but Madeline’s heart fluttered when the other woman squeezed her hands.
She felt...something. A kinship. A connection. To Anna Romanov, if not to the ruby or the blade or the scarred man in the tower above them.
“I am the red wolf’s mate. I am Soren Romanov’s wife. We are sisters, but we are also part of a sisterhood of warriors. The blade will wake in time. Trust it. Trust yourself and the warrior you’re meant to be,” Anna said solemnly, as if she recited a pledge.
“It isn’t myself or the blade I distrust,” Madeline replied. Although that wasn’t entirely true. She remembered nothing of how to wield a blade. Her hands seemed to be made for charcoal pencils, not for legendary weapons. It was only that her self-doubt took second place to her doubt of the man who was supposed to be her mate. She accepted the sword as a practical tool, not its Calling. Anna must have sensed her reservations.
“He never forgot you and Trevor. Not even after he’d forgotten how to be a man. His search carried on until he found you,” Anna said softly.
Madeline noted the woman’s persuasive tone. No one would be able to negate her memory of the white wolf on the stormy cliff. He’d been prepared to attack. Only the arrival of Vasilisa had seemed to prevent it. Madeline took the sword with her as she moved, and Anna let her go. The other woman’s hands fell to her sides.
“You are in as much turmoil as Lev. Please. Give him time. Take time to heal before you reject the connection you once embraced,” Anna said.
“We don’t have time to waste on healing or on each other. Trevor is in danger. We must find him and Queen Vasilisa,” Madeline said. Her hands tightened on the hilt of the sword.
“There’s a portal that will take us to Vasilisa,” Lev Romanov said.
Anna’s reaction to his sudden appearance caused Madeline’s chest to constrict and her breath to catch. Anna Romanov stiffened from head to toe, and she raised her hands from her sides.
Her fingers glowed with emerald light, as if she’d summoned power to meet an attack head-on.
Madeline had allowed the tip of the sword to droop, but she raised it again now in response to Anna’s defensive stance.
Lev paused on the last stone step above them. He was already much taller than Anna Romanov. On the rise, he towered over them both, in spite of Madeline’s height. He had changed his clothes. The shredded pants were gone, and he’d replaced them with black leather leggings that fitted his hard muscles like a second skin. He’d also donned a gray long-sleeved undershirt that looked like it had been made for a smaller man—as if it might burst at the seams should he decide to take a deep breath. Over the tightly stretched T-shirt was a black vest, similar to a jerkin but with more modern features, and on his feet were tall black boots. Like hers, his clothing was a mix of old and new.
Although he was lean—almost starved-looking—his frame was broad-shouldered and his muscles had been built with centuries of strenuous activity. He filled the vestibule in which they all stood with the wild presence she’d already seen in the tower room. Truly, her sword and Anna’s hands seemed like scant defense against the man or the beast he might become at any time.
But the scarred man didn’t attack. He glanced at Anna, and then his attention was all for Madeline. His gaze settled on her face as it had in the tower room, as if he would memorize her features before she left him again. When he spoke, he looked at Madeline, but his words were for Anna Romanov.
“The white wolf attacked you once. I remember. His memories are my memories. I won’t apologize. You’re a witch. I was trying to protect my brother. But know this—Soren has married you. You are a witch, but you are also his wife. I would die before I harmed you now,” Lev said.
“There was a time when I promised not to harm you as well, brother. But know this—I am pregnant, and I will protect my child,” Anna warned.
Madeline only saw Anna’s glow brighten out of the corner of her eye. She faced Lev without lowering her sword. The white wolf had attacked Anna? She couldn’t imagine the petite woman surviving the white wolf’s ferocious bite. She’d drawn his teeth in her sketchbook many times. Each had easily been as long as her hand.
Only at that revelation did Lev look from Madeline to his sister-in-law. Her obvious pregnancy must have escaped his notice since he’d returned to the castle.
“Rest assured, I’m leaving. The baby will be safe when I’m gone,” Lev replied.
His voice was as gruff as it had been before, his vocal cords roughened by centuries of howls. But the glow in Anna’s fingers faded until it was gone. The other woman lowered her hands before Madeline lowered her sword.
And the white wolf noticed, even though he was a man. Lev’s attention seemed to be on Anna, but his spine didn’t soften until Madeline lowered the ruby blade down to her side.
“Ivan destroyed the mirror portal when he found out Elena was going to have a baby. There is no longer a portal in Bronwal,” Anna said.
Lev came off the stairs and into the vestibule in several long strides. His physicality was startling. Madeline had been awake for a while, but she had yet to encounter another human being with such grace and speed. If he had decided to attack, her sword would have been useless even if she hadn’t lowered its tip to the floor. He might be on two legs instead of four. He might look hollow and hungry. But Lev Romanov was still dangerous. Along with the hunger in his appearance, there was also a deep, dark Carpathian wilderness behind his eyes.
“There is another,” Lev said. He spoke to Madeline, as if to reassure her rather than to inform. But he couldn’t be sensitive to the sudden clenching in her gut just above the womb, where Trevor had been carried so long ago.
“Yes. The fountain at Straluci. The fortress is in ruin, but the portal should still be there. It will take you to my mother in the blink of an eye, wherever she is being held. The portals are connected to her,” Anna said. “There are no roads. Only narrow game trails. You’ll have to take horses instead of all-terrain vehicles. It will take more than a week to reach the pass.”
The last was said for her benefit. Anna hadn’t taken her eyes off the white wolf in his human form, but she turned to look at Madeline now. Her green eyes flickered with the power she’d previously called to her hands.
“Then the sooner we leave, the better,” Madeline proclaimed. She wasn’t wearing a scabbard for the ruby blade, and her arm was already tired. The sword was heavy. She felt like a pretender as she stood with it gripped tightly in her hand, but even though her body hadn’t recovered its strength following her illness, her heart was filled with resolve.
“I could cover the distance in a quarter of that time on four legs,” Lev said. He had fisted his hands, and as he spoke he stepped closer to Madeline. One pace. Then two. He stopped and closed his eyes. His head fell back as if he would howl at the moon. The tendons on either side of his neck stood out in sharp relief as his body tensed. He braced his long legs wide apart, and veins bulged on his muscular arms...but nothing happened. The earth didn’t quake. His human form remained as imposing yet somehow vulnerable in all its scarred hardness, as it had been before.
Amazingly, his tight shirt hadn’t given way at the seams. It had only stretched with his flexed muscles as he strained.
“It’s probably best for us all that you can’t,” Anna responded. Madeline didn’t argue. She wouldn’t regret seeking help from Bronwal now that help had been found, even if Anna looked pale and troubled as the giant man beside them sought the shift that still eluded him.
She would face the threat of the white wolf for Trevor just as Anna had faced Lev for her unborn child. It didn’t matter that she had no Volkhvy power to back up her determination. Her determination alone would have to be enough. She would get stronger. She would get wiser. She would navigate this strange modern world with a deadly beast by her side in order to save her son.
But she couldn’t help the tightness in her chest, or the way the sword weighed too heavily in her hand. The witch on the train had tried to poison her. If the marked Volkhvy who had kidnapped the queen and her son wanted her dead, she faced more than the white-wolf threat by her side. She had to guard herself from magical stalkers as well. A longer journey would give the marked witches time to make another attempt on her life.
“The marked Volkhvy might have followed me here. They may try to stop us before we reach the portal,” Madeline warned. She allowed the sword’s tip to rest against the ground, and her arm sighed in relief.
Nothing escaped Lev Romanov’s notice. He had a wolf’s senses even in his human form. His intense glance went from the ruby blade up her arm to her face. Once again, she felt he must find her wanting compared to his memories of the warrior she’d been. Sketching didn’t require strength. Battling those witches who might try to kill her would, as would protecting herself should the shift come to the man who so desperately summoned it. If the white wolf proved to be the foe of the stormy cliff rather than the ally she sought...
Her thoughts were interrupted by the tight smile that claimed Lev’s angular face. He had the Romanov nose and sculpted jaw. His beard didn’t hide the perfection of his bone structure, nor did his scars detract from his symmetric features. He was many things—large, muscular and intimidating; scarred, wild and uncivilized—but he was also handsome. The smile startled her. It was a surprising punch to the tightness in her gut. The one-sided upward curve of his lips stole her breath and made her own lips go numb.
“I welcome them to try,” Lev said. His husky voice was pitched even lower than it had been before. His lids had lowered over his vivid blue eyes, his thick lashes creating dusky shadows on his cheeks. Though Anna was only a few feet away from them, the moment was suddenly intimate, and it was as though no one besides Madeline and Lev was there.
It was a promise to help her and Trevor. An uttered contract between them. Madeline forced her lungs to expand. She moistened her lips and nibbled the numbness away.
Lev didn’t blink or look away. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and met her eyes boldly, watching her soak in the promise he’d made.
She might not know if the white wolf was her friend or her foe, but at that moment, she knew Lev Romanov had been born a champion, and a champion he remained. After all he’d been through in his long, harsh life, he might no longer be her mate, but, shifted or not, he was still a Romanov wolf.
He would stand against the marked Volkhvy who stalked her, and he would help her rescue their son.
Chapter 4 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Lev had ridden horses almost from the day he was born. He could ride as easily as he could walk. The question was whether the horses could handle being ridden by a man who had been a wolf for a very long time now.
As Lev approached, it took several men to settle the two large destriers Ivan Romanov had ordered prepared for his younger brother and the woman who had been his wife. Madeline had already been placed in her saddle on the smaller white gelding. She held on admirably well for someone who had been asleep for centuries. He noted the white-knuckled grip she had on the reins. He also noted the ruby sword in a scabbard that hung from the pommel of her saddle within easy reach should she need it.
He’d already seen how poorly she held the blade. Her grip had been uncertain, as if she’d never wielded a sword before. Somehow during their journey, he would have to help her remember her prowess with the blade in spite of the fact that she obviously thought he might be the one she would need to wield it against.
The second horse was an impressive dun stallion. Its polished black hooves stood out sharply from the fringes of long white hair. These were warhorses bred to carry armored warriors into battle. They, too, had been caught up in Vasilisa’s curse. Her spell had prolonged the lives of everyone at Bronwal merely to torture them. The horses looked as out of place in this century as Lev felt.
“You frighten them,” Soren said as he and Anna came out of the castle behind him. “Ivan does as well. They will calm down once they realize you’re not going to eat them.”
Although they were twin brothers, Soren had flaming red hair instead of blond. His beard and hair were also neatly trimmed save for a long bang that threatened to flop over his eyes. Lev was conscious of his own overgrown hair and beard. He’d pulled back the unruly waves into a thick queue at the nape of his neck. That was all. He’d refused to try to improve his appearance any more than that. If he looked uncivilized, it was only the God’s honest truth. He was a savage. His years as the white wolf had left him with that legacy.
Better for everyone to see and acknowledge the wildness inside him, while Soren had embraced more than a witch. His trimmed hair and beard proclaimed his mastery over the red wolf.
Then again, Soren had always been more man than beast.
So unlike himself.
Anna and Soren held hands. Lev watched his brother gently hold his pregnant wife as if she was a treasure he’d found. He’d once treated a pregnant Madeline the same way. He had to close his eyes and swallow against the ghost of tenderness that assailed him. He pushed the unwelcome memory away. Then he opened his eyes to watch Anna Romanov warily. Not as his sister-in-law, but as a threat. As always, the witch made his hair follicles tighten as if she brought with her a charge that fueled the very air around them.
Soren patted the dun horse on the rump. It did prance at his touch and snort, but then it settled into place without further fuss...until Lev reached for the reins. The side of his hand brushed along the dun’s neck, and the horse whickered in fear. It sidestepped away from his touch, and its front hooves came up off the ground.
“Okay. Maybe they’re a little more afraid of you than they are of me and Ivan,” Soren said.
The white gelding’s nostrils flared, and Madeline had to tighten her legs and speak calming words to her mount as Lev hoisted himself up into the saddle of the frightened dun. He pounced as he would have if he’d been hunting instead of riding. He settled gracefully into the saddle even though it was a moving target, and masterfully brought the horse back under control with his strong hands and thighs—but more so with his aura of authority and strength of will.
Ivan was the alpha of the Romanov pack, but only because Lev had never vied for the position.
The horse trembled beneath him, but it stopped trying to rear up on its hind legs.
“Show-off,” Soren said. He’d come to stand beside Lev’s leg. With one hand, he held the bridle of the dun and placed the other on Lev’s knee. “Come back to us, brother. I searched for you too long and too hard for you to run away now that I’ve seen your face again.”
“To Straluci,” Lev said, giving his brother no reply. With a deft thump of his heel, he urged his mount to depart. Soren’s hand fell away.
The dun leaped forward, and Madeline’s horse followed at her direction. Lev refused to glance back at Bronwal or his twin brother. He couldn’t allow his brother’s love for his new wife to cloud his judgment. Her mother was an evil queen who must be destroyed. It was the only way.
As was his decision to never return. The brotherly connection he felt for his twin tugged at the very marrow of his bones as he rode away, but the wildness that haunted his soul was a stronger force. It propelled him away with the certainty that he could only protect those he loved by reclaiming the shift and leaving them far behind.
Madeline had seen an ATV in the stables. It was a mechanically propelled vehicle with cushioned seats. It wasn’t quite midmorning when she began to obsess about those cushions and regret the necessity of horses on the narrow trails they followed.
The deep, evergreen Carpathian forest had devoured them shortly after they left Bronwal. Meager spring sunshine barely penetrated the canopy above them as the horses stepped carefully on the path that was frequented by sure-footed deer and wolves and bears, more than domesticated animals.
What began as a hum to soothe the skittish horse beneath her became a nostalgic song softly murmured below her breath. She didn’t remember it exactly. The words came from somewhere inside her that was more warmth than memory. More feeling than thought. Tears sprang into her eyes and burned her nose when she realized she softly sang a lullaby. It was tentative, but it was there. More in her heart than in her mind.
“We’ll water the horses here,” Lev said, suddenly breaking off the trail and heading toward a stream that had been unobtrusively gurgling beside their route.
Needing to stretch and being able to stretch were two different things, Madeline thought, but her horse followed Lev’s and she didn’t attempt to stop it. There was no obvious clearing. Only a slight break in the trees allowed them to make their way toward a patch of moss above the water.
The white gelding came to a stop beside the larger dun, and she was somehow able to swing her leg over the pommel of her saddle. She hopped to the ground without moaning out loud. Lev seemed to ignore her. He didn’t make conversation, didn’t directly look her way, but she felt him. When he stood and tilted his head to drink, she could imagine his pleasure at the fresh, cold hydration. From a tingling awareness along her spine to the heat that rose in her cheeks, her problem was that she couldn’t ignore him. His presence was too noticeable to dismiss.
She jumped when he turned at her approach to hand her the container. She had been right. His attention was on her the whole time. Her every step was noticed, even when he didn’t look her way. She took the container and gulped too quickly. She ended up awkwardly coughing and gasping for air as she recovered from choking.
Lev still didn’t speak. He didn’t meet her eyes. She was glad. Her glances flicked over him constantly without settling. He made her nervous. It wasn’t fear of the wolf in him so much as fear of being caught watching him. She didn’t want her awareness of him to show. She didn’t want him to know that she couldn’t look away for long.
Suddenly, he broke away from the invisible awareness that seemed to draw them together in spite of forced disinterest on both their parts. Still unused to the scent of the white wolf in their midst, the horses snorted and pawed against their tethers as Lev approached. Madeline turned to see what he intended to do. When Lev pulled the ruby sword from its sheath on her saddle, the water container dropped from her fingers to the mossy ground.
She was supposed to become stronger and wiser. Instead, she’d left her sword half a dozen feet away.
Madeline took several steps toward the man who easily held the long warrior’s blade in one hand, but she froze when Lev came around the horses toward her. He effortlessly spun the sword in an arc of graceful but deadly movement around his large frame. He might have been a wolf for centuries, but his physicality as a man had only been enhanced by his time as a beast. His muscles bulged and relaxed and bulged again with his moves, as he seemed to test and then savor the heft of the blade as it arced around and around.
“You don’t remember the weight of it in your hand? Its power at your fingertips?” Lev asked.
A flush of heat spread from Madeline’s cheeks down to her throat and chest. She swallowed, suddenly very aware of the pulse at the base of her neck. If he looked, he would see her heartbeat throb, and it would no longer be throbbing simply from fear.
He continued to approach, effortlessly testing the blade as if he had no idea his words would call up a vision of him in her head, his power at her fingertips. In her imagination, she combined the blade with the man. Both powerful. Both intriguing. Both obvious omissions in her hollow memories. What he was asking was “How could she have forgotten such a sword?” What she thought was “How could she have forgotten such a man?”
And then she pushed such impossible thoughts away.
It didn’t matter what he’d once meant to her. For now, he was a necessary companion and also a potential danger to herself and to her child. She needed him. She also needed to be wary of the way he made her feel. He had said he couldn’t shift, but how long would his inability to call the white wolf last? She had to behave as if the threat of the wolf was with her every moment.
“I can’t reclaim the past I’ve lost. I can only move forward from here,” Madeline said.
Lev lowered the blade. He had approached until he was facing her, and he stood too close to continue to test the sword. Instead, he held it outstretched beside them. It wasn’t a threatening display, however—it was a pause. Whatever his intention, he’d been interrupted by his sudden awareness of her nearness. The sword was forgotten. He looked down into her eyes, and his whole powerful body stilled. His wide chest didn’t rise and fall. He didn’t move forward or back. He didn’t so much as blink as their gazes locked.
Madeline took in enough oxygen for both of them. Her respiration was shallow and quick. Too quick. She couldn’t look away. Instead, she searched his blue eyes for some indication of his intent. The blade was still in his hand, but his lids were low and his cheeks were flushed. His lips were slightly open and soft against the hardness of his angular face.
Her fingers flexed with the sudden desire to shave the wild growth that prevented her from fully appreciating his cheeks and jaw and chin. His beard was darker and more burnished gold than his blond hair, with no trace of the white streak that was more of a nod to the white wolf’s fur than to Lev Romanov’s age. The centuries showed more in Lev’s muscular hardness than they did in his general appearance. He looked as if he’d been born twenty-five or thirty years ago. Not in the Middle Ages.
She’d stared at herself in the mirror. Her age wasn’t apparent at all. She looked as if she’d fallen asleep at twenty and woken up the next morning. Except for the absence of light in her eyes. She was missing...something. The brown of her irises wasn’t as liquid as it should be. She needed to move forward, but the past she couldn’t remember might remain an emptiness in her for the rest of her days.
“Moving forward will help you recall. Whether or not you reclaim your memories will be your decision,” Lev said. He leaned slightly toward her, his face tilted down. Strands of thick, wavy hair fell forward, released from the binding at the nape of his neck by his movement. She clenched her fingers into fists to keep from reaching out to touch the startling white locks that sprang free.
“This sword was made for your hand. Your body will remember if you expect it to.” His eyes gleamed a brighter blue behind the white. She was relieved when he moved back to bring the sword up between them. He held it as Anna had held it, horizontally, as an offering for her to take.
“I’m not the woman I was before,” Madeline said softly. She’d seen him looking for the warrior she’d been. He searched for her now in between one blink and the next. His intense gaze burned its way deep into her soul, but he must have felt that his search came up empty because there were still no memories for her to recall. There was nothing but the weight of Trevor against her breast. “I can only remember the baby. I held him forever as I slept. I protected him in my arms for centuries. That’s the only knowledge of the past that I have.”
Now her fisted hands weren’t to keep from touching Lev’s hair. Her fists were for the witches who had kidnapped her child. She didn’t need any memories of being a warrior to know that she would fight to save the baby they’d stolen.
“Take this blade to save our child. Remember it, and it will remember you,” Lev said.
Madeline’s fingers opened, and she lifted her hands to accept the blade. Lev laid it across her outstretched hands. For a stunning moment, the sunlight shone through the trees and onto the ruby. It seemed to flicker to life. But then the leaves whispered with the wind, and shadows fell once more.
The ruby was as gray and dull as it had been before.
Chapter 5 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Take this blade to save our child. Remember it, and it will remember you.
He’d wanted to say “Remember me.” The words had risen from his heart to his lips, but he’d stopped them just in time. He’d hardened his mouth against them. He was here to help Madeline save Trevor. He was here to find and kill Queen Vasilisa. That was all. As she’d said, the past couldn’t be reclaimed. But not for the reason she thought. She was still a warrior. She would always be a warrior. She’d been a warrior while she was sleeping, protecting their baby against her breast. Her eyes were troubled and wounded, but they still gleamed with determination and fury, even if they didn’t gleam with ruby fire.
He was the one who couldn’t reclaim what had been lost. Even as he’d reclaimed his human form, he’d known it. It wasn’t only his skin that had been scarred by the years of ceaseless wandering and torment. The white wolf’s rage continued to live beneath his skin like a never-ending howl only he could hear, and its claws had dug away his humanity too deeply for him to ever fully find it again.
His body was a sham, his desire for Madeline only an echo of what had been when he was a civilized man. When he’d released the sword into her hands, he ignored the spark caused by the phantom ghost of their previous connection.
And then he’d stepped back, prepared to be the cool and impersonal instructor she needed to help her remember the sword. Only the sword.
Him, she could and should forget.
The training session lasted only an hour, but when they were finished, Madeline’s arm was trembling and rubbery, and she was panting with exertion. Sweat had dampened her hair, even though the mountain forest was cold.
Lev didn’t pant or sweat. He had shown her every thrust and twist and parry, often with his hands over hers to demonstrate technique, but other than a wind-kissed flush on his cheeks above his golden beard, he seemed wholly unaffected.
“Our lives consisted of battle and training for battle. Your muscles will remember even if your mind doesn’t,” Lev said.
“There must have been other things. Like singing...” Madeline thought of the lullaby. Then she tried not to think of how Trevor had been conceived. “Um, dancing?”
They had walked back to the horses. This time the dun didn’t prance at all, and the white merely snorted at Lev’s approach. It was Madeline who tried to prance away when Lev reached to help her tired body onto the back of the gelding. He caught her easily, but in deference to her avoidance, he deposited her quickly into the saddle and stepped away.
Her waist still burned from the memory of his short-lived grasp—so strong and sure—even after they headed back onto the trail. Her exhaustion was as much from resisting the effects of his touch during her training session as from the exercise itself. He had taken no liberties. Each time he’d positioned her hands on the hilt or her shoulders and hips, he’d released her the moment the demonstration was finished. Yet her body still became flushed and sensitive. By the time the session was over, she ached for his touch to become more personal.
She had counted the seconds each brush of his hands had lasted.
“We sang and danced. Of course. In between our battles with the Dark Volkhvy. And all the while we didn’t realize we were kept in Vasilisa’s gilded cage. We were her most treasured champions. Until we were not,” Lev said.
“Did the Dark Volkhvy cause my long illness?” Madeline asked.
Lev pulled the large dun to a sudden stop. He turned in his saddle to face her. Madeline’s horse stopped at the dun’s hip because the trail was too narrow for him to pass.
“Is that what the witch told you?” he asked. She was suddenly on alert again after being lulled by the gelding’s steady hoof beats beneath her. Lev was deceptively quiet. She could feel a new tension in the air. She could see his stiff shoulders and his white-knuckled grip on the reins.
“She only said I’d been ill. Not how or why,” Madeline said.
“Queen Vasilisa spelled you into an enchanted sleep. One so deep and so long that it clouded your memories. Your past wasn’t stolen by an illness or the Dark Volkhvy. There is no Dark and Light. All Volkhvy are evil. Vasilisa most of all. She wasn’t your savior, Madeline. She was your tormentor. She stole you and Trevor away from Bronwal before she cursed us all,” Lev said. The howl was present in his voice again. More than ever. His words were husky rasps in the shadowed forest. The sun had entirely disappeared. The canopy was dense, but clouds must have rolled in high above them in a sky they couldn’t quite see.
Madeline’s body no longer ached from physical exertion or burgeoning sensual need. She’d gone numb from her forehead to her toes. Her fingers had gone slack on the reins, and the gelding shuffled aimlessly in its tracks with no guidance except for the dun’s broad hips ahead.
“She was helping me recover. She was making sure Trevor woke slowly so he wouldn’t be affected the way I’d been. She tried to protect him from the marked Volkhvy when they attacked,” Madeline said.
“Whatever she does, she does for herself. For her own ends. She isn’t human—never forget it. Long ago she took my father from his family and manipulated his genes to create a supernatural champion. He helped her. He provided an entire family of supernatural beasts to fight her enemies. We married and brought our warrior mates into her service. And she repaid us with a horrible curse. The Ether ate us, again and again. Once every hundred years we materialized. She wanted to watch our slow demise,” Lev said.
He kicked the dun and it leaped forward into a trot in spite of the rough path. The white gelding followed, and Madeline’s hands were too numb to pull it back. Was everything she’d learned since she woke up a lie? The Volkhvy on Krajina had been kind to her. Very unlike the marked Volkhvy who had attacked the island. And she’d felt Anna’s warmth. She’d instinctively trusted one of the other women who wielded a Romanov blade.
Lev had to be wrong about the Light Volkhvy. And if he was wrong about the Light, then he was wrong about Vasilisa, too. She was Anna’s mother. Madeline’s sanity was currently being saved by the idea that wherever Trevor had been taken, he at least hadn’t been taken there alone. Vasilisa would take care of him until Madeline could get there. She had to believe that, in spite of what Lev believed.
Queen Vasilisa had created the Romanov wolves, and she’d forged the enchanted blades for their mates. That much was true. The rest? Madeline’s mind seemed shrouded in fog. She had woken too quickly, Vasilisa had said. She’d risen from her long sleep too fast and left her memories behind.
It had been the white wolf’s howl that had woken her up. She’d echoed it. His howl had ripped from her throat and passed her lips as it sprang from her own chest. The crystal bed she’d slept in had been shattered, Trevor gone.
But as her horse followed after the dun that had already disappeared down the curving trail, Madeline wondered who had shattered the crystal and taken the sleeping baby from her breast. She’d blamed the white wolf for waking her too soon, but perhaps the blame didn’t lie entirely with him alone.
Her skin was as soft as the petals of a flower. The faint scent of roses was tangled in the auburn strands of her hair. As he’d tried to focus on reminding her of her prowess with a blade, he was distracted again and again by observations he couldn’t ignore.
The forest canopy above them was dense. The majestic spruce surrounding the mossy bank were lined up in seemingly never-ending rows of bitter bark and evergreen bows. But sunlight still peeked through and found its way in beams down to the top of Madeline’s head. The rays of light turned the waves of her hair to fire. The strands were a myriad of colors, from light gold to the deep red of tarnished copper. He’d grown up with a ginger twin, but Soren had ordinary red hair. Madeline had flames.
He forced himself to only touch her when necessary. He corrected her hold on the hilt of her weapon, and his fingers burned where they touched hers. He nudged her feet farther apart with the toe of his boot against her foot, and he hated himself for remembering his bare leg welcomed between her naked thighs. He pressed a hand against the small of her back to urge her to straighten her spine, and he quickly pulled it away rather than allowing himself to press her body against his.
It was an hour of the worst torture he’d ever experienced, but he endured it because in spite of all the observations that hurt him, he also noticed her shoulders begin to line up with her blade the way they should, directing the sword. He noticed that the sweat on her brow didn’t stop her from going through the forms he suggested over and over again.
She would be prepared to wield the blade against the Volkhvy even if it killed her. She possessed the same determination as ever. She didn’t need memories to drive who she was at heart.
Of course, he also noticed her breath catch and her body go still when he leaned in close behind her to position her elbows. For only a moment their bodies had been touching, from her back to his chest all the way down to hips and legs. The swell of her bottom encased in tight fawn leggings had been pressed against the tops of his thighs. He had paused for only a second, allowed himself to savor the touch but only for the blink of an eye, and then he had stepped back before his response to their mutual stillness could betray itself against the small of her back.
He had ended the session soon after, no longer trusting himself or his focus. She had seemed as glad to back away and return to the horses as he had been.
And then Madeline had brought up her enchanted sleep. She’d reminded him of why they were undertaking this journey in the first place.
Vasilisa must be stopped.
She had endangered his family for the last time.
He would lose them for good when it was all said and done, but they would be safe. That was all that mattered.
The problem with travel on horseback down a narrow trail where she was required to do nothing but let her horse follow the one leading was that she had hours to think. Since she couldn’t ponder memories, she was left reliving every second of her time with Lev on the mossy bank by the stream.
His body was inhuman in its hardness, but instead of being repelled by his steely arms and legs or the solid rock of his chest, she was drawn to him as if her soft body could soothe away the centuries of hardship that had caused his to turn to stone. She could tell he tried to keep his touch impersonal. She could also feel him fail each time he brushed his hand against hers. He leaned into her as if he was freezing and she was the flame.
She tried to keep the image of the white wolf in her mind, but even though she’d sketched the monster a thousand times, she failed. Lev Romanov was intimidating. He was tall and broad and as lean as any hungry hunter could be. But he didn’t act like a predator. Oh, he noticed her every move. He sensed every time she reacted to his touch. But he didn’t exploit her weakness.
Not even when, God forgive her, she’d hoped that he would.
He had held her from behind, and she’d felt every inch of his hard body against hers, including his obvious reaction to holding the small of her back to him.
Then he had stepped away.
She had quaked like a leaf afterward. Perhaps he had thought she had overexerted herself. He had ended their practice. He’d headed back to the horses. She’d been left to mull over the impossible: the white wolf she’d been told to distrust had refused to devour willing prey.
Chapter 6 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
They were being followed. As the forest darkened around them, Lev could detect the scent of wolves on the breeze. He was well used to wild wolves. He’d run with them for over a hundred years. They naturally bowed down to his giant white-wolf form. In his supernatural body, he was easily the apex predator of the mountain. Volkhvy power might be evil, but it had given him the power he’d needed to survive when Vasilisa cursed Bronwal.
Now his ability to shift was gone.
For whatever reason, he couldn’t set the white wolf free. It was as if his human body was unwilling to risk disappearing for another hundred years or more. He was drenched with sweat by the time the sun set, but he was still a man. He’d asked Madeline to ride in front when he first scented the wolves. She hadn’t looked back at him since then. If she had, she might have drawn the ruby sword from the scabbard at her knee. She would have seen his tension. She would have anticipated the arrival of the white wolf she feared.
Now she might have to draw her sword to fend off natural wolves instead.
“We’ll stop here for the night,” Lev said. He directed his horse toward the side of the trail, where a large spruce had fallen following a heavy snowstorm several months before. The branches were still filled with green needles, although they were dry and rustled with a sharp skeletal rush when the wind blew through them. He liked the fallen tree because it would form a barrier wall between the shadows of the forest and the open trail. It would be a line of defense against any wolves that might come from the trees. They would camp against it, and he could build a large fire between the massive trunk and the trail.
“We should keep going. I have flashlights in my pack,” Madeline said. She’d turned her horse around, but she didn’t dismount.
“We’re being followed by a pack of wolves. A sizable one. If they choose to attack, it will be under the cover of darkness. We need a fire and a defensible position,” Lev said.
Madeline didn’t argue further. She jumped off her horse and led the animal to where Lev had dismounted. The white gelding seemed ghostly, and Madeline’s face was indistinct in the shadows, even to his eyes—and his vision was enhanced by the wolf that lived beneath his skin.
“We’ll need to keep the horses near the fire, which means they’ll have to be near me. They won’t like it, but it can’t be helped,” Lev said.
“They’re not as skittish as they were. The dun hasn’t reared once today,” Madeline said.
“The wolves will have them prancing if they come much closer,” Lev said. He raised his nose into the air and breathed in to try to gauge the position of the pack. Madeline watched him with wary eyes. She dreaded his shift. He lowered his nose and met her serious gaze. He stepped toward her without thinking. One pace and then two, stopping only a foot away from where she had frozen at his advance.
Once Madeline’s eyes had shimmered with ruby highlights. Now they were dark and brown. Lev reached and placed one crooked finger under her chin. Gently, with the slightest pressure, he urged her face to tilt upward so he could get a better look at her eyes. It was a mistake to touch her. It was a mistake to get too close. Because no matter how close he got, it would never be close enough. “I’ve told you I can’t shift, Maddy. Be wary of the wolves that stalk us, but don’t be afraid of me.”
“You are the wolf. I see him in your eyes. I see him in the way you move. So quick. So graceful. Your intensity is his intensity. You aren’t afraid of the wolves. You’re as ready for their challenge as the white wolf would be,” Madeline whispered.
She didn’t pull away. She didn’t move back. Her willingness to stay close to him even though she saw him as the white wolf seared him to his core. She was right. He was ready for the wolves’ challenge. It was her he couldn’t face. Or the memory of what they had been to each other. Not now, when empty desire rose in affection’s place. He wouldn’t take advantage of her attraction for him. He wouldn’t indulge the pull between them. Not even after centuries of being apart.
He looked at her lips as he made the decision not to taste them again for what she would perceive as the first time. They parted beneath his attention as she breathed a soft gasp of awareness. He wasn’t ashamed of the tremble in his hand on her skin or how it betrayed the amount of control he had to use not to dip down and suck on her full, sweet lower lip.
“Bring your sword with you and bed down by the fire. I’m going to find our stalkers and ascertain their intent,” Lev said. In truth, he simply needed to run away. From the soft flick of Madeline’s tongue as she moistened her unkissed mouth, and from his desire to lick her lips himself. He would be a fool to try to sleep beside her, enveloped by the fire’s heat.
He was the one who dropped his hand. Stepped back from her upturned face. Turned away.
Madeline went for her sword while he gathered the necessary kindling. With the modern lighter from his pack, it took no time to start a fire. It was roaring by the time Madeline returned with her sword and a roll of padded bedding.
“Keep the fire going through the night. I’ll find the wolves and keep an eye on their movements until sunrise,” Lev said. He saw a dawning wisdom in the depths of her eyes as he turned away. She knew he was avoiding being near her. He had confessed it with his touch on her chin and with his eyes on her mouth.
“I need your help to save my son,” Madeline said.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Lev said. “We will save our son together.”
She didn’t remember Lev’s kiss of the past, but there was nothing wrong with her imagination. He was an intense man. His touch stayed on her skin long after he’d disappeared into the forest shadows. The heat he’d left on her face transferred itself to the mouth he hadn’t touched with anything other than his gaze.
The white wolf was a monster—that was a truth she knew from her sketches and her vivid memories of the stormy cliff. And she wanted the monster’s kiss. She ached to remember what it had been like to press her lips to Lev Romanov’s mouth. She must have been far bolder than she was now. Far less cautious and afraid. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her breath came fast as she merely imagined what it would have been like earlier if she had narrowed the gap between them herself. She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to claim the only softness on his hard, scarred face. His lips were indulgent in an otherwise forbidding mien. They begged for kisses even as everything else warned her away.
Kissing him would be a mistake. It was wrong to even imagine flicking her tongue into his mouth and tasting him...again. The idea that she already had, that they had been mates once upon a time, was driving her crazy. Her body told her they would be good together, because it already knew they were.
That the white wolf was the one with enough control to walk away made her feel like the beast. She’d been awake for such a short time. The world was sudden and new. She had no memories to anchor her. Only the drive to save Trevor and help Vasilisa. Only the need to relearn the swordsmanship she’d forgotten.
And now this.
The desire to remember Lev Romanov’s kiss.
A wolf howled far in the distance. It was a thready sound, small and wavering. Nothing to fear with a roaring fire beside her and a sword near her fingertips. The horses didn’t even dance in their tethers.
Yet somewhere out in the forest, Lev ran alone on two legs instead of four, and even though they were no longer connected, Madeline couldn’t put him from her mind as she lay by the fire. Invisible strings seemed to run from her consciousness out into the night as if they connected her to him, seeking to knit them together.
Madeline turned toward the fire. The ruby sword was within reach. The dancing flames illuminated the dull gray gem, seemingly bringing it to life. She couldn’t reclaim the connection she’d once had with Lev Romanov. Not when she knew the beast that hid beneath his skin. She’d seen his wicked maw. She’d seen the blaze of fury in his eyes. The control he’d displayed today was a lie.
Madeline opened the backpack that sat beside the sword. She took out her sketchbook and flipped through its familiar pages. The firelight illuminated the ferocity and anger of the white wolf. His savagery. His menace.
Much better for Trevor that she focus on this truth: Lev Romanov couldn’t be trusted. He was a monster waiting to happen. Her son had been through enough. Once he was back in her arms, she would protect him from all harm, including the threat posed by his own father.
The sword was waiting. It didn’t have to glow with ruby light to be a weapon. Madeline reached for its hilt and stood up. This time, her fingers settled into the slight grooves of use that were invisible to the naked eye. Something in her knew where each digit should rest, where they had rested long ago.
Illuminated by simple firelight in the absence of Volkhvy power, Madeline went through the practice motions Lev had shown her. The ruby didn’t glow. There was no connection between her and the blade and the white Romanov wolf. But there was muscle memory, just as Lev had said there would be. The moves came more smoothly with each repetition. Her body knew which way to bend and flow, so she allowed it to take control.
The night was long, but it was also familiar. Although he didn’t have fur to warm him or giant paws to eat up the ground over which he traversed, running through the Carpathian woods had been his life for so long that it was anything but a hardship now. Within minutes, he had found his rhythm with two feet instead of four paws. He loped more easily than any other man could through the game trails that ran through the trees in a nearly invisible network of lines.
After a time, he found the pack, far enough away from Madeline and the horses to soothe his mind. He settled in to watch them from an upwind vantage point high in a tree he had easily scaled with his strong arms and legs. With his back braced against the trunk, he counted the wolves as they milled around. If their aimless wandering hadn’t clued him in to an abnormality, their numbers would have. He’d been right. The pack was large. Too large. And as he watched, more wolves came from all directions to join the others already amassing beneath him.
He and Madeline wouldn’t make it to Straluci without a fight.
But Madeline had also been right.
He would be prepared for the challenge, shifted or not. The white wolf inside him raised its head and howled with a ferocity unmatched by the natural wolves below him.
Chapter 7 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Madeline slept fitfully, always waking in time to refuel the fire when it died down. It was nearly morning when she woke to discover that Lev had stoked the fire. He was wrapped in another sleeping roll that had come from a pack on the dun horse’s back. He faced away from her toward the trees on the other side of the fire. The dancing flames painted his broad back with shadows and light.
He wasn’t asleep.
She watched his breathing rise and fall, and somehow she knew he had sensed her waking. Neither of them spoke. The silence stretched, straining the strings she imagined between them, but just as she thought she would ask him about the wolves, another howl sounded. It was as far away as the last one she’d heard.
“I couldn’t find the Volkhvy that are influencing them, but they aren’t acting alone,” Lev said. He didn’t roll toward her. His back looked stiff.
“Will they try to prevent us from reaching Straluci?” Madeline asked. Her hand had gone for the hilt of her sword. The move was instinctive, driven by memories she couldn’t recall.
“They won’t succeed,” Lev replied.
It was the answer she expected because it was the one she felt deep in her bones. She would save her son, come witches or wolves. The only other option was death.
He didn’t sleep. He waited. Finally, when the night mist began to rise toward a hint of pink sky, he rose from his bedding. Madeline had been restless throughout the night, but she’d fallen into an exhausted slumber less than an hour ago. He’d sensed when she no longer watched his back. He knew when her eyes closed.
Before he left their campsite to check on the wolves again, he made sure the fire still had enough fuel to burn until the sun fully came up. Then he stepped lightly to his companion’s side. She murmured indistinctly in her sleep. He couldn’t be certain if her sounds were ones of protest or appeal. The firelight danced on her pale cheeks. The ruby sword was forgotten beside her.
But it was the position of her hands that stabbed him with invisible blades, cleaving his heart in two.
Her arms were crooked over her chest, and her hands were cupped as if her palms supported a baby’s head and bottom. Trevor was in danger somewhere out in the world. Only Vasilisa and the marked witches knew where, but Madeline still tried to hold him safely to her breast.
Madeline murmured again and her fingers twitched as if her body knew something was wrong, even if her sleeping mind did not. It would be doubly cruel to wake to empty arms if her dreams were filled with lullabies and the powder scent of Trevor’s sweet curls.
Lev’s chest constricted. He knew that cruelty from personal experience. He fisted his hands at his sides and kept his spine straight and tall. She wouldn’t welcome him leaning over and smoothing the waves of her fiery hair back from her forehead. She wouldn’t want him bending down and holding her empty hands.
He had failed to protect his wife and child for centuries. He couldn’t undo the harm that had been done to them. He could only try to protect them now. The pack of wolves he’d seen would be tired this morning. With the sunrise, they would probably collapse from their frenzy of the night before.
He still couldn’t shift, but he was far from an ordinary man. He would go to the alpha wolf and try to overcome the unnatural influence he suspected the wolf was under. He would try to disband the pack and send them on their way before the Volkhvy could use them to try to stop Madeline from reaching their child.
It was a risky move. The alpha had the power of the pack behind him, and somewhere, the Dark power drawn from the Ether by the marked Volkhvy was also at work. Lev could almost scent the smell of Darkness caught and held in the ozone of the morning mist.
He turned away from Madeline’s prone form and headed into the forest. He couldn’t shift, but he had decided he would still try to challenge the alpha wolf with the ferocity of the white Romanov wolf that lived in his heart.
Aleksandr worried the raised skin of the brand on his forehead. His fingers had long since grown used to the roughened shape of the bellflower that Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess, had emblazoned on him, on all her enemies, when they tried to send her red wolf into the Ether for the last time.
The amount of power it had taken for her to instantly sear the mark on all of them had been prodigious. Habit sent his fingers to the brand, but no matter how often he traced its design, he was surprised all over again. Anna’s abilities had been magnified by the emerald in the hilt of the Romanov blade she had taken from him. It had come to life for her because her mother had forged it for the red wolf’s mate. At that time, she hadn’t consciously accepted the connection, but her heart had known.
She had literally glowed in defense of the red wolf she loved, and the energy she expelled had left a lasting testament to Anna’s love for Soren Romanov on the skin of both Aleksandr and his followers.
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Barbara J. Hancock
She slept…his love didn’tOnce upon a time, Madeline was trapped in an enchanted sleep, her baby wrapped tight in her arms. Then the white wolf woke her, and her son disappeared.For centuries, Lev Romanov searched for his wife and their child, and the search drove him half-mad. Can Madeline trust the wolf to be the man who can help her save their son.
She slept...
...his love didn’t
Once upon a time, Madeline was trapped in an enchanted sleep, her baby wrapped tight in her arms. Then the white wolf woke her, and her son disappeared. For centuries, Lev Romanov searched for his wife and their child, and the search drove him half-mad. Can Madeline trust the wolf to be the man who can help her save their son?
BARBARA J. HANCOCK lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where her daily walk takes her to the edge of the wilderness and back again. When Barbara isn’t writing modern gothic romance that embraces the shadows with a unique blend of heat and heart, she can be found wrangling twin boys and spoiling her pets.
Also by Barbara J. Hancock (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Brimstone Seduction
Brimstone Bride
Brimstone Prince
Legendary Shifter
Legendary Wolf
Legendary Beast
Darkening Around Me
Silent Is the House
The Girl in Blue
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Legendary Beast
Barbara J. Hancock
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08216-7
LEGENDARY BEAST
© 2018 Barbara J. Hancock
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For the lovers who mean it
when they pledge their hearts “forever.”
Contents
Cover (#ub581ca53-fe1b-5056-aae6-a4dbfd087ee9)
Back Cover Text (#udcac2421-f164-5c12-a58d-e5f44549e86a)
About the Author (#uc7961c8c-f3c7-5cce-bf9a-786bddfc146e)
Booklist (#u09f3966a-6e6b-5019-bad8-426c338fc4ba)
Title Page (#u7cf6bd95-e1cd-53b3-9029-58b20ca12167)
Copyright (#uc53dc5b5-f154-5e43-9c0d-a343d61c1691)
Dedication (#u6c5c5dff-0c07-5078-b2c1-fc7af75a991d)
Prologue (#u9a9c327c-361f-5feb-a33e-36e6e2359825)
Chapter 1 (#u610bd171-1197-55d9-a961-d03e10f9dc64)
Chapter 2 (#u8c302971-54cd-5c82-997f-39f686802c53)
Chapter 3 (#u25f94ae2-4b9e-51f7-9360-d85bbbaf0748)
Chapter 4 (#u96134227-fc6d-5167-828d-4eea57029e77)
Chapter 5 (#u6d01e8e2-6d4b-57b6-ba7e-1f5dff4c8a45)
Chapter 6 (#u0baf7428-909a-5677-85e5-cd89d9e725b2)
Chapter 7 (#u51659b06-ef6e-52e2-b0f8-c7be54655638)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Madeline woke to the sound of a howl. The horrible cry trailed off and died out. Coughs racked her body, and her raw throat throbbed. The terrible noise had ripped its way out of her own chest. She struggled to breathe. The howl had been too big and too rough for her throat. It had ripped through her throat so that every breath that followed was a harsh rasp.
Seconds later, terror caused even those shallow breaths to catch. She forgot the rude awakening and the raw pain in her throat.
The baby was gone.
Trevor. Was. Gone.
She struggled to open her eyes. The world that met her was blurry and vague. She could feel the loss of the baby better than she could see her empty arms. His weight against her chest was missing.
She’d held him for such a long time.
But another familiar weight was still beside her.
Madeline reached for the ruby sword. The gem in its hilt flickered weakly, oddly illuminating her blurred surroundings. When her fingers closed around it, its red light flared. She could suddenly make out her strange crystalline bed. Someone or something had shattered the enclosure and taken her child.
The sword vibrated with power, but she held it easily, from practice and skill. The scarlet light grew and became an aura around her whole body as she rose.
She wasn’t dressed for battle. Her gown and kirtle were much more cumbersome than the leggings and tunic she would have worn for fighting. But it didn’t matter. There was no time to search for more practical clothes. Trevor was gone, and she could sense a great and horrible danger bearing down on her.
Crystal shards fell away from her as she stood. Madeline could barely make out the tangle of bushes around her, though the scent of roses filled the air. But none of those sensations mattered. She was pulled out of the garden as if by an invisible hand toward the threat she sensed.
She was a warrior. Every instinct she possessed drove her forward. Her vision was still blurry; her heart pounded painfully beneath her breast. Her throat felt as if it had been torn apart by her howling scream. But she brandished her ruby sword and made her way to the battle that waited for her.
“Lev, no!” someone shouted.
The meaning of the shout didn’t penetrate her understanding. Her attention was focused on a great and terrible beast on the edge of a cliff as she climbed up a steep rise above the garden where she’d been sleeping. Everything else was indistinct to her perceptions except the massive figure of a monstrous white wolf that snarled and growled and threatened the people nearby.
Rain began to fall. It plastered the wolf’s hair against his giant body, and even though the red aura of her ruby sword deflected much of the moisture from her face, her vision was even more obscured as the rain hit the barrier of energy and became rivulets of water in front of her eyes.
The tempestuous storm and the creature’s sudden loud and long howl seemed to echo the tumult in her own chest. She had to clamp her jaw against the urge to howl again along with the beast, as his sound made the very ground on which she stood vibrate.
Madeline raised her blade against the monster and against the fury that threatened to tear her body apart because she couldn’t contain the enormity of it all.
But then the white wolf was gone.
Her anger didn’t disappear, but a pain so intense it overshadowed any she had felt before joined it. Her sword arm weakened beneath the onslaught of emotion, and she lowered it until the tip of her blade met the ground so that the mighty ruby blade became more cane than weapon. It was the only thing keeping her on her feet.
Until a warm body braced against hers on the other side.
Trevor was gone. The white wolf was gone. Her numb fingers no longer held the ruby blade. The same person who helped her to stay on her feet had taken the blade from her and tossed it aside. It was lying on the ground, several feet away. The protection of its red aura was gone. Rain pelted her face and soaked through her hair and her dress.
And then a cold, calm, powerful presence was also there. All the terrible, overwhelming pain was soothed away by a cool psychic touch inside her mind. Her legs gave out beneath her, but it didn’t matter. The cool presence approached and took her weight from the smaller, warmer one.
Vasilisa and her daughter, Anna. The knowledge of their names was placed in her mind by the cool presence. Her thoughts were as hazy as her vision and as impossible to process, but the explanation calmed her slightly. She should trust her queen. Her instincts were screaming other things, but they were rusty from disuse, and the psychic touch chilled them into silence.
Madeline accepted the coolness in her mind. It came from the woman who held her on her feet, Vasilisa. She exuded an aura that numbed all else. Vasilisa turned Madeline, and they walked away together. But Madeline wasn’t entirely soothed. She had failed. She hadn’t killed the white wolf. The monstrous beast must have been the terrible threat that had woken her.
And now he had escaped.
Her mind was able to hold on to only one clear thought: wherever Trevor had gone, he wouldn’t be safe until the white wolf was destroyed.
Chapter 1 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Madeline’s fingers were smudged with charcoal from the hundredth pencil she’d worn down to a nub. She used her thumb and forefinger to blend the shadows around the figure of the white wolf she’d drawn. He was large on the page. Much bigger than a natural wolf. As always, he loomed, ready to pounce. She’d lost count of how many times she’d committed her memory of him to paper. No matter how many pages she filled with his savage likeness, she never exorcised him from her mind.
Good. She needed to remember so she would be prepared to protect Trevor if the white wolf should ever return.
That stormy day she’d first woken after hundreds of years, it had been Vasilisa who had broken the crystal chamber that had been her bed for so long. The queen had taken Trevor from her arms to keep him safe while Madeline confronted the threat of the white wolf. It had been horrible to wake up and find her baby gone, but she was glad the queen had protected him from harm.
Vasilisa had been the cool presence that had helped her. Madeline’s body had woken from a long illness, but her mind hadn’t. Every sight that met her eyes had dazzled and confused her.
The queen encouraged her drawings. She said the sketches came from the recesses of her mind that were still sleeping. Besides the wolf, there were sketches of a life she’d forgotten—a life very unlike the world she had woken to on Vasilisa’s island, Krajina.
Vasilisa was the Light Volkhvy queen, and Madeline had trusted her from the moment she realized it had been the queen who protected Trevor from the white wolf. Her queen. Her beloved liege. Vasilisa had rushed to break the crystal and take the baby from Madeline’s arms when the white wolf appeared on the island. His appearance had woken Madeline too harshly from her long sleep. She had risen to face his attack, but she hadn’t been strong enough. Vasilisa had explained everything as she helped Madeline recover. Healthy food and exercise seemed to clear her head a little more each day. As her health improved, Vasilisa gently tried to help Madeline recover the memories she’d lost.
But, most of all, the queen had continued to take care of Madeline’s infant son, who was still sleeping. She’d explained that Trevor needed to wake up slowly, and that soon he would be smiling, gurgling and grasping Madeline’s finger once more.
Madeline had forgotten a great many things, but she hadn’t forgotten her baby.
Trevor, the white wolf and her ruby sword—everything else in this strange new world she had to relearn, but not those things. Knowledge of them flashed behind her eyes with every blink and pounded in her chest with every beat of her heart.
Madeline finished the sketch and pulled her blackened fingers away from the page. The white wolf’s snarl was threatening, even though she’d created it herself with charcoal and paper. She calmly looked into the beast’s eyes for a few moments. Remembering his savagery made her stronger.
She had quickly come to love Vasilisa, who treated her as a daughter and Trevor as a beloved grandchild. But she wouldn’t depend on the queen to keep Trevor safe. Madeline was his mother. Facing the threat of the white wolf was her responsibility, and she was determined to be ready.
She closed the sketchbook and placed it on the window ledge that overlooked the ocean below.
Vasilisa was walking on the beach. She held a tiny bundle in her arms—Trevor. Even far away from her breast, Madeline could feel the tug of the invisible heartstrings that held her and her baby together. Yet she trusted the queen with him; Vasilisa visited with him every day, often taking him on walks beneath the Mediterranean sun.
The queen’s footsteps took her and the baby closer and closer to the cliff where the white wolf had appeared. Though Madeline trusted Vasilisa entirely, her breath still came quicker and her pulse leaped in her throat.
Vasilisa said the white wolf had once been her champion, but he had become a wild and savage monster that couldn’t be trusted any longer.
Madeline looked from the empty cliff down to the kind queen, who crooned to the sleeping baby she held against her chest. Queen Vasilisa’s enemies were Madeline’s enemies. It was a truth she felt to her bones.
She stepped back from the window and stretched before dropping down to the floor. She caught her weight with her hands and then pressed up and down until her shoulders protested from the effort. Then she pressed up and down a dozen times more.
When she’d woken up, her vision had been blurry and weak, but her instincts had driven her to rise and climb to the top of a cliff, where she’d found the white wolf. His presence had drawn her like a magnet—a terrifying magnet with vicious teeth and glowing red eyes.
She’d confronted the wolf with the ruby sword in her hands, but she hadn’t killed him. When he’d shifted into his human form, she’d been taken by surprise. Then Vasilisa had appeared to bring her back to the palace, along with Trevor. The white wolf’s brother had taken the beast back to his home.
Letting them go had been a mistake.
But her weakness that morning had only guaranteed she would work hard to heal so she could fight the white wolf another day.
Madeline brought her legs up beneath her and used them to lift her body back to a standing position with her arms outstretched. She exercised in secret because she didn’t want Vasilisa to worry she was overexerting herself. She grew stronger every day. Her arms, back and legs were responding to her efforts. Madeline straightened her shirt and stepped back to the window. She smoothed her hair back from her face.
The queen was heading back to the palace. As she came nearer, Madeline turned to go outside and meet them. In midmorning, she always sang to Trevor and watched his little face for signs of waking.
A sudden quaking of the earth beneath Madeline’s feet shook the entire palace and sent her to her knees. It was a testament to her persistence in recovering that she was able to leap back up again within seconds. As soon as she was back on her feet, she raced to the window, but the beach was empty, as was the stone stairway that led from the sand up to the palace portico.
Vasilisa and Trevor were gone.
Her gaze flew up from the sand to the cliff, but it was also deserted.
If the white wolf had returned, he hadn’t appeared in the same place as last time.
Madeline abandoned the window, but before she could make it to the door of her room, the screams had already begun. She wrenched open the door anyway and headed toward the noise of battle. She didn’t have the ruby sword by her side, and she was far from as strong as she could be, but she’d fight for Trevor with her bare hands if she had to.
He was all she had left of a life she couldn’t remember.
The palace was under attack, but it wasn’t the white wolf. Madeline searched for Trevor as witches all around her battled each other with bolts of energy from their hands. The transformation of the beautiful Mediterranean palace into a battlefield jarred her already tender senses, but she didn’t allow the shock to slow her down. She wasn’t Volkhvy, and her sword was gone, but she was quicker on her feet than she would have been because of her secret exercise regimen. She used that quickness to dodge and weave and make her way around the fighting witches.
As she ran, she noted that the witches who had attacked Vasilisa’s palace had black marks on their foreheads. Were all Dark Volkhvy marked? She couldn’t remember.
She only knew Vasilisa’s enemies were her enemies. She memorized the mark for later reference, but for now, she had to find Trevor and keep her baby from harm.
“This way,” a voice whispered from one of Vasilisa’s sitting rooms. Madeline reacted just in time, sliding inside the narrowly opened door before a contingent of marked Volkhvy could see her. She blinked when the door clicked shut, enveloping her in darkness. The marked Volkhvy ran by, their booted feet ringing down the hall.
“I’m looking for Trevor,” Madeline said into the darkness.
“They’ve taken him. And the queen. Her last order was that I should keep you safe,” the voice explained.
Madeline could finally make out one of Vasilisa’s older servants. The woman allowed the energy in her fingers to glow only slightly, lighting up the room enough to illuminate her face.
“No,” Madeline said. “I can help them.”
The servant reached out and touched Madeline’s cheek with her cold fingers. The violet glow of energy felt tingly on Madeline’s skin.
“You can’t help them alone,” the servant said. “Sleep now. Then you can seek the white wolf’s help.”
Madeline had slept over a thousand years during her illness. She resisted the sudden cool fog that claimed her mind with the servant’s touch to no avail. She slipped into an unconsciousness that was as dark and deep as before, but it wasn’t as silent. As her body crumpled, the last thing she felt was the servant lowering her to the floor and the last thing she heard was the white wolf’s howl. His cry echoed through her soul in an endless protest against losing loved ones to the evil Volkhvy.
Her journey from the Light Volkhvy island of Krajina had been long. Without the use of Vasilisa’s more powerful abilities, Madeline had been dependent on Vasilia’s followers and their help in procuring human modes of transportation. There had been a boat and a stormy, rough passage by sea. Following that, she had flown in a plane that seemed to her as magical as Vasilisa herself. But the length of her travels had caused her body to ache nearly as much as her heart. The soreness reached all the way to her bones and deeper still. The jarring movement of the final leg on a train that carried her closer and closer to her destination didn’t help. Not nearly as quiet as the plane’s flight, the constant metallic screeches of the train strained her ears.
Only her sketches soothed her.
She finished a particularly menacing charcoal drawing of the white wolf, and then she closed her sketchbook and pushed it into the backpack that sat beside her in an empty seat. She put the pencil in a side pocket of her pack, even though it was probably spent. It rattled against a handful of others that had been used up. She had a few good ones left—soon she would sharpen another and sketch some more.
Soon.
Trevor and Vasilisa had been ruthlessly ripped from her life by an attack that had taken even the queen of all Light witches by surprise because it had been perpetuated by a traitorous Light Volkhvy who had turned to the Dark. Vasilisa had told her that long ago she’d been a warrior for the Light. Madeline felt that truth in her heart, but it wasn’t echoed by any sort of ability in her muscles and mind. She hadn’t been prepared for the old servant who had knocked her out and hidden her from the fight.
She’d failed to protect her son. She’d failed to help the witch queen who had done so much for her.
“Care for some tea, miss?” an older woman sitting across from her asked. She poured herself a cup from a steaming metal container as Madeline shook her head. Her stomach was too knotted to keep the liquid down.
She’d put her sketchbook away and zipped her backpack closed, but the white wolf’s snarl was still vivid in her memory as the train took her closer and closer to the monster himself.
Lev Romanov.
She didn’t know him. She couldn’t remember him at all. But Vasilisa had told her the legend of the Romanov wolves. The Light Volkhvy queen had created champion shape-shifters to help her stand against the Dark. She had forged three enchanted swords to be wielded by their warrior mates.
Madeline’s heart beat too quickly in her chest, and her breathing was shallow. As usual, when she wasn’t sketching, she wasn’t sure what to do with the adrenaline that urged her to some vague action. She had forgotten too much for too long. Vasilisa had encouraged her to take her time. She’d told her to remember how to live first. The simple mundane tasks of daily life that so many took for granted had challenged Madeline for months.
But now she must do so much more.
She had to save Trevor.
Her secret exercises seemed silly now, poor preparation for what lay ahead. She was physically stronger, but her memory loss left her vulnerable.
Her arms were empty. She needed to sketch or she would go mad. She clenched her smudged fingers into fists and placed them on her lap. She only had a few pencils left, and she needed to ration out the precious charcoal as a starving man would his last crumbs of bread.
Vasilisa had urged her to take her time to recover all she had lost, but her time had run out.
“Here. You look like you could use a hot drink more than I could,” the old woman insisted.
Now that her sketchbook was tucked away, Madeline really looked at the woman across from her for the first time. She raised her hand to accept the proffered cup as the older passenger nodded in approval.
But something was wrong. The woman wasn’t as old as she had seemed. Her hair wasn’t gray. It was white like Vasilisa’s, and her eyes were sharp, not elderly and vague as they focused keenly on the cup in Madeline’s hands.
Steam rose from the hot tea, but as she brought the cup closer to her face, its wafting fragrance wasn’t the aromatic scent of strong tea she expected. Instead, an unpleasant bitter scent assailed her. Madeline’s nose crinkled, and she lowered the cup without sipping.
“There’s something bad in your tea,” she gasped as her eyes watered.
The woman grabbed the cup from Madeline’s fingers before she could drop it. She raised it to her own face and sniffed.
“I only smell tea. Nothing else. You can’t possibly smell the poison. Not unless...” The woman’s eyes widened, and she rose so quickly that the bad tea slopped on the floor. “They told me it was safe to approach you alone. They said you’d lost your connection to the wolf.”
Madeline sat frozen as the woman’s movements caused a black mark on her forehead to be revealed. She’d seen the same mark on the foreheads of the corrupt Volkhvy who had attacked Vasilisa’s island. She’d sketched the ashy flower all around the wolf drawings in her pad.
“My son. Where is my son?” Madeline asked. Her sharp demand caused the other passengers to shuffle and murmur. She and the witch who had apparently tried to poison her were now the objects of everyone’s attention.
But the Volkhvy was already backing away. Her eyes were round with fear.
“It doesn’t matter. Your connection to the wolf won’t stop us. I’ll be back, and next time I won’t be alone,” the marked witch threatened. She continued to back away toward the door, her gaze spinning wildly around the passenger car as if she expected the savage white wolf to suddenly spring from thin air.
Madeline knew there was no wolf connection coming to her rescue, but before she could rise and go after the witch, armed with nothing but a sketchbook, the train entered a tunnel. The darkness wasn’t complete, but it was enough cover for the Volkhvy assassin to disappear.
When the train exited the tunnel and daylight streamed through its windows once more, the sun found Madeline clutching her backpack to her chest as if it was the baby she’d lost.
Her uncertainty in her abilities didn’t matter. The assassin’s fear meant she was on the right path. The white wolf was her only hope.
The savage wolf was a shape-shifter, and at one time he had been her husband. In this whole wide world she navigated alone, there was only one other who might be able to help her save Trevor from the marked Volkhvy who had stolen him away.
His father.
Vasilisa said he was wild and he couldn’t be trusted, but Madeline had no one else to turn to for help.
Chapter 2 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Lev had thrown most of the furniture out of the tower room. Niceties enraged him. He was currently dissatisfied with the shredded bed he’d kept in the middle of the room. The gemlike stained-glass windows he’d shattered with his fists lay all around the floor in glittering shards, while the biting wind howled through the ramparts and into the room he’d opened to the elements outside. The cold air didn’t bother him. He welcomed it. He craved discomfort. In fact, he wanted to run away from the care and concern of everyone around him, but reduced to two legs and two feet cut by the glass he’d walked over as he paced back and forth for days, how far could he possibly go?
Not far enough. Never far enough.
On four legs, he’d finally found her. She had greeted him as an enemy. She had raised the ruby sword against him...and he’d wanted its blade to fall. He’d stood on the edge of the cliff as the white wolf, and then he’d kneeled there as a broken man. He deserved her hatred. He should have thrown himself into the raging sea far below the cliff’s edge.
But Soren had brought him home.
Bronwal. The Carpathian castle Vasilisa had built for her enchanted warriors so long ago. It still stood. Only now it remained ever-manifest in an isolated mountain pass where once it had come from the Ether because of Vasilisa’s curse.
His twin brother wouldn’t give up on him. He never had. As the red wolf, Soren had been relentless in his pursuit. If Lev could have shifted back into his wolf form in those moments, he would have fought Soren tooth and nail to remain at Madeline’s mercy.
But the shift wouldn’t come to him no matter how hard he tried to summon it.
He was still a man. He’d been trapped in his human form since the day he’d found Madeline on Vasilisa’s island. His human body was unrecognizable to him. He’d been a battle-hardened warrior in long-ago days he could barely remember. He’d lived a demanding life in the saddle and on the battlefield, even when he wasn’t a wolf. But none of that had compared to the relentless life he’d lived for hundreds of years as the white wolf. That life was written on his scarred skin and ruthlessly toned physique. Only now could he look back and realize he’d been as relentless as Soren. The red wolf had hunted him. The white wolf had hunted for his lost wife and child even after he’d forgotten their faces and names.
Witches had done this to him. They had tortured him for centuries by taking his family and leaving him with a mad hunger for his wife and son that couldn’t be satiated no matter how much blood he spilled. He’d thought them dead. He’d searched anyway.
Never resting. Never stopping. Never giving up.
Only to discover his long-lost love hated him when he finally found her. It was a suitable end to his legendary tale. The only one he deserved. He hadn’t protected Madeline or Trevor from Vasilisa. He had howled and howled against the Volkhvy queen, but he had never been able to find the family she’d stolen from him. And still he howled. He couldn’t shift and he couldn’t leave Bronwal, not while Madeline, Trevor, Soren and his entire family were at the mercy of witches.
Lev jumped up from the bed and wrenched one of its solid posters free from its frame. His long years as the white wolf had given him incredible strength. His muscles were lean and firm and roped with veins. They bulged as he tore apart the bed and flung its pieces down the winding stairs.
He had felt her fear. It had been a part of him. It had driven him back into the human form he’d shunned for hundreds of years.
Servants would come. They would clear the busted wood away. They would bring him food and drink. They would bring him clothes to replace the shirts and trousers he tore from his skin. They would try to bathe him and bandage the wounds on his feet.
But his rage always won in the end. They always ran away and left him alone. Even his devoted brother, Soren, when he came to check on Lev like clockwork every night, would eventually leave him to howl alone at the too-distant moon.
He’d lived with torment for many years, but it was far worse now that he had felt Madeline’s fear.
Without the help of some of Vasilisa’s loyal servants, who had also survived the attack, Madeline never would have found Bronwal. The servants had given her the money she would need and explained how to use it. In spite of her illness, she was quick-witted and only needed to see or hear something once to understand how to do it herself. They explained that at one time, there had been a mirror portal between Krajina and the Romanovs’ castle, but it had been destroyed.
Madeline was desperate to save Trevor, but she was also terrified to see the white wolf again. The long journey helped to prepare her for what she might have to face. Still, once she hiked to the protected pass where the castle the world had forgotten stood, she stared up at its towered heights with trepidation.
The sword seemed like a dream. Her ability to wield it seemed like a joke. Her hands seemed much more suited to charcoal pencils than deadlier things. But she no longer had the luxury of taking the time to rediscover herself. It was time to decide who she would be. Right here. Right now.
Madeline decided she would be the person who saved her son.
She had dreaded seeing the white wolf again. She hadn’t stopped to imagine what it would be like for all the other citizens of Bronwal to welcome her “home.” She recognized no one. For her, it was exactly as if she’d approached the castle for the first time. She wondered at its breadth and depth. She marveled at its immensity. Only Volkhvy enchantments could have kept it hidden from the outside world for so long.
But by far, it was the whispers and exclamations and expressions on people’s faces that seemed like the greatest barrier between her and the shape-shifter she sought.
“Please, ma’am. Wait here,” an elderly servant advised.
The great hall she entered was cavernous, but its details were swallowed up in shadows.
When someone came to meet her, Madeline finally saw her first familiar face. It was one of the people the white wolf had threatened on the cliff during the storm when she’d woken up to confront him—the warm presence that had taken the sword from her numb fingers.
This was Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess, and Vasilisa’s daughter.
“We didn’t expect you so soon,” the curvy, dark-haired woman said. Her hair tumbled around her face in a chestnut cap of curls. And her lush figure was enhanced by the obvious swell of pregnancy that rounded out the loose tunic she wore. In her arms, she carried a long bundle wrapped in scarlet cloth. The cloth was embroidered with thorny vines. For some reason, the design made Madeline’s heartbeat quicken.
“I’m surprised you expected me at all, but I have no choice. Marked Volkhvy attacked Krajina. They’ve taken Trevor and Vasilisa,” Madeline said. The other woman’s eyes widened and her face blanched. Madeline’s urgency for her son had caused her to be inconsiderate. She should have been gentler when she told Anna about her mother’s kidnapping.
“I marked them. They’re worse than Dark Volkhvy. They were once Light, but they’ve been corrupted by their thirst for power,” Anna said. “You’ve come for Lev’s help,” she continued in a softer tone. She had frozen several steps away. She held the scarlet bundle with one hand while the other had fallen on her stomach as if she was protecting her own baby from harm. “He hasn’t recovered. He might never recover. He is still...lost,” Anna warned.
It hadn’t been concern for her mother that made Anna Romanov go suddenly pale. It had been the very idea that Madeline was here to seek out the white wolf’s help.
She didn’t need the other woman’s fear to remind her of the white wolf’s ferocity. She had sketched his snarl a thousand times from her memories of that day on the cliff. Anna’s fears put hers in perspective. She was more afraid for Trevor than she was of the wolf. She was ready to face him. She had to be.
“I’m also lost. I can’t remember my former life. Vasilisa said my recovery would take time, but I no longer have that luxury. I’m here because I can’t rescue my baby alone,” Madeline said.
“Soren can help. And Ivan. They can help you,” Anna said. “Elena and I—”
“No. The black wolf and the red wolf have to protect their own families. You’re ready to have a baby yourself, and Vasilisa told me that Elena has a newborn,” Madeline said.
“I don’t think Lev will help you,” Anna said. “I don’t think he can.” Her grip on the scarlet bundle was white-knuckled as she spoke, and she took another step toward Madeline, as if she would try to persuade her to go away.
“I’m not here to ask for his help,” Madeline said. “I’m here to demand it.”
Anna paused again. She was shorter than Madeline by half a dozen inches, but even though she was forced to tilt her chin to meet Madeline’s eyes, her direct green gaze still seemed formidable. It took all of Madeline’s will not to back down. For Trevor she stood. For Trevor she didn’t resist when Anna raised the bundle between them and held it horizontally supported on her forearms. The scarlet cloth fell aside to reveal what had been nestled carefully in its soft folds.
Madeline recognized the ruby sword. She reached for it automatically as if she could do nothing else, but when her fingers brushed over the large ruby in the sword’s hilt, nothing happened. It didn’t wake to greet her. It was dark and dull, more grayish black than red, as if it was tarnished by shadows.
Her hands dropped away from the one thing she remembered besides her baby and the white wolf. Its darkness seemed like a rejection. She wasn’t the woman she used to be, and the sword knew it. She wasn’t a brave warrior who had fought for the Light Volkhvy and Queen Vasilisa. She was a confused woman weakened by her long illness and her memory loss.
But she didn’t back away.
“I wondered at its dormancy. I thought maybe it would wake in your presence,” Anna said. She didn’t wrap the cloth back around the sword. She still seemed to watch and wait for some sign that the ruby wasn’t dead.
“I didn’t come for the sword. I came for the white wolf,” Madeline said. Her concerns over her memory loss had risen with her frantic heartbeat to fill her chest and then her throat with a tight heat she could barely speak around. But she wouldn’t allow it to stop her.
“Lev is in the tower room,” Anna replied. “Or what’s left of it. I’ll take you to the stairs. That’s as far as I’m able to go. He rages at the sight of me. Or any Volkhvy. Maybe you’ll receive a better welcome.”
Her tone didn’t sound hopeful. Madeline swallowed against the knot of fear that had solidified at the back of her throat.
Anna turned. She led the way out of the room and toward the back of the castle. Madeline took a deep breath to try to dispel the tightness in her chest and followed. When they came to a large archway that framed the beginning of a spiral staircase, the pregnant woman paused and then stepped aside to make way for Madeline. The stone stairway twisted up and around until its treads curved out of sight.
Anna still held the sword out in front of her as if it was an offering for Madeline. Madeline refused it as she stepped forward.
“Whatever you find at the top of the stairs, you should know that he never stopped searching for you,” Anna said. “He never rested in all the years you were sleeping.”
Madeline paused for a moment. Her back was turned to Anna, but she heard. She also doubted. Vasilisa had warned her that the white wolf was feral. She’d woken to his rage. If he had looked for her and Trevor, he hadn’t had benevolent intentions.
Madeline climbed the stairs. This time, she wouldn’t raise a sword against the white wolf as she had done on the edge of Krajina’s sea cliff. The sword was as closed off and dead to her as her past was to her mind and heart. She only had her love for Trevor to guide her and strengthen her as she climbed up toward the tower room. Her maternal feelings offset her fear. She didn’t know what she would find at the top of the stairs, but she knew she had to try.
Soft electric torches glowed from the soot-blackened walls where flaming torches used to be. Madeline could almost see them flickering. She could almost remember the scent of scorched tallow-soaked cloth as she forced herself to take step after step toward her greatest nightmare.
But any gentler memories were overwhelmed in her mind by visions of the white wolf’s snarl and his red glowing eyes. He was a massive monster with long fearsome fangs and bloodstained fur. She had been filled with the absolute certainty that a dangerous presence had threatened her and Trevor and everyone else there that day. Madeline’s response had been visceral, from the howl that had woken her up as it ripped itself from her body, to the intent that had claimed her to lash out with her sword and kill the beast that seemed to be the only threat she could see.
Anna had stopped her. The white wolf’s shift had stopped her. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to strike at the man as the rain fell and the wind whipped around them. She’d been racked by an internal storm as fierce as the one that tossed the ocean and the atmosphere around Krajina.
The ferocity of her emotion had seemed too big for her body to contain, until Vasilisa had soothed it away with her cool magic.
As she neared the top of the stairs, Madeline had to step around and over the busted-up debris and shredded remains of furniture and clothes. Feathers from pillows that had been torn apart swirled up and floated down around her feet like snow. Ripped-up pages of books joined this feather “snow” to cover the stairs.
And still she climbed.
Her body was heavy. The uncertainty in her chest and throat had expanded until it seemed to flow through her veins to every part of her. Her legs felt weighted down, but she moved them anyway. Her heightened anxiety pressed against her shoulders as if it tried to hold her back. She ignored the pressure. Once again, it seemed as if her body could barely contain the emotions it tried to feel.
But her discomfort and the danger she faced didn’t matter.
Trevor, Trevor, Trevor, Trevor.
He was all that mattered.
Each ringing step of her boots on the stone staircase seemed to echo with her baby’s name. She only paused when she came to the top and found a door torn from its hinges and lying to the side. The door had been crafted with heavy wood on its bottom half and scrolled iron bars on its top half, but for all its sturdy artisan construction, it had been busted loose and practically splintered by whatever force had shoved it aside.
“Go away. I want nothing. I need nothing. How many times do I have to tell you to allow me to bleed?”
Every ounce of trepidation that had filled Madeline’s body drained away when she heard the ragged rough voice ring out and echo down the stairs. Its deep reverberations flowed through her like rushing waters, leaving her hollowed out in their wake. For long seconds, she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t anything. She was only an empty husk that might float down to settle with the feathers and torn papers on the stairs.
And then a basket whizzed past her head. Bandages and tape spilled from it, and the whole mess bounced down the stairs and out of sight. Silence fell, broken only by Madeline’s own respiration. Her breathing was quicker than it should have been. She’d thought the fear was gone, but she found it again, a more silent, calmer disquiet than the overwhelming emotion of before.
She was certain that she was in trouble. She was also certain she would face any trouble imaginable to save her son.
This time it was easier to take the last few steps that brought her into the tower room. She only had to reach up and hold the straps of her backpack and put one foot in front of the other.
And then she saw him again. For the first time in six months.
The trash on the stairs should have prepared her for what she would find, but her breath caught in her throat in a gasp when she saw Lev Romanov. Her fingers went numb on the straps of her bag, and her knees wobbled. She willed her joints to turn to steel, and she managed to stay on her feet.
She’d seen him on the cliff, completely nude and kneeling in the rain. According to Queen Vasilisa, she’d known and loved him, and if that was so, she’d certainly seen him thousands of times before.
Yet she was certain the man before her would have been a stranger even to the warrior she used to be.
He was braced for battle in the middle of the room, with his feet planted wide and his fists clenched at his sides. He wore only torn and bloody trousers low on lean hips. The rest of him was bare. And every inch of his exposed flesh was tensed and hard with ropy muscles that seemed to scream from past exertions she couldn’t imagine. He also had fine white scars etched all over his arms, chest and abdomen. The marks seemed impossible because his flesh appeared too hard to brand. He was stone, a living, breathing statue to commemorate where a man used to be.
He glared at her with intense blue eyes that blazed from behind a shocking white streak of hair. The rest of his hair was blond. It fell in wild locks all around his face and shoulders. His beard was as untamed as his hair.
She couldn’t read his expression. The set of his features was hidden. But the set of his body was not. He stood as if he was in midbattle, always in midbattle, prepared for the next blow and the one after that.
The meaning of his words, the bandages and the blood finally hit her, and Madeline breathed out a long shaky sigh. He was hurt. The blood on his ripped trousers was his own. His feet were crimson, and the flagstones on the floor were marked by his bloodied footsteps. A cold breeze filled the room, and there was glass from the broken windows all over the floor.
“No. I will not allow you to bleed. Nor will I go away and leave you alone. Trevor needs the white wolf to save him,” Madeline said. Her voice sounded almost as rough as his had sounded. As if she hadn’t spoken in an age. But at least it didn’t tremble. She was shaken to her core by Lev Romanov’s appearance, but her voice was firm.
She wasn’t prepared for the savage man in the middle of the room to approach her right away, though she should have been. He was obviously racked by adrenaline and fully committed to waging a war only he could see.
He moved too quickly. Between one stunned blink and the next, he had crossed to her and taken her shoulders in his hands. His grip was too fierce. His fingers pressed into her flesh to hold her in place as he intently examined her face. And it wasn’t only his hardness or his hold that was intimidating. He was well over six feet tall, and she was too used to being the tallest person in the room.
Suddenly, she was small and soft in comparison to him. She was also not nearly as braced for anything as she’d thought she was. He was midbattle. Her fight had just begun.
“Madeline,” he said, and it sounded like a secret they would share, but she couldn’t grasp its meaning. The intensity of his gaze was suddenly fully focused on her face. He scanned her features as if he would memorize them. She was caught and held by his blue eyes, just as he held her with his hands as if he would never let her go.
For weeks, she’d been handled with care by Vasilisa and the entire palace of Volkhvy. She’d been given time and space and consideration as she’d tried to understand the world around her.
Lev Romanov met her with an urgency that stunned her. He was wild with some need she couldn’t begin to understand, when all else was confusion. He fought something with every rise and fall of his broad chest. His fight showed in the grip of his hands and the tension in his entire body.
He pulled her closer, the better to look deep into her eyes, but the move also brought her nearer to his large body. She had seen him nude in the rain, but her vision had been blurred. Here, now, only inches from her, she saw him clearly—every scar, every angle, every plane—and it was all too sudden and intimate for her senses, which had been sleeping for a very long time.
Her breathing had gone shallow, but the scent of the wind trapped in his hair still filled her nose. The room was chilly, but his masculine body heat enveloped her where they stood.
This man had thrown everyone and everything out of his room, but now he grabbed her and pulled her close. He looked deeply into her eyes as if he was preparing to...
Her insecurity over her memory loss flared back to life and resonated all the way to her bones.
“I don’t remember you at all,” Madeline said. “I’m not here for you. I’m here for Trevor. He needs the white wolf.”
Her heart pounded, and the fear crowded out all else that might have been long ago and far away. She needed this savage stranger to help her. She didn’t need to remember him or what they had shared.
His hands tightened for a split second and then released just before she cried out in pain. The sudden squeeze had been reflexive. He noted her pain and let her go as suddenly as the spasm had begun. She thought she saw regret flash in his eyes, but then he dipped his head, and his hair was in the way. Did he use his wild mane as a shield between them? If so, it was only somewhat effective, considering the rest of him was exposed.
“The white wolf is gone,” Lev said. “I can’t shift. I can’t help you. This human body has me again, and it won’t let me go.”
Chapter 3 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Madeline shivered as he stepped away, taking all his feral body heat with him. This was the fight she’d sensed in him. He battled the hold of his human form second by second, minute by minute. He fought to shift, and he’d been fighting since she’d seen him on Krajina. But the white wolf was close beneath the surface of his scarred skin. She could feel its ferocity, and she had seen the glimmer of wildness in Lev’s eyes. She could sense the potential beast, barely contained.
The wolf was still there in him. She was certain of it. But needing the white wolf’s help and wanting him to appear were two very different things.
“It doesn’t matter. You are the white wolf. Whether you have four legs or two. And Trevor needs you,” Madeline said.
“You know who the babe is to me? Who you once were to me?” Lev asked. His stance had gone deceptively distant. He’d taken several steps back. She could still see his tension. She could still feel his attention on her face, even though his hair hid his eyes.
“Vasilisa told me everything. That we were together once, but that the Romanovs betrayed her. She protected Trevor and me during a long illness,” Madeline said.
“An illness? You think the Volkhvy queen saved you,” Lev said hoarsely. He stepped toward her once more, without even seeming to realize he moved. “It isn’t only our son you want to save. You want me to help you save the witch.”
The tension in his body had gone so tight and so still that he had truly become a living statue. It seemed as if his scars were cracks in a marbleized form, and he might shatter into a million pieces if she said the wrong thing. Anna had said he hated all Volkhvy, but surely he would be grateful to the queen who had saved his former wife and his son?
“The ruby sword is dead and I don’t remember how to wield it, but I’m awake now and I’m going after the Volkhvy that took my son,” Madeline said. “I want you to go with me, but if you refuse, I’ll go alone.”
Her bag had been knocked crooked on her shoulders by Lev’s strong grip on her arms. When she tried to straighten it, the zipper of its main compartment gaped open and her sketchbook fell on the floor. Before Madeline could stoop to retrieve it, Lev moved to scoop it up himself.
Madeline bit her lip against the cry of distress that rose to her lips, as if her prize possession had been stolen right before her eyes. Only Lev wasn’t stealing it. He wasn’t ripping it up to fling down the stairs. He was flipping through it. He turned and examined page after page of the sketches she’d drawn of the white wolf. Her every charcoal stroke had been infused with the overwhelming feeling of danger and the threat she’d woken to that day.
His attention was riveted on the sketches. She allowed the hand that had reflexively risen to retrieve the sketchbook from him to fall back to her side.
She’d tried to be brave, but now he knew her deepest fears. They were displayed in drawing after drawing. He had searched her eyes for the warrior he had known. But here was evidence that the warrior was gone. In her place was someone mired in doubt and confusion, along with a deep, abiding helplessness she didn’t know how to dispel. She could only press her way through it and hope to come out on the other side triumphant. For Trevor.
“You came anyway,” Lev said after he had flipped to the last page. He slowly and carefully handed the book back to her, and Madeline took it from him. If possible, his calmness made her more nervous than his tension. She tucked the sketchbook back into her bag. “You came in spite of your fear.”
“Vasilisa told me that witches fear only one thing—the Romanov wolves,” Madeline said. “There’s only one thing I fear as well—failing to save my child.”
I’m awake now.
Every word she uttered pierced his gut with relentless blades of guilt. She didn’t remember him. She didn’t remember the life they’d lived. It had been so long ago. Even for him, running and fighting and searching, always searching, seemed much more immediate in his memories.
But he could see fear in her eyes, and that was the most cutting observation of all. Her fear stabbed into him, and its sharpness sliced away all other concerns. Her eyes no longer glimmered with the scarlet power of the enchanted ruby. Instead, they shimmered with unshed tears. She had come back to Bronwal. She had climbed the stairs that most were afraid to tread. She had trembled in his hands, and he had felt her fragility beneath his rough fingers.
He flexed those fingers now, as if he could force them to forget the warmth of her when they’d just been reminded after centuries of loss.
Her body was different. Her muscles had weakened during the long, enchanted sleep. But her body’s weakness wasn’t reflected in her eyes in spite of her fear. It also wasn’t reflected in her actions. She was afraid of the beast that lived beneath his skin, but that hadn’t stopped her from seeking his help.
Madeline was still a warrior.
She wasn’t his warrior. She wasn’t the ruby warrior. But she was prepared to fight. Her fear didn’t diminish her determination or her bravery. It only complicated what must be done. He’d barely contained the howl that wanted to rip from his depths when she mentioned Vasilisa. Only the knowledge that Madeline was confused and vulnerable kept him from raging against the evil queen. That Madeline might never understand what the witch had done to them was another stinging cut against his scarred skin.
He deserved the pain.
He hadn’t saved them. He had failed Madeline and Trevor, but he wouldn’t fail them again. He would help her go after the Volkhvy that had kidnapped the baby. He would help Madeline save Trevor.
But he wouldn’t save Vasilisa.
His family had to be protected from the evil queen. Yet seeing Madeline again revealed a deeper, darker truth he had to face. She had filled an entire book with sketches of his monstrous snarl, and yet she had still sought him out. She had undertaken an epic journey for a woman out of her own time and place, and she had faced him as he stood, bloody and savage, to “greet” her. He would never forget the fear in her eyes. Paired with the fear he’d felt that morning on the cliff, it was a truth he could no longer fight. He would help her save Trevor. He would kill Vasilisa, and then he would leave.
He would never forget the feel of her arms and the way he had made her flinch with the tightness of his grip.
Even if he could never shift again, he needed to protect his family from the savagery of the white wolf that had settled in to live beneath his scarred skin.
Madeline watched as he decided to help her. She saw him soften and then harden once more. His shoulders slumped for only a moment before they were again stiff and straight and seemingly made of stone.
“I will find him,” Lev said. His certainty was as solid as his lean, strong body. His scars stood out against his flexed muscles as his fists clenched.
Suddenly, adrenaline flowed in a cool rush beneath her skin. She gripped the straps of her backpack to hide the trembling in her hands. She’d made the white wolf a part of her life again, if only for a short time. That frightened her, mainly because she hadn’t reclaimed the memories she needed to be strong enough to face him, but now she had to be concerned over something else: the way Lev Romanov made her feel.
His vivid blue irises blazed from behind the shock of white in his hair. His gaze was full of secrets about the woman she’d been. Those secrets called to her, but she had to ignore them. She had to ignore the tingling in her arms where this stranger had grabbed her, a tingling that had nothing to do with adrenaline and everything to do with his feral warmth.
He was a beast. The trashed room declared it. The sketches in her backpack were further evidence. As were the bruises he’d no doubt left on her skin with his urgency.
He vowed to find their son and help her save him, but she could only wonder, who would save Lev Romanov? He said he could no longer shift, but it was obvious that the white wolf would never let him go.
Madeline set her jaw and firmed her spine. She pressed her mouth into a hard, thin line to keep from betraying her nerves by nibbling her bottom lip. The move was a mistake. His attention fell from her eyes to her lips and lingered there. This should have meant nothing to her, but her heartbeat stuttered and the nerves in the pit of her stomach whirled out of control.
Because he didn’t look at her lips like a stranger would. He looked as if he remembered the taste of her kisses from long ago, and parts of her had suddenly leaped to life, longing to remember, too.
Anna Romanov was waiting when Madeline came back down the stairs. She stood at the ready at the base of the spiraling stone stairway, as if she’d been prepared to do battle should the beast in Bronwal’s tower choose to attack her guest. The sword she’d offered to Madeline in outstretched arms was now held by its hilt at Anna’s side, but its ruby stone was still dark and gray.
“I thought maybe it would wake when you spoke with Lev, but it still sleeps. Not so much as a flicker,” Anna informed her. “It gleamed when you wielded it on Krajina with a fierce ruby light.”
“I remember. That moment on the cliff is all I recall. Nothing more,” Madeline said. “But I will take the sword. The white wolf has agreed to help me save my son. I won’t travel with him unarmed.”
She reached for the hilt of the ruby blade, and Anna released it into her hands. Unlike before, it was heavy and awkward in her grip. She held it vertically with both hands at her waist and the blade extended in front of her breasts and face until the tip stretched beyond the top of her head. She looked from the hilt in her hands up to the sword’s sharp point, and then she lowered her gaze to meet Anna’s on either side of the sharp blade. Anna reached to place her hands over Madeline’s on the hilt. The dark ruby stayed gray above their fingers, but Madeline’s heart fluttered when the other woman squeezed her hands.
She felt...something. A kinship. A connection. To Anna Romanov, if not to the ruby or the blade or the scarred man in the tower above them.
“I am the red wolf’s mate. I am Soren Romanov’s wife. We are sisters, but we are also part of a sisterhood of warriors. The blade will wake in time. Trust it. Trust yourself and the warrior you’re meant to be,” Anna said solemnly, as if she recited a pledge.
“It isn’t myself or the blade I distrust,” Madeline replied. Although that wasn’t entirely true. She remembered nothing of how to wield a blade. Her hands seemed to be made for charcoal pencils, not for legendary weapons. It was only that her self-doubt took second place to her doubt of the man who was supposed to be her mate. She accepted the sword as a practical tool, not its Calling. Anna must have sensed her reservations.
“He never forgot you and Trevor. Not even after he’d forgotten how to be a man. His search carried on until he found you,” Anna said softly.
Madeline noted the woman’s persuasive tone. No one would be able to negate her memory of the white wolf on the stormy cliff. He’d been prepared to attack. Only the arrival of Vasilisa had seemed to prevent it. Madeline took the sword with her as she moved, and Anna let her go. The other woman’s hands fell to her sides.
“You are in as much turmoil as Lev. Please. Give him time. Take time to heal before you reject the connection you once embraced,” Anna said.
“We don’t have time to waste on healing or on each other. Trevor is in danger. We must find him and Queen Vasilisa,” Madeline said. Her hands tightened on the hilt of the sword.
“There’s a portal that will take us to Vasilisa,” Lev Romanov said.
Anna’s reaction to his sudden appearance caused Madeline’s chest to constrict and her breath to catch. Anna Romanov stiffened from head to toe, and she raised her hands from her sides.
Her fingers glowed with emerald light, as if she’d summoned power to meet an attack head-on.
Madeline had allowed the tip of the sword to droop, but she raised it again now in response to Anna’s defensive stance.
Lev paused on the last stone step above them. He was already much taller than Anna Romanov. On the rise, he towered over them both, in spite of Madeline’s height. He had changed his clothes. The shredded pants were gone, and he’d replaced them with black leather leggings that fitted his hard muscles like a second skin. He’d also donned a gray long-sleeved undershirt that looked like it had been made for a smaller man—as if it might burst at the seams should he decide to take a deep breath. Over the tightly stretched T-shirt was a black vest, similar to a jerkin but with more modern features, and on his feet were tall black boots. Like hers, his clothing was a mix of old and new.
Although he was lean—almost starved-looking—his frame was broad-shouldered and his muscles had been built with centuries of strenuous activity. He filled the vestibule in which they all stood with the wild presence she’d already seen in the tower room. Truly, her sword and Anna’s hands seemed like scant defense against the man or the beast he might become at any time.
But the scarred man didn’t attack. He glanced at Anna, and then his attention was all for Madeline. His gaze settled on her face as it had in the tower room, as if he would memorize her features before she left him again. When he spoke, he looked at Madeline, but his words were for Anna Romanov.
“The white wolf attacked you once. I remember. His memories are my memories. I won’t apologize. You’re a witch. I was trying to protect my brother. But know this—Soren has married you. You are a witch, but you are also his wife. I would die before I harmed you now,” Lev said.
“There was a time when I promised not to harm you as well, brother. But know this—I am pregnant, and I will protect my child,” Anna warned.
Madeline only saw Anna’s glow brighten out of the corner of her eye. She faced Lev without lowering her sword. The white wolf had attacked Anna? She couldn’t imagine the petite woman surviving the white wolf’s ferocious bite. She’d drawn his teeth in her sketchbook many times. Each had easily been as long as her hand.
Only at that revelation did Lev look from Madeline to his sister-in-law. Her obvious pregnancy must have escaped his notice since he’d returned to the castle.
“Rest assured, I’m leaving. The baby will be safe when I’m gone,” Lev replied.
His voice was as gruff as it had been before, his vocal cords roughened by centuries of howls. But the glow in Anna’s fingers faded until it was gone. The other woman lowered her hands before Madeline lowered her sword.
And the white wolf noticed, even though he was a man. Lev’s attention seemed to be on Anna, but his spine didn’t soften until Madeline lowered the ruby blade down to her side.
“Ivan destroyed the mirror portal when he found out Elena was going to have a baby. There is no longer a portal in Bronwal,” Anna said.
Lev came off the stairs and into the vestibule in several long strides. His physicality was startling. Madeline had been awake for a while, but she had yet to encounter another human being with such grace and speed. If he had decided to attack, her sword would have been useless even if she hadn’t lowered its tip to the floor. He might be on two legs instead of four. He might look hollow and hungry. But Lev Romanov was still dangerous. Along with the hunger in his appearance, there was also a deep, dark Carpathian wilderness behind his eyes.
“There is another,” Lev said. He spoke to Madeline, as if to reassure her rather than to inform. But he couldn’t be sensitive to the sudden clenching in her gut just above the womb, where Trevor had been carried so long ago.
“Yes. The fountain at Straluci. The fortress is in ruin, but the portal should still be there. It will take you to my mother in the blink of an eye, wherever she is being held. The portals are connected to her,” Anna said. “There are no roads. Only narrow game trails. You’ll have to take horses instead of all-terrain vehicles. It will take more than a week to reach the pass.”
The last was said for her benefit. Anna hadn’t taken her eyes off the white wolf in his human form, but she turned to look at Madeline now. Her green eyes flickered with the power she’d previously called to her hands.
“Then the sooner we leave, the better,” Madeline proclaimed. She wasn’t wearing a scabbard for the ruby blade, and her arm was already tired. The sword was heavy. She felt like a pretender as she stood with it gripped tightly in her hand, but even though her body hadn’t recovered its strength following her illness, her heart was filled with resolve.
“I could cover the distance in a quarter of that time on four legs,” Lev said. He had fisted his hands, and as he spoke he stepped closer to Madeline. One pace. Then two. He stopped and closed his eyes. His head fell back as if he would howl at the moon. The tendons on either side of his neck stood out in sharp relief as his body tensed. He braced his long legs wide apart, and veins bulged on his muscular arms...but nothing happened. The earth didn’t quake. His human form remained as imposing yet somehow vulnerable in all its scarred hardness, as it had been before.
Amazingly, his tight shirt hadn’t given way at the seams. It had only stretched with his flexed muscles as he strained.
“It’s probably best for us all that you can’t,” Anna responded. Madeline didn’t argue. She wouldn’t regret seeking help from Bronwal now that help had been found, even if Anna looked pale and troubled as the giant man beside them sought the shift that still eluded him.
She would face the threat of the white wolf for Trevor just as Anna had faced Lev for her unborn child. It didn’t matter that she had no Volkhvy power to back up her determination. Her determination alone would have to be enough. She would get stronger. She would get wiser. She would navigate this strange modern world with a deadly beast by her side in order to save her son.
But she couldn’t help the tightness in her chest, or the way the sword weighed too heavily in her hand. The witch on the train had tried to poison her. If the marked Volkhvy who had kidnapped the queen and her son wanted her dead, she faced more than the white-wolf threat by her side. She had to guard herself from magical stalkers as well. A longer journey would give the marked witches time to make another attempt on her life.
“The marked Volkhvy might have followed me here. They may try to stop us before we reach the portal,” Madeline warned. She allowed the sword’s tip to rest against the ground, and her arm sighed in relief.
Nothing escaped Lev Romanov’s notice. He had a wolf’s senses even in his human form. His intense glance went from the ruby blade up her arm to her face. Once again, she felt he must find her wanting compared to his memories of the warrior she’d been. Sketching didn’t require strength. Battling those witches who might try to kill her would, as would protecting herself should the shift come to the man who so desperately summoned it. If the white wolf proved to be the foe of the stormy cliff rather than the ally she sought...
Her thoughts were interrupted by the tight smile that claimed Lev’s angular face. He had the Romanov nose and sculpted jaw. His beard didn’t hide the perfection of his bone structure, nor did his scars detract from his symmetric features. He was many things—large, muscular and intimidating; scarred, wild and uncivilized—but he was also handsome. The smile startled her. It was a surprising punch to the tightness in her gut. The one-sided upward curve of his lips stole her breath and made her own lips go numb.
“I welcome them to try,” Lev said. His husky voice was pitched even lower than it had been before. His lids had lowered over his vivid blue eyes, his thick lashes creating dusky shadows on his cheeks. Though Anna was only a few feet away from them, the moment was suddenly intimate, and it was as though no one besides Madeline and Lev was there.
It was a promise to help her and Trevor. An uttered contract between them. Madeline forced her lungs to expand. She moistened her lips and nibbled the numbness away.
Lev didn’t blink or look away. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and met her eyes boldly, watching her soak in the promise he’d made.
She might not know if the white wolf was her friend or her foe, but at that moment, she knew Lev Romanov had been born a champion, and a champion he remained. After all he’d been through in his long, harsh life, he might no longer be her mate, but, shifted or not, he was still a Romanov wolf.
He would stand against the marked Volkhvy who stalked her, and he would help her rescue their son.
Chapter 4 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Lev had ridden horses almost from the day he was born. He could ride as easily as he could walk. The question was whether the horses could handle being ridden by a man who had been a wolf for a very long time now.
As Lev approached, it took several men to settle the two large destriers Ivan Romanov had ordered prepared for his younger brother and the woman who had been his wife. Madeline had already been placed in her saddle on the smaller white gelding. She held on admirably well for someone who had been asleep for centuries. He noted the white-knuckled grip she had on the reins. He also noted the ruby sword in a scabbard that hung from the pommel of her saddle within easy reach should she need it.
He’d already seen how poorly she held the blade. Her grip had been uncertain, as if she’d never wielded a sword before. Somehow during their journey, he would have to help her remember her prowess with the blade in spite of the fact that she obviously thought he might be the one she would need to wield it against.
The second horse was an impressive dun stallion. Its polished black hooves stood out sharply from the fringes of long white hair. These were warhorses bred to carry armored warriors into battle. They, too, had been caught up in Vasilisa’s curse. Her spell had prolonged the lives of everyone at Bronwal merely to torture them. The horses looked as out of place in this century as Lev felt.
“You frighten them,” Soren said as he and Anna came out of the castle behind him. “Ivan does as well. They will calm down once they realize you’re not going to eat them.”
Although they were twin brothers, Soren had flaming red hair instead of blond. His beard and hair were also neatly trimmed save for a long bang that threatened to flop over his eyes. Lev was conscious of his own overgrown hair and beard. He’d pulled back the unruly waves into a thick queue at the nape of his neck. That was all. He’d refused to try to improve his appearance any more than that. If he looked uncivilized, it was only the God’s honest truth. He was a savage. His years as the white wolf had left him with that legacy.
Better for everyone to see and acknowledge the wildness inside him, while Soren had embraced more than a witch. His trimmed hair and beard proclaimed his mastery over the red wolf.
Then again, Soren had always been more man than beast.
So unlike himself.
Anna and Soren held hands. Lev watched his brother gently hold his pregnant wife as if she was a treasure he’d found. He’d once treated a pregnant Madeline the same way. He had to close his eyes and swallow against the ghost of tenderness that assailed him. He pushed the unwelcome memory away. Then he opened his eyes to watch Anna Romanov warily. Not as his sister-in-law, but as a threat. As always, the witch made his hair follicles tighten as if she brought with her a charge that fueled the very air around them.
Soren patted the dun horse on the rump. It did prance at his touch and snort, but then it settled into place without further fuss...until Lev reached for the reins. The side of his hand brushed along the dun’s neck, and the horse whickered in fear. It sidestepped away from his touch, and its front hooves came up off the ground.
“Okay. Maybe they’re a little more afraid of you than they are of me and Ivan,” Soren said.
The white gelding’s nostrils flared, and Madeline had to tighten her legs and speak calming words to her mount as Lev hoisted himself up into the saddle of the frightened dun. He pounced as he would have if he’d been hunting instead of riding. He settled gracefully into the saddle even though it was a moving target, and masterfully brought the horse back under control with his strong hands and thighs—but more so with his aura of authority and strength of will.
Ivan was the alpha of the Romanov pack, but only because Lev had never vied for the position.
The horse trembled beneath him, but it stopped trying to rear up on its hind legs.
“Show-off,” Soren said. He’d come to stand beside Lev’s leg. With one hand, he held the bridle of the dun and placed the other on Lev’s knee. “Come back to us, brother. I searched for you too long and too hard for you to run away now that I’ve seen your face again.”
“To Straluci,” Lev said, giving his brother no reply. With a deft thump of his heel, he urged his mount to depart. Soren’s hand fell away.
The dun leaped forward, and Madeline’s horse followed at her direction. Lev refused to glance back at Bronwal or his twin brother. He couldn’t allow his brother’s love for his new wife to cloud his judgment. Her mother was an evil queen who must be destroyed. It was the only way.
As was his decision to never return. The brotherly connection he felt for his twin tugged at the very marrow of his bones as he rode away, but the wildness that haunted his soul was a stronger force. It propelled him away with the certainty that he could only protect those he loved by reclaiming the shift and leaving them far behind.
Madeline had seen an ATV in the stables. It was a mechanically propelled vehicle with cushioned seats. It wasn’t quite midmorning when she began to obsess about those cushions and regret the necessity of horses on the narrow trails they followed.
The deep, evergreen Carpathian forest had devoured them shortly after they left Bronwal. Meager spring sunshine barely penetrated the canopy above them as the horses stepped carefully on the path that was frequented by sure-footed deer and wolves and bears, more than domesticated animals.
What began as a hum to soothe the skittish horse beneath her became a nostalgic song softly murmured below her breath. She didn’t remember it exactly. The words came from somewhere inside her that was more warmth than memory. More feeling than thought. Tears sprang into her eyes and burned her nose when she realized she softly sang a lullaby. It was tentative, but it was there. More in her heart than in her mind.
“We’ll water the horses here,” Lev said, suddenly breaking off the trail and heading toward a stream that had been unobtrusively gurgling beside their route.
Needing to stretch and being able to stretch were two different things, Madeline thought, but her horse followed Lev’s and she didn’t attempt to stop it. There was no obvious clearing. Only a slight break in the trees allowed them to make their way toward a patch of moss above the water.
The white gelding came to a stop beside the larger dun, and she was somehow able to swing her leg over the pommel of her saddle. She hopped to the ground without moaning out loud. Lev seemed to ignore her. He didn’t make conversation, didn’t directly look her way, but she felt him. When he stood and tilted his head to drink, she could imagine his pleasure at the fresh, cold hydration. From a tingling awareness along her spine to the heat that rose in her cheeks, her problem was that she couldn’t ignore him. His presence was too noticeable to dismiss.
She jumped when he turned at her approach to hand her the container. She had been right. His attention was on her the whole time. Her every step was noticed, even when he didn’t look her way. She took the container and gulped too quickly. She ended up awkwardly coughing and gasping for air as she recovered from choking.
Lev still didn’t speak. He didn’t meet her eyes. She was glad. Her glances flicked over him constantly without settling. He made her nervous. It wasn’t fear of the wolf in him so much as fear of being caught watching him. She didn’t want her awareness of him to show. She didn’t want him to know that she couldn’t look away for long.
Suddenly, he broke away from the invisible awareness that seemed to draw them together in spite of forced disinterest on both their parts. Still unused to the scent of the white wolf in their midst, the horses snorted and pawed against their tethers as Lev approached. Madeline turned to see what he intended to do. When Lev pulled the ruby sword from its sheath on her saddle, the water container dropped from her fingers to the mossy ground.
She was supposed to become stronger and wiser. Instead, she’d left her sword half a dozen feet away.
Madeline took several steps toward the man who easily held the long warrior’s blade in one hand, but she froze when Lev came around the horses toward her. He effortlessly spun the sword in an arc of graceful but deadly movement around his large frame. He might have been a wolf for centuries, but his physicality as a man had only been enhanced by his time as a beast. His muscles bulged and relaxed and bulged again with his moves, as he seemed to test and then savor the heft of the blade as it arced around and around.
“You don’t remember the weight of it in your hand? Its power at your fingertips?” Lev asked.
A flush of heat spread from Madeline’s cheeks down to her throat and chest. She swallowed, suddenly very aware of the pulse at the base of her neck. If he looked, he would see her heartbeat throb, and it would no longer be throbbing simply from fear.
He continued to approach, effortlessly testing the blade as if he had no idea his words would call up a vision of him in her head, his power at her fingertips. In her imagination, she combined the blade with the man. Both powerful. Both intriguing. Both obvious omissions in her hollow memories. What he was asking was “How could she have forgotten such a sword?” What she thought was “How could she have forgotten such a man?”
And then she pushed such impossible thoughts away.
It didn’t matter what he’d once meant to her. For now, he was a necessary companion and also a potential danger to herself and to her child. She needed him. She also needed to be wary of the way he made her feel. He had said he couldn’t shift, but how long would his inability to call the white wolf last? She had to behave as if the threat of the wolf was with her every moment.
“I can’t reclaim the past I’ve lost. I can only move forward from here,” Madeline said.
Lev lowered the blade. He had approached until he was facing her, and he stood too close to continue to test the sword. Instead, he held it outstretched beside them. It wasn’t a threatening display, however—it was a pause. Whatever his intention, he’d been interrupted by his sudden awareness of her nearness. The sword was forgotten. He looked down into her eyes, and his whole powerful body stilled. His wide chest didn’t rise and fall. He didn’t move forward or back. He didn’t so much as blink as their gazes locked.
Madeline took in enough oxygen for both of them. Her respiration was shallow and quick. Too quick. She couldn’t look away. Instead, she searched his blue eyes for some indication of his intent. The blade was still in his hand, but his lids were low and his cheeks were flushed. His lips were slightly open and soft against the hardness of his angular face.
Her fingers flexed with the sudden desire to shave the wild growth that prevented her from fully appreciating his cheeks and jaw and chin. His beard was darker and more burnished gold than his blond hair, with no trace of the white streak that was more of a nod to the white wolf’s fur than to Lev Romanov’s age. The centuries showed more in Lev’s muscular hardness than they did in his general appearance. He looked as if he’d been born twenty-five or thirty years ago. Not in the Middle Ages.
She’d stared at herself in the mirror. Her age wasn’t apparent at all. She looked as if she’d fallen asleep at twenty and woken up the next morning. Except for the absence of light in her eyes. She was missing...something. The brown of her irises wasn’t as liquid as it should be. She needed to move forward, but the past she couldn’t remember might remain an emptiness in her for the rest of her days.
“Moving forward will help you recall. Whether or not you reclaim your memories will be your decision,” Lev said. He leaned slightly toward her, his face tilted down. Strands of thick, wavy hair fell forward, released from the binding at the nape of his neck by his movement. She clenched her fingers into fists to keep from reaching out to touch the startling white locks that sprang free.
“This sword was made for your hand. Your body will remember if you expect it to.” His eyes gleamed a brighter blue behind the white. She was relieved when he moved back to bring the sword up between them. He held it as Anna had held it, horizontally, as an offering for her to take.
“I’m not the woman I was before,” Madeline said softly. She’d seen him looking for the warrior she’d been. He searched for her now in between one blink and the next. His intense gaze burned its way deep into her soul, but he must have felt that his search came up empty because there were still no memories for her to recall. There was nothing but the weight of Trevor against her breast. “I can only remember the baby. I held him forever as I slept. I protected him in my arms for centuries. That’s the only knowledge of the past that I have.”
Now her fisted hands weren’t to keep from touching Lev’s hair. Her fists were for the witches who had kidnapped her child. She didn’t need any memories of being a warrior to know that she would fight to save the baby they’d stolen.
“Take this blade to save our child. Remember it, and it will remember you,” Lev said.
Madeline’s fingers opened, and she lifted her hands to accept the blade. Lev laid it across her outstretched hands. For a stunning moment, the sunlight shone through the trees and onto the ruby. It seemed to flicker to life. But then the leaves whispered with the wind, and shadows fell once more.
The ruby was as gray and dull as it had been before.
Chapter 5 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Take this blade to save our child. Remember it, and it will remember you.
He’d wanted to say “Remember me.” The words had risen from his heart to his lips, but he’d stopped them just in time. He’d hardened his mouth against them. He was here to help Madeline save Trevor. He was here to find and kill Queen Vasilisa. That was all. As she’d said, the past couldn’t be reclaimed. But not for the reason she thought. She was still a warrior. She would always be a warrior. She’d been a warrior while she was sleeping, protecting their baby against her breast. Her eyes were troubled and wounded, but they still gleamed with determination and fury, even if they didn’t gleam with ruby fire.
He was the one who couldn’t reclaim what had been lost. Even as he’d reclaimed his human form, he’d known it. It wasn’t only his skin that had been scarred by the years of ceaseless wandering and torment. The white wolf’s rage continued to live beneath his skin like a never-ending howl only he could hear, and its claws had dug away his humanity too deeply for him to ever fully find it again.
His body was a sham, his desire for Madeline only an echo of what had been when he was a civilized man. When he’d released the sword into her hands, he ignored the spark caused by the phantom ghost of their previous connection.
And then he’d stepped back, prepared to be the cool and impersonal instructor she needed to help her remember the sword. Only the sword.
Him, she could and should forget.
The training session lasted only an hour, but when they were finished, Madeline’s arm was trembling and rubbery, and she was panting with exertion. Sweat had dampened her hair, even though the mountain forest was cold.
Lev didn’t pant or sweat. He had shown her every thrust and twist and parry, often with his hands over hers to demonstrate technique, but other than a wind-kissed flush on his cheeks above his golden beard, he seemed wholly unaffected.
“Our lives consisted of battle and training for battle. Your muscles will remember even if your mind doesn’t,” Lev said.
“There must have been other things. Like singing...” Madeline thought of the lullaby. Then she tried not to think of how Trevor had been conceived. “Um, dancing?”
They had walked back to the horses. This time the dun didn’t prance at all, and the white merely snorted at Lev’s approach. It was Madeline who tried to prance away when Lev reached to help her tired body onto the back of the gelding. He caught her easily, but in deference to her avoidance, he deposited her quickly into the saddle and stepped away.
Her waist still burned from the memory of his short-lived grasp—so strong and sure—even after they headed back onto the trail. Her exhaustion was as much from resisting the effects of his touch during her training session as from the exercise itself. He had taken no liberties. Each time he’d positioned her hands on the hilt or her shoulders and hips, he’d released her the moment the demonstration was finished. Yet her body still became flushed and sensitive. By the time the session was over, she ached for his touch to become more personal.
She had counted the seconds each brush of his hands had lasted.
“We sang and danced. Of course. In between our battles with the Dark Volkhvy. And all the while we didn’t realize we were kept in Vasilisa’s gilded cage. We were her most treasured champions. Until we were not,” Lev said.
“Did the Dark Volkhvy cause my long illness?” Madeline asked.
Lev pulled the large dun to a sudden stop. He turned in his saddle to face her. Madeline’s horse stopped at the dun’s hip because the trail was too narrow for him to pass.
“Is that what the witch told you?” he asked. She was suddenly on alert again after being lulled by the gelding’s steady hoof beats beneath her. Lev was deceptively quiet. She could feel a new tension in the air. She could see his stiff shoulders and his white-knuckled grip on the reins.
“She only said I’d been ill. Not how or why,” Madeline said.
“Queen Vasilisa spelled you into an enchanted sleep. One so deep and so long that it clouded your memories. Your past wasn’t stolen by an illness or the Dark Volkhvy. There is no Dark and Light. All Volkhvy are evil. Vasilisa most of all. She wasn’t your savior, Madeline. She was your tormentor. She stole you and Trevor away from Bronwal before she cursed us all,” Lev said. The howl was present in his voice again. More than ever. His words were husky rasps in the shadowed forest. The sun had entirely disappeared. The canopy was dense, but clouds must have rolled in high above them in a sky they couldn’t quite see.
Madeline’s body no longer ached from physical exertion or burgeoning sensual need. She’d gone numb from her forehead to her toes. Her fingers had gone slack on the reins, and the gelding shuffled aimlessly in its tracks with no guidance except for the dun’s broad hips ahead.
“She was helping me recover. She was making sure Trevor woke slowly so he wouldn’t be affected the way I’d been. She tried to protect him from the marked Volkhvy when they attacked,” Madeline said.
“Whatever she does, she does for herself. For her own ends. She isn’t human—never forget it. Long ago she took my father from his family and manipulated his genes to create a supernatural champion. He helped her. He provided an entire family of supernatural beasts to fight her enemies. We married and brought our warrior mates into her service. And she repaid us with a horrible curse. The Ether ate us, again and again. Once every hundred years we materialized. She wanted to watch our slow demise,” Lev said.
He kicked the dun and it leaped forward into a trot in spite of the rough path. The white gelding followed, and Madeline’s hands were too numb to pull it back. Was everything she’d learned since she woke up a lie? The Volkhvy on Krajina had been kind to her. Very unlike the marked Volkhvy who had attacked the island. And she’d felt Anna’s warmth. She’d instinctively trusted one of the other women who wielded a Romanov blade.
Lev had to be wrong about the Light Volkhvy. And if he was wrong about the Light, then he was wrong about Vasilisa, too. She was Anna’s mother. Madeline’s sanity was currently being saved by the idea that wherever Trevor had been taken, he at least hadn’t been taken there alone. Vasilisa would take care of him until Madeline could get there. She had to believe that, in spite of what Lev believed.
Queen Vasilisa had created the Romanov wolves, and she’d forged the enchanted blades for their mates. That much was true. The rest? Madeline’s mind seemed shrouded in fog. She had woken too quickly, Vasilisa had said. She’d risen from her long sleep too fast and left her memories behind.
It had been the white wolf’s howl that had woken her up. She’d echoed it. His howl had ripped from her throat and passed her lips as it sprang from her own chest. The crystal bed she’d slept in had been shattered, Trevor gone.
But as her horse followed after the dun that had already disappeared down the curving trail, Madeline wondered who had shattered the crystal and taken the sleeping baby from her breast. She’d blamed the white wolf for waking her too soon, but perhaps the blame didn’t lie entirely with him alone.
Her skin was as soft as the petals of a flower. The faint scent of roses was tangled in the auburn strands of her hair. As he’d tried to focus on reminding her of her prowess with a blade, he was distracted again and again by observations he couldn’t ignore.
The forest canopy above them was dense. The majestic spruce surrounding the mossy bank were lined up in seemingly never-ending rows of bitter bark and evergreen bows. But sunlight still peeked through and found its way in beams down to the top of Madeline’s head. The rays of light turned the waves of her hair to fire. The strands were a myriad of colors, from light gold to the deep red of tarnished copper. He’d grown up with a ginger twin, but Soren had ordinary red hair. Madeline had flames.
He forced himself to only touch her when necessary. He corrected her hold on the hilt of her weapon, and his fingers burned where they touched hers. He nudged her feet farther apart with the toe of his boot against her foot, and he hated himself for remembering his bare leg welcomed between her naked thighs. He pressed a hand against the small of her back to urge her to straighten her spine, and he quickly pulled it away rather than allowing himself to press her body against his.
It was an hour of the worst torture he’d ever experienced, but he endured it because in spite of all the observations that hurt him, he also noticed her shoulders begin to line up with her blade the way they should, directing the sword. He noticed that the sweat on her brow didn’t stop her from going through the forms he suggested over and over again.
She would be prepared to wield the blade against the Volkhvy even if it killed her. She possessed the same determination as ever. She didn’t need memories to drive who she was at heart.
Of course, he also noticed her breath catch and her body go still when he leaned in close behind her to position her elbows. For only a moment their bodies had been touching, from her back to his chest all the way down to hips and legs. The swell of her bottom encased in tight fawn leggings had been pressed against the tops of his thighs. He had paused for only a second, allowed himself to savor the touch but only for the blink of an eye, and then he had stepped back before his response to their mutual stillness could betray itself against the small of her back.
He had ended the session soon after, no longer trusting himself or his focus. She had seemed as glad to back away and return to the horses as he had been.
And then Madeline had brought up her enchanted sleep. She’d reminded him of why they were undertaking this journey in the first place.
Vasilisa must be stopped.
She had endangered his family for the last time.
He would lose them for good when it was all said and done, but they would be safe. That was all that mattered.
The problem with travel on horseback down a narrow trail where she was required to do nothing but let her horse follow the one leading was that she had hours to think. Since she couldn’t ponder memories, she was left reliving every second of her time with Lev on the mossy bank by the stream.
His body was inhuman in its hardness, but instead of being repelled by his steely arms and legs or the solid rock of his chest, she was drawn to him as if her soft body could soothe away the centuries of hardship that had caused his to turn to stone. She could tell he tried to keep his touch impersonal. She could also feel him fail each time he brushed his hand against hers. He leaned into her as if he was freezing and she was the flame.
She tried to keep the image of the white wolf in her mind, but even though she’d sketched the monster a thousand times, she failed. Lev Romanov was intimidating. He was tall and broad and as lean as any hungry hunter could be. But he didn’t act like a predator. Oh, he noticed her every move. He sensed every time she reacted to his touch. But he didn’t exploit her weakness.
Not even when, God forgive her, she’d hoped that he would.
He had held her from behind, and she’d felt every inch of his hard body against hers, including his obvious reaction to holding the small of her back to him.
Then he had stepped away.
She had quaked like a leaf afterward. Perhaps he had thought she had overexerted herself. He had ended their practice. He’d headed back to the horses. She’d been left to mull over the impossible: the white wolf she’d been told to distrust had refused to devour willing prey.
Chapter 6 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
They were being followed. As the forest darkened around them, Lev could detect the scent of wolves on the breeze. He was well used to wild wolves. He’d run with them for over a hundred years. They naturally bowed down to his giant white-wolf form. In his supernatural body, he was easily the apex predator of the mountain. Volkhvy power might be evil, but it had given him the power he’d needed to survive when Vasilisa cursed Bronwal.
Now his ability to shift was gone.
For whatever reason, he couldn’t set the white wolf free. It was as if his human body was unwilling to risk disappearing for another hundred years or more. He was drenched with sweat by the time the sun set, but he was still a man. He’d asked Madeline to ride in front when he first scented the wolves. She hadn’t looked back at him since then. If she had, she might have drawn the ruby sword from the scabbard at her knee. She would have seen his tension. She would have anticipated the arrival of the white wolf she feared.
Now she might have to draw her sword to fend off natural wolves instead.
“We’ll stop here for the night,” Lev said. He directed his horse toward the side of the trail, where a large spruce had fallen following a heavy snowstorm several months before. The branches were still filled with green needles, although they were dry and rustled with a sharp skeletal rush when the wind blew through them. He liked the fallen tree because it would form a barrier wall between the shadows of the forest and the open trail. It would be a line of defense against any wolves that might come from the trees. They would camp against it, and he could build a large fire between the massive trunk and the trail.
“We should keep going. I have flashlights in my pack,” Madeline said. She’d turned her horse around, but she didn’t dismount.
“We’re being followed by a pack of wolves. A sizable one. If they choose to attack, it will be under the cover of darkness. We need a fire and a defensible position,” Lev said.
Madeline didn’t argue further. She jumped off her horse and led the animal to where Lev had dismounted. The white gelding seemed ghostly, and Madeline’s face was indistinct in the shadows, even to his eyes—and his vision was enhanced by the wolf that lived beneath his skin.
“We’ll need to keep the horses near the fire, which means they’ll have to be near me. They won’t like it, but it can’t be helped,” Lev said.
“They’re not as skittish as they were. The dun hasn’t reared once today,” Madeline said.
“The wolves will have them prancing if they come much closer,” Lev said. He raised his nose into the air and breathed in to try to gauge the position of the pack. Madeline watched him with wary eyes. She dreaded his shift. He lowered his nose and met her serious gaze. He stepped toward her without thinking. One pace and then two, stopping only a foot away from where she had frozen at his advance.
Once Madeline’s eyes had shimmered with ruby highlights. Now they were dark and brown. Lev reached and placed one crooked finger under her chin. Gently, with the slightest pressure, he urged her face to tilt upward so he could get a better look at her eyes. It was a mistake to touch her. It was a mistake to get too close. Because no matter how close he got, it would never be close enough. “I’ve told you I can’t shift, Maddy. Be wary of the wolves that stalk us, but don’t be afraid of me.”
“You are the wolf. I see him in your eyes. I see him in the way you move. So quick. So graceful. Your intensity is his intensity. You aren’t afraid of the wolves. You’re as ready for their challenge as the white wolf would be,” Madeline whispered.
She didn’t pull away. She didn’t move back. Her willingness to stay close to him even though she saw him as the white wolf seared him to his core. She was right. He was ready for the wolves’ challenge. It was her he couldn’t face. Or the memory of what they had been to each other. Not now, when empty desire rose in affection’s place. He wouldn’t take advantage of her attraction for him. He wouldn’t indulge the pull between them. Not even after centuries of being apart.
He looked at her lips as he made the decision not to taste them again for what she would perceive as the first time. They parted beneath his attention as she breathed a soft gasp of awareness. He wasn’t ashamed of the tremble in his hand on her skin or how it betrayed the amount of control he had to use not to dip down and suck on her full, sweet lower lip.
“Bring your sword with you and bed down by the fire. I’m going to find our stalkers and ascertain their intent,” Lev said. In truth, he simply needed to run away. From the soft flick of Madeline’s tongue as she moistened her unkissed mouth, and from his desire to lick her lips himself. He would be a fool to try to sleep beside her, enveloped by the fire’s heat.
He was the one who dropped his hand. Stepped back from her upturned face. Turned away.
Madeline went for her sword while he gathered the necessary kindling. With the modern lighter from his pack, it took no time to start a fire. It was roaring by the time Madeline returned with her sword and a roll of padded bedding.
“Keep the fire going through the night. I’ll find the wolves and keep an eye on their movements until sunrise,” Lev said. He saw a dawning wisdom in the depths of her eyes as he turned away. She knew he was avoiding being near her. He had confessed it with his touch on her chin and with his eyes on her mouth.
“I need your help to save my son,” Madeline said.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Lev said. “We will save our son together.”
She didn’t remember Lev’s kiss of the past, but there was nothing wrong with her imagination. He was an intense man. His touch stayed on her skin long after he’d disappeared into the forest shadows. The heat he’d left on her face transferred itself to the mouth he hadn’t touched with anything other than his gaze.
The white wolf was a monster—that was a truth she knew from her sketches and her vivid memories of the stormy cliff. And she wanted the monster’s kiss. She ached to remember what it had been like to press her lips to Lev Romanov’s mouth. She must have been far bolder than she was now. Far less cautious and afraid. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her breath came fast as she merely imagined what it would have been like earlier if she had narrowed the gap between them herself. She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to claim the only softness on his hard, scarred face. His lips were indulgent in an otherwise forbidding mien. They begged for kisses even as everything else warned her away.
Kissing him would be a mistake. It was wrong to even imagine flicking her tongue into his mouth and tasting him...again. The idea that she already had, that they had been mates once upon a time, was driving her crazy. Her body told her they would be good together, because it already knew they were.
That the white wolf was the one with enough control to walk away made her feel like the beast. She’d been awake for such a short time. The world was sudden and new. She had no memories to anchor her. Only the drive to save Trevor and help Vasilisa. Only the need to relearn the swordsmanship she’d forgotten.
And now this.
The desire to remember Lev Romanov’s kiss.
A wolf howled far in the distance. It was a thready sound, small and wavering. Nothing to fear with a roaring fire beside her and a sword near her fingertips. The horses didn’t even dance in their tethers.
Yet somewhere out in the forest, Lev ran alone on two legs instead of four, and even though they were no longer connected, Madeline couldn’t put him from her mind as she lay by the fire. Invisible strings seemed to run from her consciousness out into the night as if they connected her to him, seeking to knit them together.
Madeline turned toward the fire. The ruby sword was within reach. The dancing flames illuminated the dull gray gem, seemingly bringing it to life. She couldn’t reclaim the connection she’d once had with Lev Romanov. Not when she knew the beast that hid beneath his skin. She’d seen his wicked maw. She’d seen the blaze of fury in his eyes. The control he’d displayed today was a lie.
Madeline opened the backpack that sat beside the sword. She took out her sketchbook and flipped through its familiar pages. The firelight illuminated the ferocity and anger of the white wolf. His savagery. His menace.
Much better for Trevor that she focus on this truth: Lev Romanov couldn’t be trusted. He was a monster waiting to happen. Her son had been through enough. Once he was back in her arms, she would protect him from all harm, including the threat posed by his own father.
The sword was waiting. It didn’t have to glow with ruby light to be a weapon. Madeline reached for its hilt and stood up. This time, her fingers settled into the slight grooves of use that were invisible to the naked eye. Something in her knew where each digit should rest, where they had rested long ago.
Illuminated by simple firelight in the absence of Volkhvy power, Madeline went through the practice motions Lev had shown her. The ruby didn’t glow. There was no connection between her and the blade and the white Romanov wolf. But there was muscle memory, just as Lev had said there would be. The moves came more smoothly with each repetition. Her body knew which way to bend and flow, so she allowed it to take control.
The night was long, but it was also familiar. Although he didn’t have fur to warm him or giant paws to eat up the ground over which he traversed, running through the Carpathian woods had been his life for so long that it was anything but a hardship now. Within minutes, he had found his rhythm with two feet instead of four paws. He loped more easily than any other man could through the game trails that ran through the trees in a nearly invisible network of lines.
After a time, he found the pack, far enough away from Madeline and the horses to soothe his mind. He settled in to watch them from an upwind vantage point high in a tree he had easily scaled with his strong arms and legs. With his back braced against the trunk, he counted the wolves as they milled around. If their aimless wandering hadn’t clued him in to an abnormality, their numbers would have. He’d been right. The pack was large. Too large. And as he watched, more wolves came from all directions to join the others already amassing beneath him.
He and Madeline wouldn’t make it to Straluci without a fight.
But Madeline had also been right.
He would be prepared for the challenge, shifted or not. The white wolf inside him raised its head and howled with a ferocity unmatched by the natural wolves below him.
Chapter 7 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)
Madeline slept fitfully, always waking in time to refuel the fire when it died down. It was nearly morning when she woke to discover that Lev had stoked the fire. He was wrapped in another sleeping roll that had come from a pack on the dun horse’s back. He faced away from her toward the trees on the other side of the fire. The dancing flames painted his broad back with shadows and light.
He wasn’t asleep.
She watched his breathing rise and fall, and somehow she knew he had sensed her waking. Neither of them spoke. The silence stretched, straining the strings she imagined between them, but just as she thought she would ask him about the wolves, another howl sounded. It was as far away as the last one she’d heard.
“I couldn’t find the Volkhvy that are influencing them, but they aren’t acting alone,” Lev said. He didn’t roll toward her. His back looked stiff.
“Will they try to prevent us from reaching Straluci?” Madeline asked. Her hand had gone for the hilt of her sword. The move was instinctive, driven by memories she couldn’t recall.
“They won’t succeed,” Lev replied.
It was the answer she expected because it was the one she felt deep in her bones. She would save her son, come witches or wolves. The only other option was death.
He didn’t sleep. He waited. Finally, when the night mist began to rise toward a hint of pink sky, he rose from his bedding. Madeline had been restless throughout the night, but she’d fallen into an exhausted slumber less than an hour ago. He’d sensed when she no longer watched his back. He knew when her eyes closed.
Before he left their campsite to check on the wolves again, he made sure the fire still had enough fuel to burn until the sun fully came up. Then he stepped lightly to his companion’s side. She murmured indistinctly in her sleep. He couldn’t be certain if her sounds were ones of protest or appeal. The firelight danced on her pale cheeks. The ruby sword was forgotten beside her.
But it was the position of her hands that stabbed him with invisible blades, cleaving his heart in two.
Her arms were crooked over her chest, and her hands were cupped as if her palms supported a baby’s head and bottom. Trevor was in danger somewhere out in the world. Only Vasilisa and the marked witches knew where, but Madeline still tried to hold him safely to her breast.
Madeline murmured again and her fingers twitched as if her body knew something was wrong, even if her sleeping mind did not. It would be doubly cruel to wake to empty arms if her dreams were filled with lullabies and the powder scent of Trevor’s sweet curls.
Lev’s chest constricted. He knew that cruelty from personal experience. He fisted his hands at his sides and kept his spine straight and tall. She wouldn’t welcome him leaning over and smoothing the waves of her fiery hair back from her forehead. She wouldn’t want him bending down and holding her empty hands.
He had failed to protect his wife and child for centuries. He couldn’t undo the harm that had been done to them. He could only try to protect them now. The pack of wolves he’d seen would be tired this morning. With the sunrise, they would probably collapse from their frenzy of the night before.
He still couldn’t shift, but he was far from an ordinary man. He would go to the alpha wolf and try to overcome the unnatural influence he suspected the wolf was under. He would try to disband the pack and send them on their way before the Volkhvy could use them to try to stop Madeline from reaching their child.
It was a risky move. The alpha had the power of the pack behind him, and somewhere, the Dark power drawn from the Ether by the marked Volkhvy was also at work. Lev could almost scent the smell of Darkness caught and held in the ozone of the morning mist.
He turned away from Madeline’s prone form and headed into the forest. He couldn’t shift, but he had decided he would still try to challenge the alpha wolf with the ferocity of the white Romanov wolf that lived in his heart.
Aleksandr worried the raised skin of the brand on his forehead. His fingers had long since grown used to the roughened shape of the bellflower that Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess, had emblazoned on him, on all her enemies, when they tried to send her red wolf into the Ether for the last time.
The amount of power it had taken for her to instantly sear the mark on all of them had been prodigious. Habit sent his fingers to the brand, but no matter how often he traced its design, he was surprised all over again. Anna’s abilities had been magnified by the emerald in the hilt of the Romanov blade she had taken from him. It had come to life for her because her mother had forged it for the red wolf’s mate. At that time, she hadn’t consciously accepted the connection, but her heart had known.
She had literally glowed in defense of the red wolf she loved, and the energy she expelled had left a lasting testament to Anna’s love for Soren Romanov on the skin of both Aleksandr and his followers.
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Barbara Hancock
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: She slept…his love didn’tOnce upon a time, Madeline was trapped in an enchanted sleep, her baby wrapped tight in her arms. Then the white wolf woke her, and her son disappeared.For centuries, Lev Romanov searched for his wife and their child, and the search drove him half-mad. Can Madeline trust the wolf to be the man who can help her save their son.