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
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
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 t
o 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.
When Aleksandr closed his eyes, he could still see the flash of emerald light that had imprinted itself on his corneas with its brilliance. He could smell scorched flesh and hear the screams of his followers. They had been rogues, not born to Darkness, but seduced by its promise of power. Anna had marked their foreheads so that their treachery against her mother, the queen, would be obvious for all to see.
They had been punished for their uprising.
Fortunately for Aleksandr, the mark accomplished something else as well. While it was a constant reminder of Anna’s power and his failure, it was also a reminder of what had slipped through his fingers and what he could still achieve if he refused to let his initial failure stop him.
He could still defeat the Romanov wolves and their mates. Vasilisa’s powerful triumvirate of champions hadn’t managed to reassemble yet. The black wolf and his sapphire warrior were connected once more, as was the red wolf and the emerald witch, but the white wolf and his former mate had been rent asunder by Queen Vasilisa herself. His spies had relayed to him all that had occurred since Madeline Romanov woke from her enchanted slumber.
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