But he had been her guardian for centuries, so she wasn’t surprised when he softly asked if she was okay.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Soren murmured against her ear.
Pain would come later. For now all she felt was pleasure.
“Nothing hurts. Not at all,” Anna assured him. She lifted her hips to meet his thrusts. She quickened her pace to prove her point. Nothing did hurt. Not now. Pain and tears could wait. For now, she loved a legend and she could no longer wait to take him to the same heights he had taken her.
“Anna...Anna,” Soren said. He claimed her with her true name and with the thrusts of his powerful hips. She held his shoulders and he lifted his hands up to hold her face. He cradled her jaw in both of his hands with impossible gentleness even as his rhythm increased. He was softly illuminated by green light. She saw the reflection of her glow in his eyes. He didn’t close his lids against it. He held her face and looked deeply into her eyes. He’d taken her at her word. His movements grew stronger. He claimed her with his power as she’d claimed him with hers. The bed shook. Her world shook. She pulsed again with another climax. Her muscles contracted around his shaft, and a green aura of the Ether’s energy lit the room as it rose from their entwined bodies.
Soren’s body tensed above her. And still his hands remained gentle on her face. He finally closed his eyes as his climax claimed him, but he still had the presence of mind to pull out as he came. His seed was hot on her stomach. She only minded because she would rather have him inside her. He collapsed against her and she held him close, knowing the closeness wouldn’t last.
Chapter 20
The sunrise painted the island in shades of crimson and gold. The lank-haired witch had never reappeared. No other Volkhvy had attacked. Beneath an aqua sky, Anna walked along the deceptively calm shore where craggy rocks belied the false atmosphere of a gentle Mediterranean breeze. The Outer Hebrides was actually storm tossed. Anna closed her eyes and concentrated before she opened them once more.
For a few seconds, she saw a true glimpse of the rough ocean breaking against the rocky shore. Sea spray burst high into the cold air, and the stinging sand it blew turned to needles against her skin.
And then the atmosphere calmed.
Her mother’s enchantment held against her budding abilities.
The sun shimmered across the water, and its gentle warm light was a lie.
Soren had been gone when she woke up. She’d bathed and changed, expecting some word from him, but none had come. They had stolen a night together. No more. No less. And he’d been right. Everything was changed—for the worse. His silence and his distance flayed her skin in the same way the stinging sand driven by the stormy wind had now that she’d experienced the connection they could have had.
In her mind’s eye, the emerald on her sword had gone dark. As lackluster and gray as the true sky had been moments before. Its fading light shouldn’t hurt her. Not when her decision to destroy it had already been made. But shouldn’t and didn’t were two different things.
There was a hollow where her heart used to be. She should have grown used to it by now. But her brief wholeness the night before left her feeling less this morning than she’d felt yesterday, even before she and Soren had come together.
She had no time to coddle her feelings and coax herself back to full strength. Her pain had to be faced and worked through. Her difficulty would come in working through it with an audience of the one who was causing it.
He had basked in the glow of her power.
She had pleasured him as much with her Volkhvy abilities as she had with her body, and he had cried out her name. Only to leave her this morning before she woke up. It was for the best. He had given her time to rise and fortify her defenses. When she saw him again, she wouldn’t blink, much less cringe at his distance.
Distance was the only way forward.
Her inability to control her powers while they were making love had been undeniably pleasurable, but he worried about her possible loss of control at other volatile times. Especially if his family was responsible for the volatility. Both Ivan and Lev could easily provoke Anna’s Volkhvy power into exploding merely by being themselves—the alpha with his leadership concerns and his protective instincts on high alert because of his pregnant wife. The white wolf with his wild unpredictability. Lev was currently savage. Soren could hope to civilize him again, but there would be no chance of that with Anna around.
And there was the concern even Anna echoed herself. That the emerald sword would make a witch too powerful for that witch to exercise control.
Their time on the island had been a reprieve. Their time in each other’s arms the night before had been snatched from a universe that was obviously bound to keep them apart. Her chest might ache and echo with her lonely heart’s stubborn beat. Her lips might be tender from remembered kisses. Her core might be sensitized from his touch and the frantic friction of their sex.
But her feet carried her, one in front of the other, from the shore to the palace. They would leave the island today to search for the sword. There was no other way forward for them.
And they couldn’t go back.
* * *
He burned with the need to shift and run away. His human body couldn’t contain all the sensations that buffeted it. Remembered sensations from the night before—Anna’s soft lips on his skin, her hot mouth, the feel and taste of her nipple against his tongue—and current sensations, like the tenderness of his half-erect penis that wouldn’t subside no matter how he willed it away, and the tingling in his cells that had barely subsided hours after Anna had flashed with emerald light.
Soren had asked for it. No, he’d begged for it. He wanted it still. Anna’s power was the most intimate part of her. The way she controlled and protected it from view made him crave to see her release it. He didn’t want to merely tear off her gloves with his teeth. He wanted to shred them into a million pieces so she would never feel she had to hide behind them again.
He wasn’t free to do that.
He was an enchanted shape-shifter and Anna’s power had almost thrown him off the bed last night. The electric energy she channeled had shaken his body and lingered with him long after he left her sleeping. When Lev had attacked her, she’d traveled through the Ether to take them back to the castle, and she’d been wearing the gloves at the time.
Soren couldn’t risk that kind of power, unharnessed, around his family, even if Ivan and Elena would allow it. Even if Anna’s presence didn’t risk frightening Lev away, Soren had to think of the baby.
They’d all been through so much in their lives because Vladimir and Vasilisa hadn’t tempered their actions with the thought of the children their actions might harm.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake. He’d been protecting others too long to stop now.
And he’d been protecting Anna the longest.
There was no use denying he needed to protect her from his family as much as he needed to protect his family from her.
* * *
Vasilisa visited Madeline and Trevor every day. It was only one penance she undertook for what she had done. But it was also a panacea because, for now, their unchanged faces hid long-ranging ramifications even she couldn’t fathom.
They weren’t actually sleeping. They wouldn’t wake, refreshed and happy to greet the next day. Hundreds of years had passed as they’d been kept in a state of suspension. There would be a price to pay for all those lost years. She trembled as she ran her fingers along the crystallized glass. What if the cost Madeline had to pay for this refuge was too high?
Every day she visited, and every day she put off the inevitable. Eventually she would have to decide if she was truly sparing them from the danger the white wolf might pose or if she was only sparing herself.
For now, she waited.
She would delay as long as she co
uld to ensure that Anna and Soren were given more time together. The mirror at Bronwal wasn’t her only portal. She had numerous portals all over the world. But she hadn’t informed her daughter, nor would she. Anna and Soren would have to travel the long way to the Dark Volkhvy who held the sword. Anna was still new to her abilities. The journey would tax her strength. Using the Ether would be quicker than traveling as a human, but it would still be slow.
Before Vasilisa woke Madeline, Anna and Soren needed more time to deal with their own awakening. She couldn’t undo what she had done to them any more than she could undo what she had done to Madeline, Lev and their baby. She had inadvertently thrown Anna and Soren together for centuries. Now they were determined to part. Seeing her daughter lose the man she loved was a high price to pay for her mistakes.
Too high.
She’d lived with the pain of loss for too long to sit back while Anna suffered.
Vasilisa’s hands glowed a soft violet as she continued to stroke the glass. Soon. The woman and baby beneath the glass weren’t as deeply suspended as they had been before. There was a stirring within them that only Vasilisa could sense. First, she would give Anna and Soren a chance to change their minds about the emerald sword. But no matter their decision, she would have to free Madeline and Trevor. Lev posed a dangerous threat to her daughter, and he couldn’t be allowed to hurt her again or come between Anna and Soren. Even if that meant Vasilisa would finally have to face the consequences of what she had done to the white wolf and his family.
For Anna, she had cursed Bronwal and its people.
For Anna, she would also set in motion what might become the culmination of her greatest mistake. There was no way to know how Madeline would wake or if Lev could be brought back from his feral state.
But Lev’s personal tragedy might spare her own daughter from more pain.
Vasilisa was the Light Volkhvy queen, but she had dealt in Darkness for too long. She was no longer free to deal wholly in the Light. Her actions would always be touched by shadows. She could only hope that Anna would make a better queen.
Chapter 21
Soren found Anna dressed for travel. She wore dark green leggings and a matching fleece jacket as practical as they were distracting when they stretched and conformed to her curves with every move. Her brown curls had been tamed into a ponytail on the back of her head.
Discomfort stabbed his chest when he also noted the black leather gloves that covered her fingers before they disappeared beneath her sleeves. They weren’t her only defenses. She barely glanced at him. Her face was stiff and her lips were pressed into a thin, tight line. Good. They needed to be on guard and closed off from each other as long as they were forced to travel together.
But his own tightness seemed to creak and strain once he noticed hers.
She wore a small backpack again.
He had found suitable clothes provided to him by the Volkhvy and he had to admit he was glad to be back in the tooled leather britches he preferred to jeans. They would provide more protection in a fight and more warmth as he was forced to traverse the Ether. He’d also chosen a thick homespun tunic and a leather jerkin that covered it like a fitted vest to his thighs.
“You look like a time traveler,” Anna said.
He paused when she spoke, startled by the way his gut clenched as if he’d been punched. Her words were matter-of-fact. But the sound of her voice made him think of more sultry things she’d said the night before.
“Aren’t we?” he replied. He pushed his thick bangs back from his forehead and turned to face her. Were her lips still swollen from his kisses? Or had she been deep in thought and worrying them with her teeth this morning? “You and I were both born so long ago. I’m not sure we can disguise that even with modern clothing. The years show in our eyes, don’t you think?” he continued.
He met her serious gaze. The green of Anna’s clothes brought out the flecks of emerald in her irises. Suddenly, he could barely breathe. His chest constricted, and he went molten everywhere else. He could too easily remember the vivid sparks that had shone from her eyes in the shadowed bedroom. And the way her power had seemed to claim him with tingling pleasure when their bodies had come together.
“I’m not sure others can see the years or if we just remember them too well. Every time I look at you, I see a medieval prince and a red wolf. They live on in your every gesture and word,” Anna said. Her voice had dropped lower. The confessional tone didn’t diminish the heat he struggled against. Neither did the way she glanced from his head to his feet, as if she was remembering him as only she could.
“Perhaps we can’t unsee what we have seen in each other,” Soren said. He didn’t mean to refer to the night before. But the heat he fought against colored his words. He also didn’t mean to step toward her, but his feet seemed to move of their own volition. He found himself looking down at her. They stood on the cliff where they had materialized from the mirror portal days ago. The sun had risen in a bright blue sky dotted with clouds so defined they looked like cloth.
“That’s why we need to do this. We need to sever our connection once and for all. We need to protect your family from mine,” Anna said. Her mouth had tightened again. She fisted her gloved hands.
Soren wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her until her lips softened against his.
He didn’t, because she was right. The only way they could sever their connection was by destroying the sword. Perhaps then they could get on with the new lives they had found.
The red wolf wasn’t pleased. It howled in his chest. It knew he had fully accepted what had to be done. The intimacy they’d shared last night made it harder, but it also made it more necessary.
As if conjured by her words, Anna’s mother appeared in the distance. They stood side by side, waiting for her to approach. She probably could have traveled through the Ether to reach them in the blink of an eye. Instead, Vasilisa walked gracefully up the hill from the palace. She wore a simple white walking gown. As she came closer and closer, it gleamed in the sun against the grass.
She was alone.
“It’s hard for me not to shift to face her. I’ll always wonder what she’ll do next,” Soren said. If Anna made him tense, Vasilisa made him brace for battle.
“I feel the same. And she’s my mother,” Anna confessed.
Vasilisa finally reached them. Neither of them bowed or curtsied to their queen. They waited silently for her to speak. Surprisingly, she didn’t make a pronouncement. Instead, she stepped close to Soren and leaned in to speak for his ear alone.
“I wanted to bid you farewell,” Vasilisa said. “Please take care that you don’t undo something in the heat of the moment that is in all actuality your heart’s desire.”
Before he could reply, she had drifted away from him toward her daughter.
“I love you. Never doubt it,” the queen said.
“I don’t doubt it, Mother. But Volkhvy love can be...cataclysmic,” Anna replied.
Vasilisa didn’t speak again. She leaned to kiss Anna on one cheek and then the other. In response, Anna reached for Soren’s hand. He gripped her firmly. His support was all he could offer. He couldn’t negate her parentage. She wouldn’t want him to. As cataclysmic as Vasilisa’s love could be, it was still a mother’s love. Anna had been without that for too long.
Besides, she was also Volkhvy. The fire in his belly and the hollow in his chest quietly whispered that Anna’s love could be cataclysmic, too.
* * *
Anna knew what to do to ride the Ether. It was as basic as breathing, which was not basic at all. A million different nerve endings had to communicate their wishes to each other. Her job was to get out of the way.
Last night, Soren had urged her to let go and allow herself to climax in his arms. To let go she’d had to lower her walls against the Ether’s energy. She’d had to welcome the power insid
e her. She’d had to willingly channel the blast that had built up behind her control.
When Lev had hurt her, she’d done the same thing instinctively.
This time, she consciously lowered her defenses to allow herself to tap into the energy of the vacuum the Ether created. It was that energy that she and Soren would ride for as long and as far as they could before she had to rest and recharge.
The Call of the emerald sword was a distant pinpoint on an unfamiliar map she would have to navigate. The sword and Soren’s hand in hers were the only two solid things in the world to her as she stepped forward into the frigid nothingness. How many times had she disappeared into the Ether with the red wolf by her side?
This time she held her lover’s hand. Once they reached their destination they would be parted, but, for now, they stood against the nothingness of the Ether the way they always had.
Chapter 22
Evergreen air rushed against Anna’s face as she fell forward onto her knees. She’d traveled as far and as fast as she could. At first, the energy her Volkhvy abilities tapped into seemed to buffer her and Soren from the hungry vacuum of the Ether itself. But gradually she began to experience the inexorable pull of nothingness until it seemed like the Ether would eat her soul.
It was horrible and familiar.
She’d never consciously used her Volkhvy abilities to avoid disappearing for good during the curse. She hadn’t known who she was or what she could do, but the power had been in her blood. She had reappeared time and time again with a fully functioning mind, unclouded by her time in the Ether.
Because she was a witch.
Perhaps she’d even helped Soren keep his faculties because they were constant companions.
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