She didn’t cry. She didn’t run away. She reasoned with a monster. And he listened to every word. Like Soren, he was more aware than an ordinary beast. Hope flared in her breast. The knot in her stomach eased. The daggers in her hands dipped down, and she almost sheathed them back in her hip pockets.
Except, unlike the red wolf, the black wolf’s teeth were still bared against her. He stepped forward, not from animal instinct and rage, but for clearheaded, rational reasons she couldn’t understand. Who could interpret a beast’s reasons for determining enemy or friend? She’d tried. He might understand her words, but he refused to bow to the sapphire’s call.
Her knees softened as fear reclaimed her.
Romanov had warned her that the black wolf was deadly. Her hope might have sealed her fate. But there was still one last chance she could grab—The sapphire stone had flared. She’d seen it from the corner of her eye. Even the black wolf had turned his face toward the vivid blue flash. It hadn’t been firelight. The flame’s glow was completely shadowed by the alpha wolf’s body. The stone had lit from within, in the same moment that she’d promised to defend the castle.
The flash hadn’t soothed the black wolf. In fact, it seemed to be the sudden light in the sapphire stone that had set his paws in stalking motion. He paced toward her and one of the wolves under the thrones whined. Soren or Lev? In sympathy or in anticipation?
“You won’t kill a woman the sword has chosen,” Elena said. But she had no idea if her supposition was correct. How long had the alpha been hidden in the Ether? And what did he care about an enchanted sword’s preferences?
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Even if she’d wanted to flee to the tower, the black wolf’s powerful legs would catch her before she made it out of the room. From the corner of her eye, she saw the red wolf wiggle out from under the chair. He stood staring at her and the alpha wolf as if he wasn’t certain what he should do. But when Lev also came out of hiding and aggressively tried to move her way as if he would stalk her too, Soren stopped him. The red wolf knocked the white wolf to the floor and placed one paw on his neck to keep him supine.
She’d been distracted. When she turned her full attention back to the black wolf, he was only a few feet away. She started, but she didn’t back away. She stood her ground, a tiny, ineffectual dagger in each hand. The alpha wolf stepped closer and closer until his nose was above her head and between the small blades she clenched in her fists. She could do damage with them if he decided to attack. She could hurt him before she died. But the daggers wouldn’t defeat him. At best, they would buy her seconds of time. As she tilted her chin to look into his emerald eyes, her hands were stilled by what she saw there. Intensity burned bright in the gem-like gleam of his irises.
It was an intensity she’d seen before.
“Romanov?” she whispered. Her fingers went limp and the daggers clattered to the floor. The black wolf flinched for all his size and strength. But he didn’t lash out. He didn’t growl or bite.
Ivan Romanov wasn’t the master. He was the wolf. Her search had been over as soon as he’d materialized in front of her on the snowy mountain pass. Answers to so many of her questions suddenly crystalized in her mind.
“You’ve been in front of me all along. What haven’t you told me?” Elena asked. In spite of the deadly teeth, she reached to touch the bottom of his jaw. She cupped his monstrous face in the palm of her hand. Her book of legends had shown her the Romanovs and their wolves. She hadn’t understood. The Romanov brothers are the Romanov wolves. The russet, the white and the black.
The alpha wolf was stiff with emotion. He didn’t relax into her hand. How could he? She had woken him. She had disturbed him from the deep sleep in which Ivan Romanov had buried him in order to maintain his stand as the last Romanov. His brothers were gone, but not permanently into the Ether as she’d supposed. They had shifted and either they had chosen to stay in their wolf forms...or they had been trapped in them unable to return as men.
Soren whined again and Elena looked toward the red wolf. Suddenly, she understood Bell better than she had before. The other woman longed to see Soren’s human face. The clothes in the trunk and the hat Bell always wore...had they been Soren’s long ago? He still had more understanding than an animal would have. He still remembered the man. Lev had forgotten. Would Soren forget eventually too? And now that Romanov had shifted to let the alpha wolf free, would he lose himself too?
“What have I done?” Elena said.
More pieces of the puzzle came together in a painful picture in her mind. Lev, the white wolf, had also been a man. The tragedy she’d stumbled upon in the baby’s room became clear. Romanov had said he wasn’t a pet. He’d never been a pet. But the family who’d lived in the room had been his.
Hot tears filled Elena’s eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
She looked back at Romanov, the alpha wolf, and found him staring beyond her head. Not at his brothers. His focus was on the thrones. She followed his gaze to find that it fell on the gleam of the sapphire stone.
“Lev’s wife wielded the ruby Romanov blade,” Elena whispered.
Romanov had shifted to keep her from the stone.
Sympathy had hollowed her gut, but pain caused it to tighten as if she’d been stabbed. Cold ache suddenly burned away and in its place came a sharp stabbing heat. He was here to protect the blade from her. He didn’t think she was worthy of it.
She lowered her hand and clenched her fist. It took every ounce of her strength not to use it to strike him. To share the pain that tore her apart.
“You don’t have to want me. Or accept the blade’s decision. But I won’t be frightened away. Don’t you know that by now? The blade knows. I’m a warrior. Whether you fight by my side or not,” Elena said.
Before any of the wolves could react to her decision, Elena pirouetted. She used her good leg to hold her weight and it spun her as it always had, tried and true. Then she ran and leaped for the dais, even though there were no strong arms there to catch her. She landed gracefully in spite of the pain in her injured knee. And she reached for the blade. None of the wolves tried to stop her. In part because Soren still stood on Lev’s neck, holding him down.
Her hand closed around the hilt of the Romanov blade and the sapphire flared once more. A vision of another woman filled her mind. She recognized Romanov’s mother from the portrait in the hall. Vladimir Romanov hadn’t only betrayed the Light Volkhvy queen. He’d betrayed the memory of a woman who had pledged to protect Bronwal by his side when he’d betrayed her queen. Elena clenched her teeth as she felt a glimmer of what the other woman must have felt. Maybe it was better to be rejected before you fell in love, not after.
She turned with the blade in both hands. She’d never been trained, but it seemed more comfortable in her grasp than it should, as if it had been made for her. She would learn how to wield it even if Romanov didn’t approve.
The alpha wolf stood in front of her. Raised on the dais, she was able to meet his eyes. From her better position, she could see the midnight shine of his wild black fur and the epic proportions of his shoulders. There was no doubt that he was Ivan Romanov. The tale had finally pieced together in her mind from the legend and everything she’d learned since she’d come to Bronwal.
Her spine tingled with the impossibility of a man being able to become a beast, but she couldn’t unsee what she’d seen in the black wolf’s eyes. She’d climbed a mountain to find a legendary castle and this wolf. She thought she’d found his master, but he’d been here, hidden before her very eyes, all along. She held the sword up between them, but she could have easily been pledging her loyalty to him and his cause rather than taking a defensive posture. Her heart pulled her in both directions.
As she’d told Soren, the Romanovs needed her. The sword had somehow known it. It had called her across time and great distance. Now tha
t it was in her hands, she wouldn’t let it go. Not only because she felt safer than she’d ever felt, more ready to take on her evil magical stalker, but also because the pale blue glow of the sword’s gem seemed to illuminate a path she’d been looking for.
“I’ve always longed to be more than a dancer. That’s why the book of legends called to me even before I heard the sword. Let me help you. The sword has spoken. See how it fits in my hands? Help me to learn how to use it. Let’s stand together against Grigori and the Dark Volkhvy. After the Gathering, I’ll leave. I’ll walk away. I’ll let you and the sword vanish back into the Ether without me if that’s what you want. But, for now, teach me how to fight,” Elena said.
Soren whined again. Lev had gone limp. He panted on the floor beneath his brother’s paw from his exertions to get free. Did the red wolf think he would have to rescue her from the alpha too? It would be pointless for him to try to intercede. If the black wolf decided to attack her, his much smaller brother wouldn’t be able to prevent it.
But the eyes she gazed into weren’t an animal’s eyes. Ivan Romanov had risked the shift, but his beast hadn’t swallowed him whole yet. There was a man’s reasoning and a man’s soul in the black wolf’s giant body. Elena faced him and waited for him to decide if he would flee or teach her to fight. Because that was his choice. He could give up and let the black wolf’s savage nature take over, or he could accept her as the warrior called to carry the sapphire blade.
She refused to believe that Romanov, even in his black wolf form, would attack her and try to drive her away if he was still in control. So she stood. She waited. She held tightly to the hilt of a blade she hadn’t been trained to use. And she prayed she wouldn’t have to try to kill the man she’d kissed only hours before.
Chapter 9
The standoff seemed to last for hours. Elena’s arms protested the weight of the blade. For all her fitness, the particular muscles needed to brandish a sword hadn’t been developed. Sweat dampened the waves of hair on her forehead, and her lower back screamed. Finally, because she had to, she made a decision. If he attacked, she would die before she had to admit she’d been wrong.
Elena lowered the sword. She released it with one hand and used the other to deliberately place its point on the floor beside her. The black wolf trembled in reaction to her movement. His entire body was stiff with tension, but he vibrated with energy as if one wrong move would cause him to leap. She lifted her free hand anyway. She placed it on the side of Romanov’s great wolf head.
She wasn’t sure if it was her shivering or the alpha wolf’s she felt.
“You won’t attack me. Not as long as you’re in control,” Elena said. The black wolf blinked, but he continued to shudder beneath her hands. Was that Romanov seeking to maintain control? Or was it Romanov trying to let go? Standing her ground and reaching out to the alpha wolf was the bravest thing she’d done. It was also the most dangerous. She’d seen the fatigue in Romanov’s spirit. She’d seen all of his loss and pain. She had to trust that he would continue to stand and fight even though she had seen so much evidence that he should choose the contrary.
The black wolf rumbled low in his chest. Her body jerked in response and the tip of her sword came off the ground. But it wasn’t a growl. It was vocalized pain. The great beast backed away from her touch. The rumble built and built until once again she felt it in the soles of her feet, but when the alpha wolf threw back his mighty head and released the sound in his massive chest as a ululating howl, it was that devastating call that shuddered her bones.
She had magnified Romanov’s pain.
She couldn’t undo it. She couldn’t drop the sword or retreat back down the mountain. Not without giving up her freedom and the newfound sense that her purpose was here. As a dancer, she’d had to learn to press through the pain, to push past it. Romanov had been nearly consumed by it for too long. Maybe it was time for him to face it down.
“Come back to us, Ivan Romanov,” Elena urged as the howl trailed off to nothing. The black wolf’s nose came back down and he looked at her from where he’d retreated across the room. “Come back to us and help us fight.”
Soren and Lev had howled along with the alpha. Their smaller voices had joined with him in expressing grief and frustration. Lev had leaped to his feet and Soren had allowed it, but the white wolf didn’t attack her. He followed the example of his alpha wolf.
“I want to be ready when Grigori comes,” Elena said. “I thought it was the wolf I sought, but I was wrong. It was the blade...and the man who can train me in how to use it.”
The black wolf whirled around and ran away with powerful strides. Lev yelped and followed after. Soren stopped to look at her for several seconds before he followed his wilder brother.
She was left alone.
The Romanov blade easily took her weight when she leaned against it. Her legs suddenly felt insubstantial as if all her muscle had turned to smoke beneath her skin. She’d faced down an enchanted creature who might have eaten her in several gulps. Her head had told her to run, but her heart had told her to stand her ground.
She still wasn’t certain which had been right.
She might have seen the last of the wolf and the man. They might disappear into the Ether and leave her to face Grigori alone.
* * *
As the legendary black wolf, Romanov ran through the snow. His great paws churned icy clouds into the air, and as they fell down all around him he was dusted with a fine coating of white. It glistened as the sun rose, dazzling his eyes. The airborne ice particles stung his nose and weighted his lashes.
Still, he ran.
Soren and Lev howled behind him. The hunt was on. There was a stag. Its blood pumped, warmed by the chase. It would have been natural to run the prey down. To take its life to fuel his own and that of his pack.
But something told him he’d better hold on to more of his humanity than that.
His hold was tenuous.
There was a powerful thrill in the idea of letting go to become a simple-minded animal driven by instinct. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. But this time he wanted to more than ever before. No wonder Lev had escaped into the white wolf form when his family had disappeared into the Ether. Romanov understood that decision better than he ever had.
He crested a rise and looked down at the stag as it raced desperately across a clearing between patches of evergreen below. It was difficult, but he reined in his instincts and he let the animal reach the opposite side. It paused, as if startled by the possibility it could escape the giant, hungry wolf. Its head lifted, and white billows of respiration puffed from its flared nostrils. Its sides heaved and it stomped one of its front legs. It dared to try to warn him away?
That defiance was almost his undoing. The alpha wolf tried to wrest control from the shreds of his humanity. It almost succeeded. But then the stag must have scented his hunger on the cold breeze because it startled and turned to plunge into the woods.
He let it go.
Soren and Lev caught up with him. Even Lev respected his pause on the ridge top. His brothers didn’t race around him as they once would have to nip submissively at his chin and heels. He hadn’t been the alpha around them in a very long time. They were afraid. Both crouched at a distance. Watching and waiting to see what he would do.
Back at the castle, there was someone else waiting for him to choose, as if his choice hadn’t been made the moment she’d materialized out of the snowstorm on the pass. The sword had known. For how long? How powerful was Vasilisa’s magic? Could it really have found his intended mate across so many decades and miles? Or was this another cruel aspect of the punishment she’d leveled against the Romanov family?
Loss and love. Love and loss. The cycle seemed as endless as the Cycle of the curse.
He wouldn’t accept the sword’s decision. He wouldn’t court the same devastation Lev had faced. He wouldn’
t ensnare Elena in the Romanov curse. But he would reclaim his human form. He would honor her decision to wield the blade. That much he could do without risk. He could help her learn to defend herself against Grigori now that the sword had chosen.
The Gathering approached, as did the Ether.
He didn’t have much time to ensure that her stalker wouldn’t enslave Elena before he and the sapphire blade disappeared. The risk wasn’t in the blade, because he would die rather than bind her to the Romanov curse. The risk was entirely in the shift.
Because he would give in to the wolf rather than allow her to suffer for the witchblood prince’s pleasure. He would save her from the Ether and from Grigori even if it meant all else was lost.
Chapter 10
Elena had to improvise a gym. She’d discovered in her standoff with the black wolf that her arms needed strengthening. Her searches throughout the castle hadn’t led her to any modern amenities when it came to weightlifting, but she remembered the training courtyard and the equipment there.
She might not have weights, but she knew how to use them, and there was a whole rack full of heavy training staffs carved from oak.
She’d go insane if she waited for Romanov to return even if she didn’t fret over how he’d return, as man or wolf. He’d been gone an entire day and night. Instead of useless worrying, she swallowed her discomfort over pilfering for clothes appropriate for the training courtyard. She passed over numerous wardrobes full of dresses until she found a long-sleeve tunic to shield her from the cold mountain air. She paired serviceable fur-lined boots with her own jeggings. She did take a long red cloak from a trunk that she knew had been meant for a formal occasion. It was lined with black velvet and embroidered along the edges of its hood and hem with thorns and roses. It was a cold day and she didn’t want to try to transport the equipment to an indoor location.
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