She wanted a wolf...

...and she found a man.

Once upon a time, Elena Pavlova was a ballerina. Now she is a fugitive, looking for the great black wolf who can save her from the witchblood prince who haunts her dreams. The cursed shifter Ivan Romanov knows he is no longer the hero Elena needs, but he cannot say no to this graceful warrior, the beautiful woman who may well be his destined mate.

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

Brimstone SeductionBrimstone BrideBrimstone PrinceLegendary ShifterDarkening Around MeSilent Is the HouseThe Girl in Blue

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Legendary Shifter

Barbara J. Hancock

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08203-7

LEGENDARY SHIFTER

© 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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For the warrior in us all. Because she rocks.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Prologue

All he could do was watch and wait.

He found pleasure in it, surprisingly enough. Anticipation made the torment sweet. Elena Pavlova’s mother had slit her wrists to protect her daughter ten years ago. Her sacrifice hadn’t kept him from visiting her daughter’s nightmares with delicious visions of the future they’d have together. He couldn’t physically have Elena, yet. Her mother’s blood had bought her a reprieve. But the protective power of the spilled blood was running out.

As a witchblood prince of the Dark Volkhvy, Grigori was used to getting what he wanted. He was part of the royal family in a culture that condoned Darkness. He stood just inside the open window of Elena’s bedroom and watched her toss and turn in her sleep. The soft sounds of her fretful sighs were mere whispers compared to the noises she would be making in the nightmare that disturbed her sleep. Because he was in control there, unbound by her mother’s rough folk magic.

What a shocking surprise that had been.

The voluminous curtains on the window billowed outward to brush against him, stirred by a midnight Saint Petersburg breeze. He’d seen the girl dance. He’d decided to have her. But her mother had been raised to believe in the old ways. She’d died so her daughter could live.

Or so she’d thought.

The curtains continued to flutter around him like white wings on either side of his tuxedo-clad body. When he was finished here, he would make other clandestine appearances throughout the city. He was a royal among Dark Volkhvy circles and the Dark Volkhvy ruled from the shadows. Their power was rising, bubbling to the top of a world rent by betrayal and hunger.

The mother’s blood had run out before he was bound forever. At best, she’d bought her daughter time. Time to be stalked. Time to be hunted, night after night in her dreams. Elena had been a lovely swan as a teen. She’d only grown more graceful and more alluring as she’d aged into a prima ballerina. His anticipation had grown with every passing year. Every time she donned the pristine white feathers and pirouetted across the stage.

Then an injury had interfered with her dancing, and her vulnerability had inflamed his desire to even greater heights. He had fought against the binding. He’d done everything to try to break it, to no avail. She still had a grandmother who lived and watched over her with all the old folk magic most modern-day Russians had forgotten. He could only send more violent and vivid visions to Elena each night, fueled by his frustrated passions.

Finally, her grandmother had died and he’d sensed the power of Elena’s mother’s blood fading. She’d sacrificed every last drop to fuel a protective barrier spell around her daughter, but it wouldn’t last. She might have known some of the old ways, but she was no Volkhvy. Lately, he’d been able to approach Elena and speak to her. He’d added to the torment of the visions he sent to her nightmares by telling her that they were true.

She would be his.

When the protective spell her mother’s blood had created ran out.

Grigori watched his delicate swan whimper in her sleep. He couldn’t even approach her bed to get a closer look at the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the flush on her porcelain cheeks, the heat rising off her sweat-dampened skin.

Love was abhorrent to him. The residual love of her grandmother was infused into every object in this house and, combined with her mother’s sacrifice, continued to hold him at bay...for now.

Power was everything to one of his kind. Once a witch turned to darkness, the taint was passed down through the generations—growing stronger with every birth. And his family was the oldest and darkest of all the Dark Volkhvy. He gloried in subjugating innocence. His conquest of Elena would be more satisfying because it hadn’t been instant. Her fear and his anticipation fed the dark taint in his blood, making it—and him—stronger.

The breeze from the window must have soothed her. She quieted as he watched, and he knew it was time for him to leave.

But soon. Very soon. He would be free to make her nightmares come true.

Chapter 1

Wind blew stinging clouds of icy dust from the jagged gray rocks on the side of the mountain. The snow was so white the exposed rock glistened darkly against it in the fading light of the sinking sun. Every surface was coated with a fine sheen of ice. Elena Pavlova had only been outside the full cab all-terrain vehicle that had brought her this far for a half an hour, but in spite of the preparations she’d made—her ski suit, insulated boots, gloves and scarf—the protective clothing didn’t prevent her face from feeling as cold and hard as the frozen rocks.

Mountain tours never came this far in winter, but it had been imperative that she get as far as possible before she sent prying eyes away. She’d insisted that the driver leave her, but only a substantial bribe had finally persuaded the man, who obviously thought she was on a suicide mission.

And maybe she was.

Night was falling in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania and she would never survive the elements if she didn’t find the shelter she sought. Refuge. Redoubt. Haven. Her eyes teared against the biting wind and the moisture froze on her eyelashes until her lids were heavy and her vision obscured.

She’d heard the tales since she was a child. She’d listened, rapt, as her grandmother had read from the worn but beautiful book Elena currently carried in a small pack on her back. Her childhood had been two things: dancing and the Slavic legend of the Romanov wolves. Bloody toes and even bloodier stories of the fight against evil.

Hundreds of years ago, the Light Volkhvy had chosen a younger son of royal blood to stand against their dark brethren. They’d spirited Vladimir Romanov away to become their champion. He’d been given enchanted wolves and a castle enclave deep in the Carpathian Mountains. In return, he’d been bound to an endless fight. Grim fairy tales to read to a child, but, looking back, Elena realized her grandmother had been preparing her to fight the darkness herself. The old ways were wise ways, but knowing them wasn’t only a defense. Playing at the edges of Volkhvy power by telling the tales and practicing the small hearth magics with charms for luck and wellness ran the risk of attracting the attention of true witches. Ones from the dark as well as the light.

Too much dabbling could lure an ordinary person into a Volkhvy world they weren’t prepared to face. Perhaps her family remembered the Old ways too well.

Elena was living proof. She was stalked by a witchblood prince and her fascination with the legend had turned into a call she couldn’t ignore. She’d been pulled across thousands of miles from Saint Petersburg to Cerna, and the call only became stronger the closer she came to the mountains.

It was almost physical now. In spite of the cold, she was aware of a strange pulse beneath her skin that compelled her onward. Her choice had seemed so clear—heed the call or stay within Grigori’s grasp.

By the time she came to the pass, her lungs hurt with every frigid breath and her weak knee was on fire. She wouldn’t have made it this far over the ice and rugged terrain if she hadn’t spent years pushing past physical pain to achieve the optimum performance from her muscle, sinew, heart and will. Prima ballerinas weren’t born. Or made. They were forged in the fire that was the Saint Petersburg Ballet Academy.

Elena paused. She wiped her eyes with gloved fingers, but they weren’t so hindered by icicles that they missed the castle she’d come to find. She couldn’t see it because it wasn’t there.

She’d chased help that only existed in a book of legends. No more. No less. She’d followed landmarks in the illustrations and carefully tried to sleuth her way to the right place. But her beautiful book crafted of intricate, hand-painted and cut designs that leaped from the page in three-dimensional depictions of a castle, the Romanovs and their enchanted wolves was nothing more than a storybook.

Her grandmother had blamed Elena’s nightmares on the book, but ten years of bad dreams hadn’t prepared her for the true horror of the witchblood prince who stalked her. She’d been haunted by the loss of her mother, only to learn her death had been a heroic sacrifice and not a suicide. Her mother had spilled her own blood to protect her daughter from a Dark Volkhvy prince. Her blood had fueled earthy folk magic. Nothing compared to the power it faced down and held back, but her mother’s fierce love had strengthened it.

He had stood out from the other patrons even before he spoke—tall, lean and beautiful to the point of being unnaturally perfect as if he was a mannequin, not a man. Not a hair of his glistening gelled hair had been out of place. There hadn’t been so much as a speck of lint on his tailored tuxedo. He’d moved like oil into her path with a flow to his gestures that was less grace and more fakery. His appearance was a charade. One meant to obfuscate his true nature. Yet one that revealed all, if you looked closely enough.

The sun was almost gone. Suddenly the white glare of ice and snow turned russet as it reflected the orange glow of the sky. Elena had nowhere else to go. The guide in his all-terrain vehicle was gone. He had taken his money and followed her orders: Don’t wait for me. I won’t be coming back. The dire economics of the region precluded any squeamishness over what she might do once he drove away.

It was true. She would freeze to death rather than go back and give in to Grigori’s demands even though she hadn’t found the help she’d hoped to find.

You’ll be utterly mine. Your mother only ensured I would require even greater satisfaction from our time together because of the delay.

A sudden sound dispelled the ice in her veins. A long, echoing howl—both mournful and triumphant—filled the air and conquered the wind as the king of sound on the mountain. Adrenaline rushed lifesaving vigor to her limbs. Her heart pounded. Her breath poured from her lips in vaporous puffs of fear and hope. The call that had brought her all the way from Saint Petersburg seemed to respond to the howl. It rose in her throat as if she should cry out a reply.

But her head was more rational than her heart.

Freeze or fangs?

Probably both, yet the possibility that the legend was true sent her scrambling farther along the pass in spite of her terror and the pain in her leg. The Romanovs controlled powerful wolves that were trained to fight the Dark Volkhvy witches. The alpha wolf was her last, best chance to defeat the witchblood prince. Another howl swelled up and out from the unseen chest that gave it birth. Paired with the decreasing light, the howl seemed to raise hungry shadows to consume the world. She hadn’t brought a flashlight. Or a tent. She didn’t own a weapon of any kind. Weapons were useless against the witchblood prince, and mortal shelter would only protect her from the elements long enough for him to find and claim her.

Perhaps she’d been seeking death after all. If the call that had drawn her here was a lie, death would be preferable to a life spent as Grigori’s captive.

Even sleep hadn’t given her peace in years. Every night she suffered horrible nightmares in which she was caught by Grigori and unable to escape. She’d thought they were only nightmares. Now that she’d seen her tormenter in real life, certainty had settled into her bones. Death wasn’t the worst fate she could suffer. As his stalking had escalated, so had her resolve to escape.

The snow was deeper and softer where drifts had accumulated in the protected lee of the pass between mountainous ridges. Her legs weren’t very long. At twenty, she was thin and graceful, petite and powerful. In spite of her knee, her body responded to the desperate pounding of her heart. Go. Go. Go.

She was all muscle, tendon and sinew. It didn’t matter that the ligament in one knee had required surgery to repair. All the rest made up the difference, fueled by adrenaline and fear. But if the howl had spurred her on, the sight of the creature who had opened its maw to create the sound caused her to freeze in place. A white wolf had climbed to the top of the ridge on her left. He was immense, larger than any wolf nature could have made. He stood on the peak, a ghostly silhouette against the darkening sky, and he howled again.

Elena’s legs—her stock and trade, the one thing between her and oblivion—gave out beneath her. She collapsed to her knees in the snow. She cried out when her right knee made contact. An unnoticeable deformity in the shape of her femur had caused her to land from jumps with incorrect form. Over the course of a decade, after millions of repetitions, her knee had been stressed by the imperfection. She’d recovered well from surgery and spent over a year in physical therapy, but the snowy hike had aggravated her injury.

Another howl answered the first. On the left peak directly across the pass from the white wolf, another wolf appeared, as russet as the sunset had been moments before. Even if she could get to her feet, she would never outrun them in the deep drifts of snow. There was no castle. There were no Romanovs. As hard as she squinted against the icy wind, she could see nothing to refuel her hopes. There were only two giant wolves whose echoes sounded hollow and hungry as they bounced off the icy walls of the pass. This is better than Grigori, the blood seemed to whisper as it rushed in her ears. The ice on her eyelashes had melted as fresh hot tears filled her eyes. They shimmered there, making the gloaming world mercifully indistinct, but even now she refused to let them fall. She closed her eyes to will them away, but then it was an effort to lift her lids against her weighted lashes. She did it anyway. If she had to meet a grim fate, she would do it with her eyes open.

Only her nightmares made her cry. On waking, when she was alone with no one to see, she often found her cheeks damp. She’d grown to be terrified of enclosed spaces and the sound of frantic, fluttering feathers—the two elements of her nightmares that never changed. She’d never cried over bloody toes or aching muscles or the harsh practices meant to perfect the curve of her arms and spine. The nightmares were far worse than any real-life trials. It had been horrible to discover that Grigori was real even more so because it meant that he had witnessed the tears she’d thought were shed in private. He’d seen her weak and terrified. That knowledge and his pleasure in it caused bile to rise and burn her throat. She wouldn’t cry now that she’d found only a part of what she’d been looking for, even if the wolves turned out to be her salvation in a darker way than she’d intended. She wouldn’t season their meal with tears.

The illustrations in her book hadn’t done the wolves justice. They were more monstrous. Far above her, she could see the power in their limbs and the glint of their eyes. She could also see the flash of white that indicated deadly teeth against their damp fur.

It was only the movement of the wolves’ attention from her to elsewhere that caused her to lower her attention from the ridges back to the pass. She blinked against icy lashes as an approaching form swam into focus. A tall, muscular man clothed all in black walked purposefully through the deep snow. He came out of the swirling white clouds of flakes as if he materialized before her eyes. He wore a cloak with a fur mantle that covered his broad shoulders. Its voluminous folds whipped around his powerful strides. But it was another sight behind him that caused her to gasp in stunned surprise.

Before she’d fallen, there had been nothing but ice and snow on the cliffs of the pass. Now, in the last hazy hint of twilight, ramparts and towers seemed to solidify from the shadows high above. Behind the man, the castle had appeared as if the mountain itself had decided to morph its rocks into the shape of a king’s home. Around the highest tower, ravens circled in and out of storm clouds that clung to its pointed peak. The structure was surrounded by a stone wall that enclosed the entire keep and a small village around the foot of the castle. She could see thatched rooftops peeking over the wall. Wind swept over her in a new way. The sudden appearance of the castle and the enclave its walls created had diverted the air. This new breeze rushed over the man, and his long, tousled hair was blown into a riotous black mane around his face.

He held a lantern in his hand. Its light suddenly flared to life and its glow illuminated the man’s face. The world fell away—castle, mountain, wolves and snow—until only his face shone before her. The call had brought her to the right place and the right time. The compulsion to come here hadn’t been a lie.

“Romanov,” Elena said. Her lips were stiff with cold. Her voice was muted by the wind. The white of her breath dissipated in wisps blown away from her face, taking most of the sound with it. The snow had claimed all feeling from her legs, and the numbness climbed steadily up her hips to her waist.

He heard her. He stopped and lowered the lantern so its light shone in her eyes and on her face, leaving his in shadow.

“Whoever you are, I’m not the man you seek,” he said.

The wolves had leaped down from the peaks on either side of the pass while the castle and the man had distracted her. Their large, powerful forms had eaten up the distance much sooner than ordinary canines might have done. They came to the man—one on each side—and he chided their eager prancing without taking his attention from her face. She’d been right about the wolves’ size. Both came to their master’s chest, and he was no small man.

The wolf she’d come to find would be even larger.

She needed larger-than-life legends to help her escape Grigori’s clutches.

“I’m not here for a man. I’m here for the wolves,” Elena said. The wolf she needed was the alpha of the Romanov pack and he would be as black as midnight. The old legends said that only the alpha wolf could defeat the strongest of the Dark Volkhvy.

The creatures paced toward her, but the man called them back to his side by name.

“Lev. Soren. Heel.” Though his face was shadowed, she could see the stern set to his lips and jaw. “Then you have come for nothing,” he said to her bluntly.

He gestured and the two wolves churned snow as they spun around to rip back toward the castle in the distance. Oddly, she felt abandoned rather than spared. Her stomach hollowed within her as if she’d fallen from a great height. The cold reached relentless icy fingers into her heart. Its thumping had slowed as if the muscle that pumped her blood was beginning to freeze.

“You risked your life,” the man said. “For nothing.” He didn’t follow the wolves. He stepped closer. His clothes were fashioned with tooled leather and thick stitches. The wool of his cloak was thickly woven and the fur of his mantle blew this way and that in glossy chunks. There was a richness of texture to his entire appearance that made her frozen fingers twitch. Though she’d come for the alpha wolf, a being more fantasy than reality, this man looked solid and strong. Against the backdrop of ice and snow and plain gray rock, he was sudden, vigorous and very alive.

Far from nothing.

Only his eyes kept her from reaching out to him. They were green. A frigid pale green. Ferocious and intense. Bright against his black hair and the deepening darkness, but also intimidating.

“I risked my life to escape from a nightmare. I’ve accomplished that. At least for now,” Elena said. His words had caused the pulse beneath her skin to fade. She was left on top of a mountain in a snowstorm with nothing to anchor her there. No certainty. No song.

“You won’t find escape here,” the man said. But he knelt down beside her. Elena was so cold, the heat from his lantern seemed to warm her, or maybe it was the heat of his large body so close to hers.

This was the right place. She wasn’t mistaken. Even with the physical pulse of the compulsive call to climb diminished, her instincts to trust the old legend wouldn’t fade. She was here for a reason. The book in her bag had shown her the way. Her grandmother had told the old tales as if they were true. They might have fueled her nightmares, but they might also prove to be her only hope against Grigori once the protective binding her mother had bought with her blood ran out.

“I won’t go back,” Elena said.

Her body was done. Frozen. If he refused to help her, she would die. But it was force of will, not bodily exhaustion, that caused her to take a stand even as she knelt in the snow.

“Not tonight anyway,” the man said. “The storm is only getting started. I won’t leave you here to die.” She cried out when he reached to pick her up, but she quieted when his hold turned out to be surprisingly gentle for such a large man. He stood easily, trading his lantern for her body in one smooth, easy move. “But this isn’t an invitation to stay,” he continued.

“You are a Romanov,” Elena murmured against his windswept hair. He turned to walk back through the deep snow. The ache in her knee throbbed in time with the thudding of her heart. Her weight in his arms didn’t slow him down and neither did the drifts of snow. He left the glowing lantern behind them, so every stride carried her closer and closer to the dark where his wolves had disappeared. She’d seen his face earlier. She’d recognized his features—the square jaw, the sculpted nose. She’d seen their like in the book that had brought her here, but her book’s illustrations had been fanciful compared to the actual man.

“I am Ivan, the last Romanov,” the man replied. “You came for a refuge, but you found nothing but cursed ground.”

* * *

When she’d fallen to her knees, Ivan Romanov wanted to rush forward to her aid. That very human reaction had slowed his response. It wasn’t the fall that caused his heart to swell and his chest to tighten with concern. It hadn’t been the pale blue of her lips or the porcelain of her skin or her thick dark lashes crusted with a dusting of white. Her sapphire eyes, vivid against the blowing snow, and the stubborn light that intensified in them even as darkness fell, had compelled him forward. Whatever had driven her up the mountain in winter hadn’t faded with the fall or the intimidating appearance of the wolves.

She would rise.

She would press on.

And if he didn’t do something to prevent it, she would die at Bronwal’s great gate. Her eyes revealed a different person than her slight form suggested. When he picked her up, she weighed nothing in his arms. He had trained for centuries, but it wasn’t until he felt her delicate, mortal burden that he had the insane idea he had trained for just this moment.

For centuries.

She reached to hold around his neck. In spite of the stubborn light in her eyes, her arms surprised him with their strength. Only the wisps of respiration that came too quickly from her lips betrayed her fear. She was bundled in insulated clothing of a make and design he’d never seen. It had been many years since anyone other than the Volkhvy had ventured close during the Romanov materialization. The glimpses he’d seen of the modern world as it progressed had created an incomplete picture in his mind, always changing.

Her clothes told him little about the woman who wore them, but her determined journey through the pass should have alerted him. Her size was deceptive. Her eyes and tight hold as well as the tension in her body against him—those things revealed the woman to him.

Her limp did not define her.

She wouldn’t be frightened away. Not easily.

“You can shelter here for the night out of the storm, but when it passes, you leave,” Ivan said. He’d left the gate open. Lev and Soren stood on either side to guard the entrance. He’d seen them do so thousands of times before. The momentary electricity that had claimed his limbs when he’d lifted the woman in his arms drained away. He recognized the numbness as it returned. He was beyond weary. More worn by the years of coming and going from the Ether than he’d ever been worn by battle.

His father, Vladimir Romanov, had betrayed the Light Volkhvy queen centuries ago. He hadn’t been satisfied to be a champion. He’d wanted to rule. The queen’s punishment had been unrelenting. She’d cursed Bronwal and all the people in it to be bound to the Ether for eternity. Every ten years, the castle materialized for one month. It was taken into the Ether after the month was over, again and again. Each materialization, fewer survivors materialized. His father had been the first to succumb.

The quickening Ivan had felt in himself when he’d rushed to the fallen woman wasn’t respite. It was torture. The years had piled on until his soul was crushed by too many losses to bear. And yet there was always one more.

Not always.

His enchanted blood had prolonged his life as had Vasilisa’s curse.

But he wasn’t immortal.

He said a prayer of thanks for that small mercy before he carried the woman inside.

Chapter 2

Even though she had the snowstorm and the frigid mountain pass for comparison, she didn’t find the great hall of the castle welcoming. It was nothing like the illustrations in her book. Dark, gray, unlit by torches or firelight, it seemed more a massive cave than a place where people would gather. A fireplace several times larger than any she’d seen before yawned cold and dark. Wind whistled down its chimney like a banshee. A frozen banshee.

In the shadows, the elaborate tapestries hanging on the walls were lifeless and dull. In her book, they were painted with vivid detail that never seemed to fade. Romanov had carried her through the outer keep without greeting or comment from a dozen or so dreary-looking denizens going about half-hearted work. The gamboling of the giant wolves had seemed cruelly vigorous in comparison. The wolves were playful when all else was doom and gloom. They must have been protected from the gloom of the villagers by their simpler, animal comprehension.

Something was wrong with Bronwal. The wrongness permeated the people and the atmosphere, including the man who held her to his chest.

Inside, the great hall was deserted. Elena tried to speak, but her teeth chattered together and shivers racked her body. The trembling meant her nerves hadn’t been frozen, but the pain of her skin coming back to life caused her to moan.

“We have no accommodations for visitors. Not anymore,” Romanov said. He turned around as if he was looking for somewhere to put her that wasn’t dark and damp.

“I s-see th-that,” Elena replied. Welcome or not, she was here. She’d made it. Once she warmed up enough to face the challenge, she would find the alpha wolf even though this last Romanov was determined to send her away. She’d be much better off facing this man’s determination not to help her than she’d been facing Grigori in Saint Petersburg alone.

“Fetch Patrice. To the tower room,” Romanov ordered. The russet wolf jumped to attention. He stopped his leaping and stared at his master for several seconds as if his wolf brain had to interpret the command. Then he was off. The white wolf sat on its haunches and looked at them.

“I know there are plenty of empty rooms. Don’t look at me like that. Anyone who would have an opinion about where best to put her is long gone,” Romanov said.

He tightened his arms when she tried to press her palms against his broad chest for release. He didn’t place her on her feet. Inside the castle, even in the lofted great hall, he seemed much larger. He was well over six feet with muscled arms and legs that matched his intimidating frame. His hold was overwhelming. His embrace swallowed her petite body. He held her close against his chest. Odd, since he had ordered her to go away. His heartbeat was clear and strong against her cheek.

Suddenly, he was too real. Her respiration quickened and her fingers curled into the damp material of his cloak. He felt her increased tension and paused. His whole being became alert. She could sense the intensity of his attention on her face. Her focus was on the fur of his mantle, but she forced her gaze from that safe haven to more dangerous territory.

In the shadows, his eyes were lighter than his dark brows and hair, but they were hooded against her. She couldn’t read his emotions before he looked away. He betrayed nothing of his inner feelings yet she sensed them beneath his stiff demeanor. She noted his tightened hands and his unwillingness to meet her eyes. They waited for a long time, made longer by her fatigue and fear.

Finally, at some unspoken signal, he turned again and headed from the room in a decided direction. They came to a circular stone hall that eventually changed to stairs. She held him as he carried her up and up the never-ending climb. She was accustomed to athletic artists and dancers. Sophisticated and polished businessman and patrons were her usual companions. She wasn’t used to storybooks come to life from legends that originated in the Dark Ages.

Romanov’s scent was one of wind and snow, leather and fur. His hair had enveloped her with stinging strands outside on the mountain. Now it dried around his face in a riot of damp waves. By the time they came to an open door at the top of the stairs, Elena had seen Romanov’s face by the light of a thousand torches. The impact of his appearance wasn’t diminished by the increased time to study him. His face was as bold as the rest of him, with a strong brow and patrician cheekbones. His lips were sculpted and sensual against his hard features and there was a shadow of beard growth on his jaw that only served to highlight its perfect, sharp angles. The contrast of his green eyes continually startled her against his dark hair and pale skin.

Not that he looked at her again. He kept his gaze on the stairs. He didn’t have to look. She could feel his attention zeroed in on her every blink and sigh. She’d followed a call she couldn’t define to a strange place she’d only heard about from a storybook, but she was afraid she might have found more danger than she’d left behind. The wolves had been terrifying, but Romanov was in some ways more intimidating than his pets. In trying to escape Grigori had she placed herself in even greater danger?

The glow of a small fire met them when he stepped inside the room at the top of the long, spiraling stairway. A round woman in a faded apron bustled around and the russet wolf stretched out by the fireplace, soaking up what heat it provided in its infancy. Romanov had carried her up into the tallest tower she’d seen from far below in the pass. The windows were obscured by ancient stained glass, wavy and dense with imperfections. Occasional shadows seemed to swoop by, hinting that the ravens still circled outside. The room was furnished sparsely with a plain wooden bed draped in thick velvet textiles against the cold. There were two sturdy chairs on either side of the fire. There were no lamps or electric outlets. No technology of any kind.

Had she expected modern amenities in a castle made by magic hands centuries ago?

The woman didn’t speak. She quietly straightened a woven throw on one of the chairs by the fire and Romanov responded by placing Elena on it. The move was hurried, as if he couldn’t wait to put her down, but also gentle. He was being careful with her leg. His size and strength and gruff manner made his courtesy that much more surprising.

“It isn’t a new injury. My name is Elena Pavlova. I’m a dancer. The stress of the climb aggravated an ACL condition I developed from my years in ballet,” Elena said. “I’ll be fine with rest and another knee surgery.” She didn’t tell him she’d never dance again. An additional surgery might give her a greater range of movement, but she would never reclaim the grace she’d lost.

She could no longer focus on dancing. It had been a necessity to help support her family. It had saved her when her mother died, but now all of the drive she’d used for the dance needed to be focused on survival. Never mind there was an empty place left by the loss of her dance deep inside of her. It had given her purpose for so long even though it had been a cruel taskmaster more than a heartfelt occupation. The call had seemed to fill the void for the last several days, but she tried to ignore it now. She was here. Why did it still seem to compel her toward something she couldn’t see?

“Thank you,” Elena said to the woman, who tucked another throw around her legs. Patrice didn’t reply.

“It’s been several Cycles since she’s spoken. You spoke of the wolves. You must know of the curse that binds us. The Queen of the Light Volkhvy punishes us for my father’s betrayal of her trust. Every ten years, Bronwal materializes from the Ether. At the end of the month, we disappear into the Ether once more. We all change each time we’re lost in the Ether,” Romanov said. “When the enclave dematerializes, we’re left with an awareness that makes the Ether a purgatory. It drains our souls away, little by little, time after time. For some there’s a sudden vanishing. For others, a slow fading away. Vladimir Romanov hasn’t been seen since the first Cycle.”

The legends about the Light Volkhvy champions had always seemed magical and romantic to her, filled with heroics and daring. She hadn’t known about the curse. No wonder there seemed to be something wrong with her storybook castle and all the people she’d encountered in it. The thaw she’d been experiencing seemed to pause as ice reclaimed her heart, but if Romanov noticed her chilling realization he betrayed nothing. Elena slowly shrugged out of her backpack as her host ignored her, and Patrice took it from her only to drop it on the floor as if she wasn’t aware she had taken it. The chubby woman had crinkles around her eyes and merry red cheeks, but her silence negated who she’d once been. Her features seemed to indicate that she’d once been a jolly soul, but she wasn’t fully with them. Her eyes were distant and her movements were automatic. It wasn’t only that she didn’t speak. She didn’t seem to hear them well. The backpack landed near the russet wolf and the giant creature nosed it and then ignored it as if it had proved of no interest.

“You’re here after all this time,” Elena said. She’d come looking for champions. She’d hoped to find enchanted wolves and their masters. She’d never imagined she’d find the original Romanovs themselves. “You’re the oldest son of Vladmir Romanov. One of Queen Vasilisa’s champions. Fully awake and aware.” The heat from the fire began to warm her again. Her shivering had stopped. Her teeth didn’t chatter. Romanov filled the room with his restrained energy. He’d let her go, but she could still feel his hold. He was powerful, but his power wasn’t merely physical. There was no way he had faded from what he had once been. Why did he want her to think otherwise?

“In time I’ll fade away too,” he said. “In one month, Bronwal will go back to the Ether. Maybe this time I’ll stay there, vanished, like the rest of my family.” He shrugged, but the light gesture didn’t match the shadows that haunted his eyes. He’s not sure what each materialization will bring. Who will remain and who will be gone forever. Elena’s body was beginning to adjust to the heat from the fire, but Romanov’s circumstances left her heart permanently chilled. It must have been torture through the decades to lose his loved ones, one by one.

He sat in the opposite chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him in a deceptively relaxed position. The white wolf, Lev, had found them. He came into the room reluctantly and slumped at his master’s feet as if he had grown unused to such comforts. The russet wolf, Soren, stretched out on the other side. Without saying goodbye, Patrice left the room. Would she wander the halls aimlessly until the castle went back into the Ether? Would she even exist during the next Cycle or would she be lost to nothingness, never to be seen again? Elena had come looking for help against Grigori, but she had found more darkness here than she’d expected.

“I need the alpha wolf. My grandmother said he was the Light Volkhvy’s greatest champion. Are you his master? Will you help me find him?” Elena asked. It made her nervous to see her bag so close to the subjects of the book inside of it. It might seem childish to Romanov even though it had served as a lifeline to her. But her knee throbbed and that was the more pressing problem. She stood and leaned to unbuckle her boots. She carefully took them off without jarring her knee. Then she reached to unzip her ski suit and pull it down. Beneath its down-filled pale blue polyester, she wore simple white silk thermals. Gooseflesh rose on her skin at the sudden rush of air against the thin material. Finally, with some painful maneuvering, the damp suit was peeled away. She draped it over the back of her chair and she sat again, free to massage her troublesome knee. There was a scar where the first surgery had extended her use of the knee. Without that repair, her walk through the snow would have been impossible, not merely excruciating.

It wasn’t until her pain eased that she noticed the tension in the air. Elena stilled. The fire had caught and it blazed brightly, bathing her in a flickering spotlight. She understood her mistake even before she lifted her eyes. Romanov wasn’t a modern man and she had basically stripped in front of him. She was a ballerina. Her body was an instrument, a tool. Her every movement was a deliberate placement of everything from her spine to her toes, but she was completely disconnected from the sensuality of her lithe limbs. The theater had no patience for modesty. They hurried to change from one costume to another in hallways amid a rush of similar nude forms.

But this man wasn’t a dancer. He didn’t even belong to this century at all. He’d been born in the Middle Ages. Her book was very old and it told a tale much older than its pages.

She’d always thought of the Romanovs as legends. Larger than life and not quite human. But this Romanov was a man. One she didn’t know, from a time she couldn’t understand. And he was a man tortured by a cruel curse. When she did look up and her gaze collided with his, he looked stunned, as if shedding her wet clothes in front of him was more shocking than his cursed castle, monstrous wolves and disappearing people. He also looked even more real. The leaping flames reflected in his eyes seemed to reveal the emotion he’d tried to hide before. His glance dropped to sweep her body. There was color in his cheeks and his lips had softened. Her stripping might have surprised him, but he was appreciative of what she had revealed. His lingering perusal made her cheeks heat. The flush was a tingling pleasure in the cool room.

In time, he might fade as he predicted, but he was fully here now and she must seem nearly naked to his old-fashioned standards. He didn’t look away, but he did raise the direction of his gaze from her breasts to her eyes.

“You won’t find help here. Loss. Despair. Resignation. Those you will find. But not help,” Romanov said. His hands had grasped the arms of his chair with a white-knuckled grip and his voice was strained. His accent was exotic to her ears. His vowels and consonants were slowly uttered with deeper inflections as out of place and uninfluenced by current civilization as his leather and furs. He must have had contact with the outside world each time he materialized. She could understand him, but it was as if he was a time traveler speaking a language that wasn’t his native tongue. It was a visceral experience to have to listen to him so carefully and watch his eyes and his lips move as he spoke. She had to attune her entire body to him in order to communicate.

Elena trembled again, but not from the cold. She didn’t see resignation in Romanov’s eyes. The waves of black hair around his face were highlighted by a halo of firelight. From that glowing frame, his green eyes shone with repressed passion...and anger. Beneath his dramatic brows and offset by pale skin, the emotion in his irises caused her heartbeat to kick in her chest and her breath to quicken.

He didn’t want her here.

In her nightmares, she had wings, but they were always clipped. She was flightless. Caged. Kept at the whim of Grigori for reasons that caused her to beat against the bars of her cage until her white-feathered breast was stained with blood. She’d danced Odette many times—the swan tormented by a sorcerer. Her performances were as prophetic as her dreams. Grigori had seen her dance as a young girl. He’d vowed to have her. Her mother had used every last drop of her blood to bind him away from her daughter.

She’d never known why her mother had killed herself. Only a few months ago, Grigori had revealed the truth. Her mother had traded her life for her daughter’s and it had only bought Elena’s safety for a limited time.

“I’ve had my share of despair and loss,” Elena said. “Resignation? Never.”

She wouldn’t be frightened by his anger. Or not cowed by it anyway. She had done nothing but search for a way to survive. She was going nowhere until she found it.

Suddenly, over Romanov’s shoulder, she saw bars on the door to the tower room. They were artistically twisted in patterns of vines and flowers, but they were iron bars nonetheless. Romanov had drawn his legs back and he’d straightened. His wolves had also straightened to sit at attention by his side.

Three sets of eyes stared her down.

She had nowhere else to go, but that didn’t matter. Not if she was trapped in a tower of a cursed castle and kept from finding the alpha wolf she sought.

I am the last Romanov.

He hadn’t said it in a tone of resignation. He’d said it like his soul stood rooted in its last stand for eternity if need be. Had she disturbed his lonely vigil? Was that why he was looking at her with anger in his eyes?

This man ruled here. There were no councils or committees. He was a king and she was a trespasser. For some reason, he had decided to stand between her and the alpha wolf she needed to find.

“The Romanovs were given great power by the Light Volkhvy to fight against the dark. You were given powerful enchanted wolves to fight by your side. A Dark Volkhvy is my enemy,” she said.

Romanov stood. She wasn’t certain if it was a conscious move or if it was an automatic response to her mention of the Russian witches who had cursed his family.

“My father betrayed the Light Volkhvy. He wasn’t satisfied with leading a pack of champions. He wanted Vasilisa’s crown. His actions brought the curse down upon us. There are no champions left here. Only the dishonored and the walking dead. My father doomed himself and all of his people to this endless punishment. You’ve wasted your time,” he said.

“You’re not dead yet,” Elena whispered. He was anything but dead. He shone with life. That was what captured her attention when lantern light, torchlight or firelight illuminated his face. She’d seen many dancers glow on the stage, backlit by spotlights and painted scenery. With only the gray of his cursed castle’s backdrop, Romanov glowed—with anger, frustration and restrained passion—but he was definitely alive.

“All I ever held dear are dead. Gone. Vanished into nothing. My time will come. It must come. And soon,” Romanov said.

His hands were fisted. This man was part of the legend she’d sought, but he was also more—more human, more fallible, more tortured than the tales had led her to believe. She’d been an innocent child fascinated by the three-dimensional paper images that had popped up from the pages of her grandmother’s book. What had she known of love and loss? Since then, she’d lost her mother and her grandmother. And, finally, she’d lost the dance. Everyone she’d ever loved and her lifelong purpose. But that didn’t mean she was ready to give up. She’d been called here for a reason. She refused to be turned away before she understood the tingling in her veins that said this was where she was meant to be.

If he wouldn’t help her find the alpha wolf and fight Grigori, she would have to find the wolf and face the witchblood prince on her own. Romanov was a living, breathing legend, but he was finished. Fed up with the love and loss of this world and all the people in it. He wanted her gone because he wanted to die.

She jumped up when he turned toward the door. She couldn’t be caged. It was too much like her nightmare. But instead of running for the door, she rushed to her backpack. She unzipped the top and rummaged until she pulled her precious book from its depths. Instinct drove her now as instinct had driven her to follow its stories into the mountains. Her grandmother had been a wise woman. She’d treated the legends with respect. Romanov was at the door when she turned to show him the book. He needed to be reminded of what his family had been in the fight against the Dark Volkhvy. Of what he could be still.

“Stop,” Elena commanded. She held the book toward him and opened it as if she was the witch casting a spell. But in this cold, dark stone fortress, the book had lost its magic. It seemed small. Its colorful pages were more worn and faded than she remembered. It opened on her favorite scene. A lush forest of dozens of paper trees popped up from the page, and from between the trees three wolves ran. The white. The red. And the black. But they paled in comparison to the real wolves in the room, and they were so crumpled from use that they didn’t leap from the page as they had when she was a child.

Romanov looked from the book as the trees fluttered in her trembling hands up to her face.

“This is what brought you here?” he asked. The whole hollow castle seemed to still around them. His soft, pained voice echoed down the quiet stairs.

“My grandmother’s stories brought me here. She told them while we looked at this book,” Elena explained. The book itself wasn’t as impressive as her grandmother had been. In the same room as the last Romanov and his wolves, it wasn’t impressive at all.

But she couldn’t explain the pulse beneath her skin that had drawn her to his castle as if it were magnetized and she was raw ore dug up from the earth by an unseen hand.

He turned away again, from her and the legend, and Elena closed the book and dropped it onto her chair. She wouldn’t be locked in the tower. She would fight if she had to. The wolves led the way. They disappeared down the stairs in front of their master. Romanov’s large body blocked the door. He turned back to face her when he crossed the threshold. He slowly reached for the door to swing it closed.

“No. Wait,” Elena said. She rushed forward, but he shut the door too forcefully for her to prevent its closing. The lock clanked home as her hands gripped the iron vines. She pressed her face to the space between the bars. Romanov stood inches away from her, separated by the thick oak of the bottom of the door and the scrolling iron at the top, but also by centuries of experience that had left him jaded and untouchable.

Roses. She saw them closely now. Dozens of iron roses “grew” along the vine-shaped bars. The door was an ancient artisan’s masterpiece and a horror at the same time. She was trapped. The only thing that kept the scream from rising up from her gut was the absence of bloody feathers. As long as she was still herself, she could fight.

“You can’t keep me in here,” Elena protested.

Romanov leaned down. The firelight illuminated his face once more. He leaned so close that his raven hair brushed her cheek through the bars. He was older than she could imagine, even though he looked barely older than she was. He was more savage than anyone she’d ever encountered with his leather and furs and several white jagged lines from battle scars on his face, but he was also fiercely handsome. His rough, masculine beauty caused her to gasp at the sudden intimacy of his closeness. The door was between them but it felt like nothing at all.

She’d come looking for a legend, but he was real. She breathed in the scent of wind and snow held in his hair. And then she held her breath to keep from appreciating the wild bouquet. Of its own volition, her gaze cataloged every scar, every dark eyelash that lushly rimmed his eyes and the oddly vulnerable swell of his sensual lips. His eyes were hooded and hard, but the tenseness in his jaw eased when he noticed her catch her breath and hold it. He must have seen her sudden surprise at the physical attraction she felt for him in spite of her desperation. His gaze tracked over her face. She held her body still. She bit a lip that suddenly tingled because his were so kissable and so close. His attention dropped to her lips and then to her tight-knuckled grip on the bars. When he spoke, his voice was quiet.

“I’m not locking you in the tower, Elena Pavlova,” he said softly. His voice still vibrated against her even though they weren’t touching. It was deep, low and raw with some restrained emotion she couldn’t name. He looked back up, into her eyes. His gaze held her for long moments so that when he lifted an iron key scrolled with tiny vines and roses that matched the bars, she released her breath in surprise. The key dangled from a delicate silver chain and it bumped her hand again and again through the bars while he waited for her to move. She released the bar to open her hand for the key. Her fingers were shaking. Rather than dropping the chain, he lowered it slowly down into her palm to pile on top of the cool key in a slow, lazy coil of precious metal. For several seconds, his large hand rested over hers. His touch was light and warm. He stilled her trembling. She’d thought she knew his story, but his tale was still unfolding right before her eyes. She’d become a part of it, and it was a tale rife with danger.

She’d responded to the call. She’d come to the mountains for a legend and his wolves.

She’d found a man.

“The tower is for your protection. You hold the key while you’re here. Don’t be fooled by your pretty book. This isn’t a fairy-tale castle. Bronwal is cursed. Those who come and go from the Ether are forever changed and even while we’re in this world the Ether isn’t fully dispelled. Whatever you do, don’t consider this a refuge. The Volkhvy, both Dark and Light, aren’t to be trusted and neither am I. The Romanov curse is real...and deserved. Don’t forget that while you’re here,” Romanov said. He was warning her away. He wanted her to keep her distance. But he uttered the warning only after he’d leaned down until their lips were even closer together—nearly touching—between the iron bars. The door was nothing. It didn’t seem to exist at all. She looked up into his eyes and rather than repel, they caught and held her more thoroughly than any cage.

Perhaps it wasn’t the castle that was the magnet.

She’d been wrong. He was worn, not jaded. And he was touchable. Very touchable. It took all her self-control not to touch him now when he seemed to invite it.

“Sometimes the month passes in the blink of an eye and sometimes it stretches on in an endless trial. But however our time passes, it ends with a Volkhvy Gathering. If you came here to escape a Volkhvy prince, it was a mistake. They all come to dance on our graves. Or wasn’t that bit a part of the tale you were told?” Romanov whispered. “The Volkhvy, Dark and Light, are drawn to power. And Bronwal glows cruelly and seductively with power to their eyes. You’d do well to stay locked in this tower until the storm passes and you’re strong enough to leave.” His voice had dropped even lower and one sigh would have brought her to the taste of his lips. She held very still. She didn’t move. He dared her to greater intimacy, but she refrained. Because she could see that he was only torturing himself. He had no intention of kissing her. She wondered if he knew how much he tortured her too. His body was pressed to the outside of the door and hers was pressed against the inside. She could have sworn their body heat mingled even as they were kept apart.

“When you’ve caught the attention of a witchblood prince, there isn’t any place safe on earth,” Elena said. “I thought I was looking for refuge, but I’m not. I’m looking for a fighting chance.”

She straightened back from the bars and lifted her chin. She hadn’t come here to tempt a legend to kisses. She’d come to find a wolf and she didn’t intend to give up.

Chapter 3

Elena placed the key’s chain around her neck and let her means of freedom dangle down between her breasts like a pretty bauble. She couldn’t leave the tower immediately to hunt for the black wolf. She didn’t want to follow Romanov and the other wolves down the stairs. After the moments of intimacy through the bars of the door, she thought it best if she avoided the alpha wolf’s master. He wanted her to go away...and he didn’t at the same time. His actions didn’t match his words.

She found herself wanting to prove to Romanov that he was still alive. As if he could be woken from his stubborn vigil of despair by a kiss or a touch or an embrace. She hadn’t expected to find that sort of temptation at Bronwal. Romanov was a dangerous distraction she couldn’t afford. The pain in her knee was also a distraction she couldn’t afford. She always carried supplies to deal with her injury. In her backpack, she had first-aid cold packs, pain medication and a neoprene sleeve to offer support when she overdid.

Mountain climbing definitely qualified as overdoing.

She needed to treat her knee before she tried to do more. The strange compulsion that had called her to Bronwal now seemed to urge her on the hunt. She needed to resist that compulsion until she was sure that Romanov was farther away from her room.

Patrice surprised Elena before she could pull on the orthopedic sleeve. She opened the door with a key on an iron ring that hung from a braided leather belt around her waist. She led the way in front of a haphazard team of servants. They carried a large hip tub and a seemingly endless supply of steaming pitchers and pails full of hot water. Two large men in mismatched livery placed the wooden tub beside the fire. They both nodded in her direction before they left the room. Patrice gestured and the other servants walked forward one at a time to pour the water they were carrying into the tub.

Observing the procession was like watching time pass before her eyes. The people had hair and garb from varying centuries and all of them looked worse for wear. Elena’s chest tightened in sympathy. The curse had punished all of the Romanovs’ people, from the head of the powerful family to the tiniest chambermaid. It looked as if anyone who was able chipped in to do the work that had to be done even if it hadn’t been his or her original specialty. The liveried men had obviously been something other than maids in the past.

Once the tub was filled, Patrice pulled a corked vial from one of the numerous pockets in her shabby apron. When she opened the vial and upended it over the water, a light, fresh scent filled the air. Mint. Elena breathed deeply as the aromatic steam rose.

“That’ll warm your bones, Miss,” a pretty young girl said. When she smiled, a dimple graced her cheek alongside a sprinkling of freckles. “If you need anything while you’re here, they call me Bell.” She was last in line and emptied her chipped pitcher with a nod of accomplishment before turning to leave the room. Her dress was nicer than most. It had been patched and mended. And her brown curls were clean beneath a faded cap. The cap and her boots looked like she’d borrowed them from a boy twice her size. Elena supposed there was no one left to protest if a maid chose unconventional attire.

As before, Patrice didn’t say a word. She followed the last servant toward the door.

“Thank you. Thank you all,” Elena said.

She was surprised when the older woman paused at the door to look back over her shoulder. There was a crinkle in her forehead as if Elena’s thanks and the steaming tub confused her. Poor Patrice. Not all there, but still present enough to perform old duties long expected of her. She must have been a housekeeper to the Romanovs before the curse descended. Elena ached for her confusion, but then the puzzled look eased and Patrice turned back to walk out of the room. She closed the door behind her and the lock engaged.

So if the lock on the door wasn’t to protect her from Ether-addled servants, what did it protect her from? The Volkhvy, the Romanov wolves...or Romanov himself?

Elena reached up to grasp the iron key Romanov had given her. She closed her fingers around it, easily remembering the brush of his hand and the closeness of his lips as he’d warned her to stay locked in the tower of her own volition.

Those that come and go from the Ether are forever changed.

She’d seen dishonor walking with the witchblood prince. Romanov seemed its opposite in every way. Yet she couldn’t help if an insistent thrill of fear electrified the blood in her veins. He wasn’t what she’d expected. He was cursed by a dark enchantment she couldn’t imagine having endured for so long, but he was also undeniably attractive. Her urge to hunt that wouldn’t ease might well be blamed on the memory of the almost-kiss. He’d seemed so hungry for contact and so determined not to succumb. Still, she had to focus on the black wolf, not his master. She could fight Grigori without Romanov, but she couldn’t win without the alpha wolf.

A wolf hunt loomed, but Elena’s knee throbbed and she was cold to the marrow of her bones. She released the key and ignored it and her memories of Romanov’s nearness as she took off her long underwear. She was alone. The door was locked. She couldn’t resist soaking her whole body, including her knee, while she waited for the right time to leave the tower. There was no doubt that she would. She had come to Bronwal for a wolf champion. She wouldn’t leave without finding him first.

* * *

It was probably not wise to wander around a strange castle after midnight looking for a witch-eating wolf. Sometimes wise wasn’t an option when you were hunted by a witchblood prince and running out of time.

Elena had dried herself with rough towels the servants had left near the tub. She’d pulled on the one change of clothes she’d packed—underwear, jeans, a T-shirt and a loose-knit sweater. Soft-soled sneakers completed a look that was practical and completely out of place. If the servants had presented a hodgepodge of passing centuries that had briefly influenced castle life, she was fairly certain she would be the first person to walk Bronwal’s halls in jeggings.

Even after the bath, her body was exhausted. She might have opted for a quick nap before she left the tower to refresh herself if it wasn’t for the possibility that her sleep would be disturbed as usual by nightmares.

She wasn’t a swan.

She was a woman.

And hiding in a tower wasn’t going to solve her problems.

Her knee still ached, but she washed several pills down with a bottle of water she’d also packed in her bag. Patrice hadn’t thought to offer her food or drink and Romanov hadn’t returned with a tray. Thank God. She couldn’t handle another tête-à-tête with or without bars between them. Eventually, moonlight filtered through the wavy glass that must have been an extravagance when it was installed in the narrow tower windows. Had it been placed by magic before Vladimir’s betrayal? The whole castle was evidence of enchantment later darkened by the curse. The wavy stained glass glowed beautifully by the light of the moon while hungry ravens circled perpetually outside.

When Elena decided it was relatively safe to leave the room, she pulled the chain over her head and used the key to unlock the door. The sound of the tumblers moving in the lock echoed down the stairs with loud metallic clinks. She placed the chain back around her neck while she paused to wait for a reaction. No one came to stop her. From the top of the winding stair, she could only see torch-lit shadows flickering on the walls. Distant sounds came to her ears. Singing and sighs and soft sobbing from somewhere far away. The castle didn’t sleep. The atmosphere was one of restlessness and regret. Patrice wasn’t the only one who wandered. Romanov had warned her that it wasn’t safe. She risked running into Light or Dark Volkhvy or humans caught up in the curse and driven mad by their endless returns to the Ether.

Yet it was running into Romanov again that she most feared. His magnetism was at least as strong as the original pull that had drawn her to the mountains, but the curse had changed everything. She had to be careful about the darkness she’d found, in Romanov and in his castle. He was right. She had to resist her attraction to her host, but she also had to find the alpha wolf. Her resolve to resist Grigori was useless with no power to back it up.

* * *

Elena Pavlova would leave tomorrow. The training courtyard was the emptiest, most hollow place he had to endure during a Cycle and tonight it was rapidly becoming covered in a frigid blanket of snow. Nevertheless, Ivan had trained in it for hours. He rarely wasted a Cycle with sleep, but this time his restlessness had another cause. He would be haunted by her small, perfectly formed breasts for the rest of his days on earth. Her nipples had been hard from the cold and damp. Their rosy darkness had been vivid against the thin white silk of her unusual undergarments. He’d had to force himself to look away. And now he needed the snow and exertion to keep him sane.

She had been completely innocent of her inadvertent seduction. Not in the manner of a child, but in the manner of a woman who had more urgent matters than seduction to attend to. She had said she was a dancer. It showed in her every move. Even her limp was graceful, a careful shifting of weight and form. He was captivated by her manner of movement and her urgency. She’d flushed when she’d noticed his reaction to her disrobing. It had been a simple, practical removal of wet clothes not intended to shatter him completely.

But it had.

And then to pile torment on top of torment, she had paused in her desperate bid to ask for his help to tremble and stare. Her eyes had widened. She’d held her breath and captured the soft swell of her lower lip in her perfect white teeth. He’d been alone for a long time, but he knew the signs of desire when he saw them. Especially when he was burning with it himself.

First, she’d looked at him like she was searching for something he could never be. Then she’d looked at him as a woman looks at a man, and he’d wanted to respond to the hunger that had risen in her eyes.

He’d been blissfully numb before she came. He couldn’t remember the last Cycle where he’d felt anything but the growing wish to fade away. He’d gone through the motions. He’d cared for Lev and Soren. He’d endured the “honor” of the Volkhvy Gathering that was, in fact, a celebration of his eternal torture and the aura of power released by the Ether every materialization. But it had all been done in a haze of endurance as if he ran a marathon of epic distance with one stride more, then one more, then one more before the final finish line.

His haze had been cruelly lifted.

He struck again and again at the scarred oaken practice figures in the moonlit courtyard with the sapphire sword. The gem in its hilt was flat and plain. It was an enchanted sapphire, but it was only moonlight that occasionally caused its surface to glow. The Light Volkhvy queen, Vasilisa, had given the sword to his father as a gift for his mate. When Ivan’s mother had wielded the blade, the power in its gem had been dazzling. Now it was dulled by the curse.

The dead stone was doubly cruel because its moonlit dark blue reminded him of Elena’s serious gaze leveled on him with expectation and hope.

He couldn’t help her. He couldn’t revive the sword. His blows rained down on the oaken cross that had once been used to train the Romanov guard. Clouds of white burst into the air as every blow shook the wood and kept the snow from settling. They were all gone now. The Ether had eaten them. A devora. It had taken his father first. Perhaps justly, for it was Vladimir Romanov who had tried to betray the Light Volkhvy queen, Vasilisa. It hadn’t been strictly a political betrayal. It had been a betrayal of the heart. Ivan’s mother had been killed by the Dark Volkhvy king. Afterward, his father had become Vasilisa’s lover. But his father had craved more power. He hadn’t wanted to be a mere champion. He’d wanted to rule.

In retribution, Vasilisa had punished him and his offspring and all of his people.

Sweat poured down Ivan’s face like the tears he’d never allowed himself to shed as a teen when the weight of the world had fallen on his shoulders. Steam rose off his heated skin as the salty moisture hit the night air. He’d been raised to fight the Dark Volkhvy. As the oldest, he’d assumed leadership. He’d become the alpha. Even as a teen, he’d already been a battle-scarred warrior in those days. But he’d been unprepared to fight against dishonor, nothingness and despair. He’d carried on. For years, he’d tried to earn redemption while one after another after another of his people and loved ones faded away, Lev and Soren by his side.

He hadn’t been able to hold back the darkness. The Ether won, again and again. The curse was triumphant. Bronwal had been under siege for centuries and it wasn’t until Elena arrived that Ivan had realized, for him, it would never be over.

Because in that moment, at the door of her room, he’d known he had no intention of succumbing to the beast as his brothers had done. Neither would he vanish quietly into the Ether. He was the last Romanov. He would stand. Alone. Forever. To ensure that the curse ended with him. If he allowed himself to disappear into the Ether for good, the castle, the wolves and the sword would be undefended against anyone who might try to claim them when they materialized each Cycle. His brothers, Lev and Soren, had given up their humanity to escape permanently into their wolf forms. Either they couldn’t remember how to be men or they didn’t want to. The shame of their heritage was too great.

He would never abandon them, but would never join them.

He wasn’t free to help Elena Pavlova in his wolf form because he had to maintain his control and his human faculties. He had to defend Bronwal and keep possession of the sword. Until his unnaturally long life finally came to an end in death and dust.

He also wasn’t free to be a man with Elena. He had to resist the mutual attraction that had flared between them. The only way to break the Romanov curse was to guard against passing it on.

The cross he attacked with powerful blows finally disarmed him. With one last swing, he buried the sword too deeply to retrieve and he released its hilt. The dulled sapphire seemed to mock his resolve in the moonlight. Snowflakes immediately began to adhere to its surface now that it was stilled. Let it be there, buried deep in the oak, when the Dark Volkhvy came to try to steal it. Every Cycle, they came. And he was always ready. This time would be no different.

He was the alpha wolf that Elena Pavlova sought. But he wasn’t free to be wolf or man with the woman who needed his help.

Chapter 4

The lighting in the castle was as haphazard as the servants who had helped her the night before. With servants influenced by their time in the Ether, it was no surprise that jobs such as maintaining torches and lanterns went undone or half-done. The entire castle had an air of hushed neglect, but there was also a sense of expectation as if dust and cobwebs and candles waited and waited for care that never came.

Elena walked quietly on her sneakered feet. She placed her weight on her toes, unconsciously tiptoeing down gloomy halls. There had to be hundreds of empty rooms. She explored them, one by one. But the weight of what she found settled heavily on her heart. Her chest constricted and her breathing turned shallow. Again and again she found knitting laid to one side and never taken up again. She found dusty books marked with faded ribbons. There were chessboards waiting for next moves that would never come and clothes laid out that would never be worn. Toys abandoned.

And paintings of generations of Romanovs lost to the Ether.

The curse had been a terrible punishment and a horrible fate for the legends she’d loved as a child. Ivan Romanov lived in a haunted home. Bronwal was a majestic graveyard filled with the discarded remains of lives interrupted never to resume.

Finally, Elena came to a large portrait hall lit only by the scant light of sunrise filtering through heavily draped windows set high in the stone block walls. The scarlet of the thick velvet drapes gave the light a reddish glow. She moved along the edges of the room, avoiding the center of the floor filled with a forest of sheet-draped statuary.

Instead, she looked at the people. Especially an oversize painting that dominated the room. The subject of the painting was Ivan Romanov and his family—mother, father, and two younger brothers. She stepped close to the base of the portrait to stare. There was warmth and familial affection captured by some long-gone artist’s deft hand. Ivan stood behind and between his younger brothers with his hands on their shoulders as if he held them still. She could see the twinkle in the boys’ eyes and the patience of a wiser older brother in Ivan’s. The younger Romanovs weren’t identical twins. One favored his father with reddish brown hair. One favored his mother with pale, unblemished skin and platinum blond hair. But all of them had the Romanov nose and the tall, fine forms of aristocratic warriors.

Had he lost them all to the Ether?

His mother had leaned toward all three of her boys. Her body language conveying that she preferred their company to her husband’s. The eldest Romanov looked more proud than warm, but she was certain it was her knowledge of his failures that diminished him in her eyes.

She’d come for the alpha wolf, but she couldn’t help being drawn to the Romanov tragedy, as well. No matter what their father had done, the boys had been innocents caught up in the curse through no fault of their own. Elena had to force herself away from the painting. It was too easy to be transfixed by the younger Ivan and the warmth and ease that was now absent from his green eyes.

She saw the shapes first beneath large sheets in the center of the room. She walked to each and pulled them off, first one and then the other. She found stone carvings of the two wolves she’d already met—the red and the white.

But there was one larger covered form behind them.

Its sheet came off in her hand in a sudden flourish and dust filled the air with motes that rained down over the black marble she’d revealed. The alpha wolf was the size of a great stallion. It wasn’t a pet of the Romanov family. It was the greatest champion just as her grandmother had said. Its purpose was evident in every stone sinew and in its marble teeth.

Where had the alpha wolf gone?

Surely he hadn’t disappeared into the Ether. Not the largest and strongest of them all. She looked into his ferocious maw and her flight instinct kicked in. The sheet dropped from her numb fingers and her breath came quickly.

She risked her life in this place where’d she’d come to try to save it.

Hunting such a creature without its master’s blessing was as suicidal as climbing up the mountain looking for a fantasy castle. She should leave as Romanov advised and never return.

Elena lifted her hand and her fingers hovered near the black wolf’s face. She noted the tremble of her digits and forced herself to touch the cold stone. She cupped beneath the great snarling mouth as if she held the wolf’s head in her hand. She couldn’t leave. The hollow place inside of her where the dance had been wouldn’t allow it. She was here for a reason she didn’t yet understand, but the search for the black wolf was a part of it.

Her silent communication with the statue was interrupted by a clicking sound behind her.

She recognized what made the sound even without turning around.

Slow, stalking claws click, click, clicked on the tiled floor. They approached her from the way she’d come. Elena didn’t turn around. She looked into the alpha wolf’s stone eyes. They were as black as the rest of him, but the midnight glinted in the soft glow of filtered sunlight. Even as her heart pounded and her spine froze, the sculpture’s eyes seemed compelling.

She braced herself. The clicking came closer and closer from two distinct directions. One to her left and one to her right. When the massive creatures she’d met earlier came into her peripheral vision, flanking her on either side, she had the crazy sense that the two other wolf sculptures had come to life. Of course they hadn’t. These were the wolves from last night. And this time their master wasn’t around.

There was no one to call them off.

“You know where I can find the alpha wolf. Take me to him,” Elena said. Her voice didn’t waver. She spoke firmly. The flutter was hidden from view deep in her stomach and her knees. The wolves moved to stand beside the sculpture of the alpha wolf, on either side. They loomed over her and they were no longer acting like gamboling giant puppies. Their eyes blazed with predatory intent. Had they been hunting her while she searched the castle? Had they followed her from room to room at the bidding of their master or for some hungrier cause?

“I came for the alpha’s help,” Elena said. They weren’t ordinary wolves. Perhaps they would be able to understand. “A Dark Volkhvy stalks me. A witchblood prince. No friend of yours. Help me against him,” she urged.

She had no idea if they understood her words, but she had to try. She hadn’t come this far to stay locked in a tower.

First the russet and then the white stepped toward her. Elena lowered her hand from the marble wolf’s jaw. The trembling in her fingers was more noticeable, the better to show the wolves the terror she tried to hide. It was the russet wolf with coppery eyes who lowered his head to her hand first. She cried out softly, certain he would bite off her hand, but then the silky hair on the top of his head tickled the palm of her hand. The white wolf stepped forward to lean and lower and nudge her other hand until it too rested on a monstrous wolf’s head.

“Does this mean you’ll help me?” Elena said. “Will you lead me to the alpha wolf?”

* * *

The courtyard was churned into ruts and packed dirt by frequent use. Considering it was only materialized a month every ten years that meant the sweat that ran down Ivan Romanov’s half-naked body had been well-earned time and time again.

The wolves hadn’t understood her after all.

They’d led her to their master. A betrayal for sure, but she couldn’t blame them. Especially when she was grateful that they hadn’t eaten her for breakfast. They left her and bounded onto the field, chasing each other beneath the rising sun. It was cold in spite of the sun. Snow drifts lay all around. Elena wrapped her arms around herself. The castle walls protected the inner courtyard from excess snow accumulation, but Romanov’s practice field was dusted with white and edged by icy foliage on evergreen bushes. It glistened and dazzled her eyes because they’d grown used to the dimness inside.

Ivan lowered his arms. He’d left a sword embedded in the cross-shaped practice form. It was buried deep in the scarred wood. So deep that she wondered at the force required to leave it there. He didn’t turn around. She could see streaks of sweat on his muscled back and his labored breathing as his broad shoulders rose and fell. A leather cord wrapped the wild hair she remembered from the night before. The thick queue hung midway down his spine.

She didn’t like his hair bound. She wanted to free it. The crazy urge took her by surprise, as did the sudden feeling that everything she’d been looking for was here, in this courtyard, for her to see.

She hugged herself tighter as she waited long heartbeats for him to turn and face her. He expected her to leave today. She hadn’t found the alpha wolf. Grigori would find her, alone and defenseless. There was nowhere she could hide from him. Ivan Romanov couldn’t be her only hope because he was a man who didn’t believe in hope. Not anymore.

“Did you send the wolves to find me?” Elena asked.

Though she’d braced herself, she wasn’t prepared for Ivan to suddenly turn around and pace toward her. She backed away several steps from the ferocity that tightened his face before she stopped herself and stood her ground.

“You weren’t in the tower,” Ivan said.

He came close enough to touch her, but instead he reached for the key between her breasts. He didn’t pull it from her neck. He only held it in his large, calloused fingers. She looked from the key up to his eyes. He loomed over her, but it wasn’t fear she felt at his sudden nearness. No. The thrill in her veins and the rush on her skin was something besides fear. Awareness. Expectation. In the meager sunlight, she noted that his irises were brighter than the snow. His pupils had retracted, allowing lighter green and gold flecks to glow. The lightness softened his otherwise forbidding expression. His hair had been loosened around his face by his exertions, and glossy chunks of it threatened to come free from the leather cording.

If he sought to intimidate her, he succeeded, but only because she was intimidated by his accessibility. Why did she notice indications of softness that were probably a lie? And why did she feel as if she was missing a truth she needed to see?

“You gave me the key. And I chose to unlock the door,” Elena said. She still didn’t mention the call that made it impossible for her to hide. There was something here she needed to find. Something more than a man and a wolf, but they were part of it, she was sure.

“I can’t decide if you’re brave or foolish,” Romanov said. His gaze was intense. His hold on the key between her breasts was tight. She couldn’t back away. She was caught and held—both by his hand and his eyes.

“Careful and brave rarely go hand in hand. Brave is doing what has to be done, no matter the risk,” Elena said. “My mother was brave. She gave her life to call forth an ancient binding spell so that I could live free. I’m only just learning how to be brave for myself.”

He leaned slightly, bowing his head toward her face. At the same time, he pulled the key slightly toward his chest. It was an infinitesimal movement. But the chain definitely tightened against her neck. Her neck and his hand were engaged in a silent tug of war that mimicked the tug of war she was battling between the magnetic pull of his broad chest and her trembling body.

Why did the courtyard seem like the final destination in the long journey she’d taken? And why did she look for softness in this legendary man? Because she wanted him to tighten his grip on the key and tug harder. He was powerful. He could narrow the gap between them without her permission. It would absolve her of the bad decision she suddenly wanted to make.

Because in spite of the talk of being brave, all she could do was lower her attention from his angry eyes to focus on his mouth. Somehow, the truth was there for her to see. The swell of his sensual lower lip belied his talk of her foolishness. He wanted her here. He wanted her close. Deep inside, a liquid tightening coiled and a hunger rose. She wanted to kiss him. Never mind that he was an angry warrior who claimed he wanted her to stay locked away until she could leave. He held her for a reason. He stood tense as their bodies paused in the nearly touching position. Her breasts were inches from the warmth of his chest.

She lifted her gaze quickly to see what he would do. But his eyes were shadowed now by a thick fall of wavy black hair that had escaped its confinement. His irises glittered with an emerald sheen behind those snow-dampened locks. But his expression was obscured. She could only take in the rise and fall of his chest—it seemed slower than it should be, as if he controlled his breathing or even...did he hold his breath? Her own breath was shallow and quick. Her body held still as she waited to see what he would say or do.

“You are brave. Braver than I hope you’ll ever know,” Romanov said. It was almost a growl, uttered past a tense and tightened jaw.

“What is it I should be afraid of? What could possibly be worse than being captured by the witchblood prince who stalks me?” Elena asked. She closed her eyes and willed away the hot moisture that threatened to rise behind her lids. She’d already betrayed too much of her vulnerability to him and he refused to be moved. She wouldn’t give him her tears too.

“I don’t know the prince of whom you speak. And I know many monsters. Some man, some truly beast. The Ether claims more of my humanity with every Cycle. And you ask what you should be afraid of as if a threat doesn’t stand before your very eyes,” Romanov said. His voice had dropped to a low, agonized whisper. It seemed confessional. Yet he told her nothing she didn’t already know. He was dangerous. She could sense it. She could see it. But he was also so much more. Compelling. Alluring. Seductive. More attractive to a civilized woman than he should be.

“I will not give up. I will not go away,” Elena insisted. A sudden persistent pull on the silver chain caused her eyelids to open quickly. They were closer. There was only the slightest brush of contact between them, but the tips of her breasts burned. She did hold her breath then because respiration caused an agonizing allure of friction she couldn’t resist.

But she didn’t pull away.

And she didn’t close her eyes again.

There were no tears now. Only a giddy heated pleasure radiating from her distended nipples to the rest of her body. The glittering intensity of his gaze was locked on hers, but he must have known the chain was indenting the nape of her neck because he allowed the silver links to go slack. Now it was up to her to stay close or move away. He no longer held her in place.

She stayed.

And the attention of his eyes fell to the key in his hand. She watched him as he focused on placing the key against the hollow of her neck. The heat of his hand had warmed the iron. Nevertheless the contact sent shivers down her spine, especially when he allowed the key to fall. It slid down until the hollow of her cleavage caught it. The warmed iron between her breasts caused her to gasp. But then when he lifted his free hand to touch her, the sudden weight of his calloused fingers and palm cupping the back of her neck was so much hotter. Her gasp became a trembling sigh and then a whimper when his fingers brushed under the chain as if to soothe the mark it had left on her skin. He was moved, but she wasn’t sure what to expect. She suddenly feared she’d woken a sleeping giant, one that might consume her body and soul if he decided to stay awake.

“I won’t send you back out into the snow. But you won’t find what you seek at Bronwal. There are no champions here. Only heartache and defeat. Only darkness and danger,” Romanov warned.

Elena breathed freely now. Her whole body burned and she didn’t care. For so long she’d been harassed and harried. She’d been injured, physically and emotionally. Plagued by nightmares and loss. Desperation hadn’t been the only thing that drove her to climb the mountain, but it was desperation—a different kind—that caused her to lift her arms. She placed her palms against Romanov’s sweat-dampened chest. She felt the thudding of his heart, his powerful muscles and his heat. He jerked at the contact. But he didn’t jerk away. He stilled as she slid her hands up inch by inch, measuring his height and his solid reality, until she held a broad shoulder in each hand. She didn’t understand what had called her to Bronwal, but she understood this.

Her hands had been trained to be a graceful expression of her art, but in that moment they were strong. They held a legend. And he was the one who trembled beneath her fingers. His mighty form reacted to the delicate intimacy of her touch.

His hand tightened on the back of her neck. She was held again. And she didn’t mind. For the first time in a long time she focused on pleasure instead of pain. It was warm and immediate and all else fled from her thoughts.

“One word and I’ll let you go. I’m not so Ether-addled that I have no self-control. I will be a man, not a monster, for as long as I’m able. For now, I’m able. Walk away from me,” Romanov said. But as he spoke he pulled her close and it was gentler than she could have imagined. He didn’t crush her against him. He pressed and her curves complied until they were melded together.

She tilted her chin to meet his descending face. And still he paused. Their lips were only millimeters apart. His warm breath tickled her slightly open mouth.

“I’m a dancer. I’ve spent more time as a swan than as a woman,” Elena said softly. The tears were back, burning her eyes. She ached to kiss him. And more. He was big and powerful, and when his other arm came up to press against her lower back the sensation of being held, safe, away from all that had come before, left her light-headed. But she was at a loss off the stage. She didn’t know how to claim a new life now that her old life was over.

“No. I’m holding the woman. Without a doubt, it’s the woman’s mouth I’ll taste,” Romanov said.

Elena drew a shuddering breath of air as he traversed the last distance left between them.

Their lips touched and his mouth moved with eager hunger against hers. In nightmares, she’d endured depravity. This was pure, human and real. She tightened her hands on his shoulders as her stomach swooped and soared and her legs went weak. She also opened to the masculine seduction of his rough, slick tongue teasing between her lips.

Living off the stage was more instinct than practice. She swooned into the kiss without thought to form or precision. Romanov was all heat and pleasure and he consumed her easily. The thrill that rushed beneath her skin echoed the call she’d followed up the mountain. She couldn’t separate the sensations. She’d wanted his hair unbound because she wanted this wildness. He’d seemed to offer it with every glance, with every move, even though he’d withheld it.

Her tongue hungrily licked past his lips and twined with his. He held her tight as if he hadn’t been offering to let her go seconds before. She didn’t want to go anywhere. Her search seemed to be over. The call was silenced because it had been answered, somehow, someway, by his lips and teeth and tongue.

“You risk much. This woman is protected by her mother’s spilt blood and claimed by Grigori, the witchblood prince. You might be Vasilisa’s plaything, but that won’t stop him from torturing you for eternity if you despoil his prize.”

Romanov tore his lips from hers and whirled around to face the interruption. A man had entered the courtyard from the keep. Elena immediately found her footing as she was shoved behind the warrior she shouldn’t have been kissing.

Her life wasn’t a life free to indulge in sensual assignations. Especially with the legendary master who refused to help her engage the help of the alpha wolf.

The man who had entered the courtyard cautiously approached them. Of course, he was no man. He was Volkhvy. And judging from his intimate knowledge of her tormentor, he was Dark, not Light.

“You’ve come for the Romanov blade, but you’ll find it buried deep in a cross purified by generations of my honorable men. It won’t come to you easily, and the sapphire has long lost its glow,” Romanov said. He’d placed himself between her and the Volkhvy. But he had no weapon in his hands.

The Dark witch was dressed in black leather from head to foot. He shone like obsidian in the winter sun. His white hair was braided in a thousand plaits and piled on top of his head, and his movements were young and quick. He was at least as tall and strong as Romanov himself. Elena’s heart pounded, overwhelmed with the rude transition from passion to fear. The wolves would come. Surely, the wolves would come.

“Grigori will kill you for taking the taste he hasn’t been able to take himself. He will cut out your bold tongue,” the man said. He laughed when he said it. And he attacked.

Elena was startled by another sudden shove that sent her sliding backward in the snow away from Romanov as he pushed her several feet before he and the Volkhvy collided. She didn’t fall. She kept her balance as only a woman with years of physically demanding training could have. Her knee screamed, but it didn’t give way. Her arms flew out to automatically aid her equilibrium, and anyone watching would have thought she had merely been landing from a smooth pirouette.

“You grow weaker with each materialization, old man. The stone can be recharged. I’m not sure the same can be said for you,” the witchblood man said.

“Try and try and try again. But always empty-handed in the end. Right, Dominique?” Romanov taunted in return.

“You know this man?” Elena asked. She’d immediately recovered and gone to a weapons rack where practice swords and daggers were hung in a rough array.

“Him. Many others. They’re all the same to me. They come for the sword Vasilisa gave my father,” Romanov said. “They leave without it.” His blows connected powerfully with the Volkhvy’s abdomen, chest and jaw. The witchblood man recovered from each blow much more quickly than a mortal man would. But after one particularly hard connection, he did spit blood into the snow. “Sometimes they don’t leave. Perhaps it’s your turn to die, Dominique.”

“Romanov!” Elena shouted. She threw a short broadsword high into the air. It flew in a wide arc and then down into Romanov’s hand. She grabbed two daggers for herself, but as her hands closed over their hilts, something drew her attention across the courtyard. Her eyes fell on the sword Romanov had buried deep in the scarred practice form. Her feet carried her closer to it of their own volition. One step and then another. The sapphire didn’t look that dull to her. It seemed to sparkle in the sun.

“No. Go inside,” Romanov ordered. She ignored him. The Volkhvy had drawn a blade from a sheath on his back. His leather trench coat whirled around his legs as he brandished it. It wasn’t jeweled, but the metal itself glowed in his hands.

Elena had gone for the easily accessible weapons because that’s where she’d ended up when Romanov had shoved her away. Now she tucked the daggers in her back pockets and went for the more powerful blade. It was buried deep in the wood of the cross. So deep that it held her entire body weight, such that it was, when she grasped its hilt and tried to pull it free.

“I’m not running away. Not anymore,” she said through clenched teeth. She refused to let go even when the hum of power in the sword caused her arms to go numb. Romanov was wrong. There was power left in the blade. It hummed like bees beneath her skin, vibrating her body as she pulled. She braced her feet against the practice form. Her knee screamed, but she used all of her strength to push with her legs and pull with her arms at the same time.

“It won’t matter. Running, hiding, making a stand. He’ll have you in the end. There are many that claim to be Volkhvy, but only Dark Volkhvy royals can trace their lineage back to Baba Yaga herself. The witchblood prince won’t be denied. Oh the pretty tales he’s told about his future plans for you, my pet. Or I should say his pet,” the Volkhvy said. His laugh was cut short by a sudden fierce attack by Romanov. The powerful warrior hacked and hacked until the muscles on his back stood out in bunches and the witchblood man was driven to his knees. The Volkhvy, Dominique, parried as many blows as he could, but others connected with him until his white hair was painted with crimson flecks of blood.

“You should have given up. This will be your last attempt,” Romanov said.

Elena suddenly fell to the ground as the Romanov blade came out of the practice form. She cried out as the fall jarred her knee and she closed her eyes against the pain, but she didn’t drop the sword. She landed on her back with the sword grasped in both hands. It took long seconds to catch her breath and regain her feet. Seconds Romanov didn’t have. As she opened her eyes and stood, the Volkhvy’s hands glowed. His blade had been knocked from his fingers, but he looked prepared to unleash some kind of spell against the man she’d been kissing minutes before.

“No,” Elena shouted. She ran toward the men with the sapphire blade held high.

But there was no time for spells or the Romanov blade. Romanov plunged the dull practice sword into the Volkhvy’s chest. The rusty metal must have penetrated the witchblood man’s heart. Thick black blood bubbled up from the wound and from between the man’s lips as he fell to the snowy ground.

Romanov fell to his knees beside his old adversary and grasped him by the lapels of his leather trench coat. He jerked him up toward his face. Elena stopped dead in her tracks and lowered the Romanov blade before the gruesome scene.

“Take Grigori a message. Tell him Elena Pavlova belongs to no one but herself,” Romanov said. “And that Bronwal is defended. For eternity.”

Elena started and dropped the Romanov blade when the bleeding man hazed before her eyes and disappeared leaving nothing but a puddle of steaming black blood on the ground. The sword fell with a solid thud that caused Romanov to rise to his feet and turn as if he was prepared to face another challenger.

“It’s a defense mechanism. Volkhvy fade back to their home when they’re gravely injured,” Romanov explained. There was black blood on Romanov’s sculpted cheek. From it a slow curl of steam rose in the air. His hair was loose now. It had come unbound during the fight. Long black waves framed his face. His hands were clenched. His chest rose and fell from the exertion of defeating a magical foe. But it was his eyes that caught her attention. They tracked from the sword on the ground to the practice form, to her face and back again.

“You tried to bring me the Romanov blade,” he said.

“You warned Grigori away,” Elena replied.

He stalked toward her looking battered and bruised, but the confident look in his eyes and the puddle of Volkhvy blood on the ground made him seem invincible. Why had she been so desperate to help him when he had refused to help her?

The answer came from the things he’d said to the witchblood man.

She thought he would pick up the blade she’d dropped, but he stepped over it instead. He’d already recovered. His breathing was no longer labored. As she watched, the black blood completely evaporated from his face. He ignored the sword and came to stand directly in front of her, his attention fully on her. His penetrating gaze caused a flush to rise as she remembered her hungry response to his kiss.

“I’m no longer Vasilisa’s champion against the Dark Volkhvy. I’m no one’s champion. But I am the last Romanov and I stand to defend Bronwal. Forever. I warned Grigori away for that reason and that reason alone,” Romanov said.

“Why didn’t the alpha wolf...or any of the wolves come to help you?” Elena asked. The courtyard was empty. The sunlight was hidden behind clouds that had drifted in sometime during the fight. New snow fell in soft silence. Fluffy white flakes contrasted against Romanov’s dark hair for brilliant seconds before they melted. The black waves released from his queue grew damp once more.

Romanov laughed softly and the snow globe the world had become suddenly crystallized and warmed at the same time. Elena hugged herself to keep from reaching out to him because his laugh was hollow rather than happy.

“I don’t need wolves to fight a Volkhvy of Dominique’s degree. Only the lesser witches come for the Romanov blade in its current state. Its power has faded. It holds no attraction or appeal to greater witches,” Romanov said.

“Grigori would never fall to a common sword. Even if it pierced his heart,” Elena guessed. Deep down she’d already known. That’s why she’d sought the help of the alpha wolf.

“This blade is far from common. But it is also far from what it was when it was given to my father,” Romanov said. He turned away to bend and retrieve the jeweled sword. The sapphire in its hilt winked dully in the cloudy light.

Elena reached to touch the sapphire. She wasn’t sure why. The dark gem was cool and damp beneath her fingers.

“It’s very old,” she said.

Romanov had frozen and she was reminded of her first glimpse of him last night. He stared at her face as if he saw something in it that caught his attention and wouldn’t let him look away. The snow was falling more heavily and it swirled around the place where their bodies kept it from the ground. But when she looked from the gem up to his eyes he was no longer a legendary figure come to life. He was a complicated man. One who swore he was no hero while at the same time warning her greatest enemy away.

“It isn’t age that diminishes the stone. It’s dishonor,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to be brandished by a traitor.”

Elena withdrew her hand and Romanov blinked and looked away from her face. He lowered the blade until its tip pointed to the snowy ground.

“You’ve carried the weight of your father’s mistake for a long time,” Elena said. “But I can also see that you aren’t bowed beneath this burden. You might doubt that you’re still a champion, but your body knows. You don’t fight like a man with nothing to lose. You fight like a man with everything to lose. I can see that the stone doesn’t shine,” Elena continued as she turned to walk away through the accumulating snow. “But I can also see that you still do. You shine. And you could help me if you would.”

He didn’t reply and she didn’t pause. She left him and his dishonored blade in the whiteout of falling snow. She wouldn’t kiss him again. She would avoid him while she sought the alpha wolf. The ferocity of his unexpected needs drew her, as did the skin-to-skin electricity between them. But she hadn’t climbed the mountain to find a seductive lover. She’d answered a call that couldn’t be denied and she’d come to find a way to defeat the witchblood prince.

Chapter 5

She’d tasted like honey cakes and her scent had been feminine and minty sweet. The combination had gone to his head like a mead brewed for maximum potency and pleasure. Romanov sought out his rooms and the cold comfort of a bath to wash away the remnants of his long training session and his battle with Dominique. He used a rough cloth to sluice icy water over his skin. Crazy that he should kiss her. But it was a crazy inspired by sizzling attraction that clouded his thinking and burned in his blood. She should have been frightened away by his brothers, by the castle, by his tales of Ether-mad people wandering the halls.

Instead, her body had melded against his chest in his arms. She’d reached for him. She’d held on tight. She’d eagerly welcomed the thrusting of his tongue. She’d tasted him. She’d moaned and sighed as if her body craved more intimate contact with his than could be had in a courtyard in the snow.

The cold water was useless against the onslaught of sensations his mind insisted on recalling—one by one in slow, torturous succession. He hardened with the memory and he was glad he’d filled his own tub. He didn’t need an audience for his body’s reaction half an hour after Elena Pavlova had allowed—nay, participated in—an embrace and kiss that shouldn’t have happened.

Once again, he’d been surprised by how powerfully muscular her seemingly delicate dancer’s body could be. He’d wanted to rip her clothes away so he could explore and appreciate every taut line, every smooth curve. Not to mention the soft, full breasts that contrasted with her spare frame and the warm, hidden crevices he could only imagine.

Oh damn, how he could imagine them.

Many Cycles had come and gone since he’d been alive enough to feel like this. And even more since he’d been foolish enough to act on the feelings. He was cursed. He wasn’t free to crave and savor and...

His body was reddened from its rough washing when he stood to allow soapy cold water to run off his skin. He wouldn’t indulge his erection. He left the bath instead, wrapped in a sheet that was tattered and faded. No one had been prescient enough to mend or replace linens in a long time.

He walked to the window and pressed open the stained glass that had been added centuries after the castle was constructed. Throughout the castle there was evidence of the passage of time. People had tried to carry on. Some still did. The window’s iron hinges protested, but the cold air rushed in, bathing his moist face and chilling his body temperature. He needed the blast of winter air.

Dominique wasn’t dead. A normal blade would never kill a Volkhvy. His bold message would be delivered to Grigori. He’d told Elena he wasn’t a champion. He’d told her the alpha wolf wouldn’t help her. Both of those things were true. But he was a defender of his family’s enclave and he would be here when Grigori came for the dancer he had claimed.

If he assumed wolf form to fight the witchblood prince, he might lose himself to it as his brothers had. Bronwal would be deserted and the Romanov blade would be up for grabs. The Dark Volkhvy might gain a foothold that couldn’t be dislodged without a clearly sentient person to stand against them.

He couldn’t risk the shift even for Elena Pavlova.

From where he stood he could see the ravens that circled around Elena’s tower. They soared like feathered shadows around her room. It seemed a dark foreshadowing of what was to come.

His only option was to force her to leave Bronwal.

Cruel that he should continue to taste her and recall with perfect clarity the bold strokes of her tongue.

He wasn’t sure how he would drive her away when everything in him wanted her to stay.

But he had no choice.

She’d fallen to the ground when she’d pulled the Romanov blade from the practice form in the courtyard. It had been a hard, bone-jarring fall. The blond waves of her hair had tumbled into her face and her eyes had closed. She hadn’t seen what he’d seen as her body flew backward. It hadn’t been the weight of the blade or the momentum of her jerk that had sent her to the ground.

The dormant, fading sapphire in the hilt of the Romanov blade had flared in her hands. A powerful force had radiated out from the awakened gem. It was that force that had sent her petite body to the ground.

The stone had dimmed immediately after and it hadn’t glowed again when she rose to her feet and picked it up. But it hadn’t been his imagination. The sapphire had reacted to Elena’s touch. He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d felt the same awakening in her presence. Not to mention what her touch did to him. An hour later, and the blood in his veins still thrummed from the fleeting kiss they’d shared.

As the ravens swooped and soared, he lifted his hand to feel his lips as if he would be able to feel the ghost of her heat on his mouth as well as he did within.

The wolf he kept buried howled deep in his chest, but not as deep as it had been before Elena arrived. She tested his control. She tempted him to give in to the passions he’d denied for so many Cycles with ease.

He had no choice but to send her away when the weather allowed it. He’d almost shifted when Dominique had taunted him in the courtyard. He couldn’t risk what he might do if Elena was still at Bronwal when the Volkhvy came to gloat at the Gathering.

Almost as if he’d willed it to show its face, the sun burst from behind the storm clouds that had eaten its light earlier in the day. The mountains were covered in snow, but the clouds were gone and no more flakes fell from the sky.

He couldn’t help remembering the stories of how the Romanov blade had chosen his mother. He remembered her as a ferocious warrior well able to wield it, and yet she’d died with the blade in her hands in spite of its power. She’d fallen against the Dark Volkhvy king.

Vasilisa had created the blade for the alpha’s mate.

He refused to accept what its wakening in Elena’s hands might mean.

The curse changed everything. It twisted all of the old enchantments. He was doomed to stand alone forever. The sapphire’s glow only illuminated his pain.

Chapter 6

Evening came early as the sun set once more behind the rocky ridges of the snow-capped mountains. Elena figured out how to open one of the stained glass panels in her room so that she could see the brilliant red sphere as it sank. It turned the entire world to crimson and gold, while ravens continued to lazily patrol the skies around her tower. After the kiss and the fight, she’d retreated to the tower. She’d slammed the door and turned the key. But no one had followed her. She was alone except for the ever-present birds. Their constant revolutions occurred silently, with only the occasional flutter of wings.

Once the sun went down and the world went dark, Elena took one last deep breath of the fresh air and then closed the window against the night. With the snowstorm clearing, it was only a matter of time before Romanov decided to send her away. She didn’t have long. The unwound clock in her room didn’t tick. It didn’t have to. She felt the seconds counting down with every heartbeat in her chest. The call beneath her skin had become a continual sense of urgency rather than a pulse.

It compelled her to be brave. She didn’t have much time. She unlocked the door and left the tower to search for the alpha wolf. The long winding stairway was deserted, but when she left the tower to travel into the main part of the castle, she wasn’t alone. Lev and Soren appeared behind her. Romanov had ordered his wolves to stalk her. Their claws could be eerily quiet when they wished. But not as eerie as how loud they could be seconds later. The click-click-click that occasionally sounded behind her caused her heart to pound. She bit her lip so often against the fear that her lower lip became swollen and sensitized.

She was already more conscious of her mouth than she’d ever been.

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