Legendary Beast

Lev Romanov met her with an urgency that stunned her. He was wild with some need she couldn’t begin to understand, when all else was confusion. He fought something with every rise and fall of his broad chest. His fight showed in the grip of his hands and the tension in his entire body.

He pulled her closer, the better to look deep into her eyes, but the move also brought her nearer to his large body. She had seen him nude in the rain, but her vision had been blurred. Here, now, only inches from her, she saw him clearly—every scar, every angle, every plane—and it was all too sudden and intimate for her senses, which had been sleeping for a very long time.

Her breathing had gone shallow, but the scent of the wind trapped in his hair still filled her nose. The room was chilly, but his masculine body heat enveloped her where they stood.

This man had thrown everyone and everything out of his room, but now he grabbed her and pulled her close. He looked deeply into her eyes as if he was preparing to...

Her insecurity over her memory loss flared back to life and resonated all the way to her bones.

“I don’t remember you at all,” Madeline said. “I’m not here for you. I’m here for Trevor. He needs the white wolf.”

Her heart pounded, and the fear crowded out all else that might have been long ago and far away. She needed this savage stranger to help her. She didn’t need to remember him or what they had shared.

His hands tightened for a split second and then released just before she cried out in pain. The sudden squeeze had been reflexive. He noted her pain and let her go as suddenly as the spasm had begun. She thought she saw regret flash in his eyes, but then he dipped his head, and his hair was in the way. Did he use his wild mane as a shield between them? If so, it was only somewhat effective, considering the rest of him was exposed.

“The white wolf is gone,” Lev said. “I can’t shift. I can’t help you. This human body has me again, and it won’t let me go.”

Chapter 3 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)

Madeline shivered as he stepped away, taking all his feral body heat with him. This was the fight she’d sensed in him. He battled the hold of his human form second by second, minute by minute. He fought to shift, and he’d been fighting since she’d seen him on Krajina. But the white wolf was close beneath the surface of his scarred skin. She could feel its ferocity, and she had seen the glimmer of wildness in Lev’s eyes. She could sense the potential beast, barely contained.

The wolf was still there in him. She was certain of it. But needing the white wolf’s help and wanting him to appear were two very different things.

“It doesn’t matter. You are the white wolf. Whether you have four legs or two. And Trevor needs you,” Madeline said.

“You know who the babe is to me? Who you once were to me?” Lev asked. His stance had gone deceptively distant. He’d taken several steps back. She could still see his tension. She could still feel his attention on her face, even though his hair hid his eyes.

“Vasilisa told me everything. That we were together once, but that the Romanovs betrayed her. She protected Trevor and me during a long illness,” Madeline said.

“An illness? You think the Volkhvy queen saved you,” Lev said hoarsely. He stepped toward her once more, without even seeming to realize he moved. “It isn’t only our son you want to save. You want me to help you save the witch.”

The tension in his body had gone so tight and so still that he had truly become a living statue. It seemed as if his scars were cracks in a marbleized form, and he might shatter into a million pieces if she said the wrong thing. Anna had said he hated all Volkhvy, but surely he would be grateful to the queen who had saved his former wife and his son?

“The ruby sword is dead and I don’t remember how to wield it, but I’m awake now and I’m going after the Volkhvy that took my son,” Madeline said. “I want you to go with me, but if you refuse, I’ll go alone.”

Her bag had been knocked crooked on her shoulders by Lev’s strong grip on her arms. When she tried to straighten it, the zipper of its main compartment gaped open and her sketchbook fell on the floor. Before Madeline could stoop to retrieve it, Lev moved to scoop it up himself.

Madeline bit her lip against the cry of distress that rose to her lips, as if her prize possession had been stolen right before her eyes. Only Lev wasn’t stealing it. He wasn’t ripping it up to fling down the stairs. He was flipping through it. He turned and examined page after page of the sketches she’d drawn of the white wolf. Her every charcoal stroke had been infused with the overwhelming feeling of danger and the threat she’d woken to that day.

His attention was riveted on the sketches. She allowed the hand that had reflexively risen to retrieve the sketchbook from him to fall back to her side.

She’d tried to be brave, but now he knew her deepest fears. They were displayed in drawing after drawing. He had searched her eyes for the warrior he had known. But here was evidence that the warrior was gone. In her place was someone mired in doubt and confusion, along with a deep, abiding helplessness she didn’t know how to dispel. She could only press her way through it and hope to come out on the other side triumphant. For Trevor.

“You came anyway,” Lev said after he had flipped to the last page. He slowly and carefully handed the book back to her, and Madeline took it from him. If possible, his calmness made her more nervous than his tension. She tucked the sketchbook back into her bag. “You came in spite of your fear.”

“Vasilisa told me that witches fear only one thing—the Romanov wolves,” Madeline said. “There’s only one thing I fear as well—failing to save my child.”

I’m awake now.

Every word she uttered pierced his gut with relentless blades of guilt. She didn’t remember him. She didn’t remember the life they’d lived. It had been so long ago. Even for him, running and fighting and searching, always searching, seemed much more immediate in his memories.

But he could see fear in her eyes, and that was the most cutting observation of all. Her fear stabbed into him, and its sharpness sliced away all other concerns. Her eyes no longer glimmered with the scarlet power of the enchanted ruby. Instead, they shimmered with unshed tears. She had come back to Bronwal. She had climbed the stairs that most were afraid to tread. She had trembled in his hands, and he had felt her fragility beneath his rough fingers.

He flexed those fingers now, as if he could force them to forget the warmth of her when they’d just been reminded after centuries of loss.

Her body was different. Her muscles had weakened during the long, enchanted sleep. But her body’s weakness wasn’t reflected in her eyes in spite of her fear. It also wasn’t reflected in her actions. She was afraid of the beast that lived beneath his skin, but that hadn’t stopped her from seeking his help.

Madeline was still a warrior.

She wasn’t his warrior. She wasn’t the ruby warrior. But she was prepared to fight. Her fear didn’t diminish her determination or her bravery. It only complicated what must be done. He’d barely contained the howl that wanted to rip from his depths when she mentioned Vasilisa. Only the knowledge that Madeline was confused and vulnerable kept him from raging against the evil queen. That Madeline might never understand what the witch had done to them was another stinging cut against his scarred skin.

He deserved the pain.

He hadn’t saved them. He had failed Madeline and Trevor, but he wouldn’t fail them again. He would help her go after the Volkhvy that had kidnapped the baby. He would help Madeline save Trevor.

But he wouldn’t save Vasilisa.

His family had to be protected from the evil queen. Yet seeing Madeline again revealed a deeper, darker truth he had to face. She had filled an entire book with sketches of his monstrous snarl, and yet she had still sought him out. She had undertaken an epic journey for a woman out of her own time and place, and she had faced him as he stood, bloody and savage, to “greet” her. He would never forget the fear in her eyes. Paired with the fear he’d felt that morning on the cliff, it was a truth he could no longer fight. He would help her save Trevor. He would kill Vasilisa, and then he would leave.

He would never forget the feel of her arms and the way he had made her flinch with the tightness of his grip.

Even if he could never shift again, he needed to protect his family from the savagery of the white wolf that had settled in to live beneath his scarred skin.

Madeline watched as he decided to help her. She saw him soften and then harden once more. His shoulders slumped for only a moment before they were again stiff and straight and seemingly made of stone.

“I will find him,” Lev said. His certainty was as solid as his lean, strong body. His scars stood out against his flexed muscles as his fists clenched.

Suddenly, adrenaline flowed in a cool rush beneath her skin. She gripped the straps of her backpack to hide the trembling in her hands. She’d made the white wolf a part of her life again, if only for a short time. That frightened her, mainly because she hadn’t reclaimed the memories she needed to be strong enough to face him, but now she had to be concerned over something else: the way Lev Romanov made her feel.

His vivid blue irises blazed from behind the shock of white in his hair. His gaze was full of secrets about the woman she’d been. Those secrets called to her, but she had to ignore them. She had to ignore the tingling in her arms where this stranger had grabbed her, a tingling that had nothing to do with adrenaline and everything to do with his feral warmth.

He was a beast. The trashed room declared it. The sketches in her backpack were further evidence. As were the bruises he’d no doubt left on her skin with his urgency.

He vowed to find their son and help her save him, but she could only wonder, who would save Lev Romanov? He said he could no longer shift, but it was obvious that the white wolf would never let him go.

Madeline set her jaw and firmed her spine. She pressed her mouth into a hard, thin line to keep from betraying her nerves by nibbling her bottom lip. The move was a mistake. His attention fell from her eyes to her lips and lingered there. This should have meant nothing to her, but her heartbeat stuttered and the nerves in the pit of her stomach whirled out of control.

Because he didn’t look at her lips like a stranger would. He looked as if he remembered the taste of her kisses from long ago, and parts of her had suddenly leaped to life, longing to remember, too.

Anna Romanov was waiting when Madeline came back down the stairs. She stood at the ready at the base of the spiraling stone stairway, as if she’d been prepared to do battle should the beast in Bronwal’s tower choose to attack her guest. The sword she’d offered to Madeline in outstretched arms was now held by its hilt at Anna’s side, but its ruby stone was still dark and gray.

“I thought maybe it would wake when you spoke with Lev, but it still sleeps. Not so much as a flicker,” Anna informed her. “It gleamed when you wielded it on Krajina with a fierce ruby light.”

“I remember. That moment on the cliff is all I recall. Nothing more,” Madeline said. “But I will take the sword. The white wolf has agreed to help me save my son. I won’t travel with him unarmed.”

She reached for the hilt of the ruby blade, and Anna released it into her hands. Unlike before, it was heavy and awkward in her grip. She held it vertically with both hands at her waist and the blade extended in front of her breasts and face until the tip stretched beyond the top of her head. She looked from the hilt in her hands up to the sword’s sharp point, and then she lowered her gaze to meet Anna’s on either side of the sharp blade. Anna reached to place her hands over Madeline’s on the hilt. The dark ruby stayed gray above their fingers, but Madeline’s heart fluttered when the other woman squeezed her hands.

She felt...something. A kinship. A connection. To Anna Romanov, if not to the ruby or the blade or the scarred man in the tower above them.