Legendary Shifter

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 (#ue243427a-3fef-5d70-9f6e-5b1affd3a2df)

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.