Legendary Beast

Soren patted the dun horse on the rump. It did prance at his touch and snort, but then it settled into place without further fuss...until Lev reached for the reins. The side of his hand brushed along the dun’s neck, and the horse whickered in fear. It sidestepped away from his touch, and its front hooves came up off the ground.

“Okay. Maybe they’re a little more afraid of you than they are of me and Ivan,” Soren said.

The white gelding’s nostrils flared, and Madeline had to tighten her legs and speak calming words to her mount as Lev hoisted himself up into the saddle of the frightened dun. He pounced as he would have if he’d been hunting instead of riding. He settled gracefully into the saddle even though it was a moving target, and masterfully brought the horse back under control with his strong hands and thighs—but more so with his aura of authority and strength of will.

Ivan was the alpha of the Romanov pack, but only because Lev had never vied for the position.

The horse trembled beneath him, but it stopped trying to rear up on its hind legs.

“Show-off,” Soren said. He’d come to stand beside Lev’s leg. With one hand, he held the bridle of the dun and placed the other on Lev’s knee. “Come back to us, brother. I searched for you too long and too hard for you to run away now that I’ve seen your face again.”

“To Straluci,” Lev said, giving his brother no reply. With a deft thump of his heel, he urged his mount to depart. Soren’s hand fell away.

The dun leaped forward, and Madeline’s horse followed at her direction. Lev refused to glance back at Bronwal or his twin brother. He couldn’t allow his brother’s love for his new wife to cloud his judgment. Her mother was an evil queen who must be destroyed. It was the only way.

As was his decision to never return. The brotherly connection he felt for his twin tugged at the very marrow of his bones as he rode away, but the wildness that haunted his soul was a stronger force. It propelled him away with the certainty that he could only protect those he loved by reclaiming the shift and leaving them far behind.

Madeline had seen an ATV in the stables. It was a mechanically propelled vehicle with cushioned seats. It wasn’t quite midmorning when she began to obsess about those cushions and regret the necessity of horses on the narrow trails they followed.

The deep, evergreen Carpathian forest had devoured them shortly after they left Bronwal. Meager spring sunshine barely penetrated the canopy above them as the horses stepped carefully on the path that was frequented by sure-footed deer and wolves and bears, more than domesticated animals.

What began as a hum to soothe the skittish horse beneath her became a nostalgic song softly murmured below her breath. She didn’t remember it exactly. The words came from somewhere inside her that was more warmth than memory. More feeling than thought. Tears sprang into her eyes and burned her nose when she realized she softly sang a lullaby. It was tentative, but it was there. More in her heart than in her mind.

“We’ll water the horses here,” Lev said, suddenly breaking off the trail and heading toward a stream that had been unobtrusively gurgling beside their route.

Needing to stretch and being able to stretch were two different things, Madeline thought, but her horse followed Lev’s and she didn’t attempt to stop it. There was no obvious clearing. Only a slight break in the trees allowed them to make their way toward a patch of moss above the water.

The white gelding came to a stop beside the larger dun, and she was somehow able to swing her leg over the pommel of her saddle. She hopped to the ground without moaning out loud. Lev seemed to ignore her. He didn’t make conversation, didn’t directly look her way, but she felt him. When he stood and tilted his head to drink, she could imagine his pleasure at the fresh, cold hydration. From a tingling awareness along her spine to the heat that rose in her cheeks, her problem was that she couldn’t ignore him. His presence was too noticeable to dismiss.

She jumped when he turned at her approach to hand her the container. She had been right. His attention was on her the whole time. Her every step was noticed, even when he didn’t look her way. She took the container and gulped too quickly. She ended up awkwardly coughing and gasping for air as she recovered from choking.

Lev still didn’t speak. He didn’t meet her eyes. She was glad. Her glances flicked over him constantly without settling. He made her nervous. It wasn’t fear of the wolf in him so much as fear of being caught watching him. She didn’t want her awareness of him to show. She didn’t want him to know that she couldn’t look away for long.

Suddenly, he broke away from the invisible awareness that seemed to draw them together in spite of forced disinterest on both their parts. Still unused to the scent of the white wolf in their midst, the horses snorted and pawed against their tethers as Lev approached. Madeline turned to see what he intended to do. When Lev pulled the ruby sword from its sheath on her saddle, the water container dropped from her fingers to the mossy ground.

She was supposed to become stronger and wiser. Instead, she’d left her sword half a dozen feet away.

Madeline took several steps toward the man who easily held the long warrior’s blade in one hand, but she froze when Lev came around the horses toward her. He effortlessly spun the sword in an arc of graceful but deadly movement around his large frame. He might have been a wolf for centuries, but his physicality as a man had only been enhanced by his time as a beast. His muscles bulged and relaxed and bulged again with his moves, as he seemed to test and then savor the heft of the blade as it arced around and around.

“You don’t remember the weight of it in your hand? Its power at your fingertips?” Lev asked.

A flush of heat spread from Madeline’s cheeks down to her throat and chest. She swallowed, suddenly very aware of the pulse at the base of her neck. If he looked, he would see her heartbeat throb, and it would no longer be throbbing simply from fear.

He continued to approach, effortlessly testing the blade as if he had no idea his words would call up a vision of him in her head, his power at her fingertips. In her imagination, she combined the blade with the man. Both powerful. Both intriguing. Both obvious omissions in her hollow memories. What he was asking was “How could she have forgotten such a sword?” What she thought was “How could she have forgotten such a man?”

And then she pushed such impossible thoughts away.

It didn’t matter what he’d once meant to her. For now, he was a necessary companion and also a potential danger to herself and to her child. She needed him. She also needed to be wary of the way he made her feel. He had said he couldn’t shift, but how long would his inability to call the white wolf last? She had to behave as if the threat of the wolf was with her every moment.

“I can’t reclaim the past I’ve lost. I can only move forward from here,” Madeline said.

Lev lowered the blade. He had approached until he was facing her, and he stood too close to continue to test the sword. Instead, he held it outstretched beside them. It wasn’t a threatening display, however—it was a pause. Whatever his intention, he’d been interrupted by his sudden awareness of her nearness. The sword was forgotten. He looked down into her eyes, and his whole powerful body stilled. His wide chest didn’t rise and fall. He didn’t move forward or back. He didn’t so much as blink as their gazes locked.

Madeline took in enough oxygen for both of them. Her respiration was shallow and quick. Too quick. She couldn’t look away. Instead, she searched his blue eyes for some indication of his intent. The blade was still in his hand, but his lids were low and his cheeks were flushed. His lips were slightly open and soft against the hardness of his angular face.

Her fingers flexed with the sudden desire to shave the wild growth that prevented her from fully appreciating his cheeks and jaw and chin. His beard was darker and more burnished gold than his blond hair, with no trace of the white streak that was more of a nod to the white wolf’s fur than to Lev Romanov’s age. The centuries showed more in Lev’s muscular hardness than they did in his general appearance. He looked as if he’d been born twenty-five or thirty years ago. Not in the Middle Ages.

She’d stared at herself in the mirror. Her age wasn’t apparent at all. She looked as if she’d fallen asleep at twenty and woken up the next morning. Except for the absence of light in her eyes. She was missing...something. The brown of her irises wasn’t as liquid as it should be. She needed to move forward, but the past she couldn’t remember might remain an emptiness in her for the rest of her days.

“Moving forward will help you recall. Whether or not you reclaim your memories will be your decision,” Lev said. He leaned slightly toward her, his face tilted down. Strands of thick, wavy hair fell forward, released from the binding at the nape of his neck by his movement. She clenched her fingers into fists to keep from reaching out to touch the startling white locks that sprang free.

“This sword was made for your hand. Your body will remember if you expect it to.” His eyes gleamed a brighter blue behind the white. She was relieved when he moved back to bring the sword up between them. He held it as Anna had held it, horizontally, as an offering for her to take.

“I’m not the woman I was before,” Madeline said softly. She’d seen him looking for the warrior she’d been. He searched for her now in between one blink and the next. His intense gaze burned its way deep into her soul, but he must have felt that his search came up empty because there were still no memories for her to recall. There was nothing but the weight of Trevor against her breast. “I can only remember the baby. I held him forever as I slept. I protected him in my arms for centuries. That’s the only knowledge of the past that I have.”

Now her fisted hands weren’t to keep from touching Lev’s hair. Her fists were for the witches who had kidnapped her child. She didn’t need any memories of being a warrior to know that she would fight to save the baby they’d stolen.

“Take this blade to save our child. Remember it, and it will remember you,” Lev said.

Madeline’s fingers opened, and she lifted her hands to accept the blade. Lev laid it across her outstretched hands. For a stunning moment, the sunlight shone through the trees and onto the ruby. It seemed to flicker to life. But then the leaves whispered with the wind, and shadows fell once more.

The ruby was as gray and dull as it had been before.

Chapter 5 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)

Take this blade to save our child. Remember it, and it will remember you.

He’d wanted to say “Remember me.” The words had risen from his heart to his lips, but he’d stopped them just in time. He’d hardened his mouth against them. He was here to help Madeline save Trevor. He was here to find and kill Queen Vasilisa. That was all. As she’d said, the past couldn’t be reclaimed. But not for the reason she thought. She was still a warrior. She would always be a warrior. She’d been a warrior while she was sleeping, protecting their baby against her breast. Her eyes were troubled and wounded, but they still gleamed with determination and fury, even if they didn’t gleam with ruby fire.

He was the one who couldn’t reclaim what had been lost. Even as he’d reclaimed his human form, he’d known it. It wasn’t only his skin that had been scarred by the years of ceaseless wandering and torment. The white wolf’s rage continued to live beneath his skin like a never-ending howl only he could hear, and its claws had dug away his humanity too deeply for him to ever fully find it again.

His body was a sham, his desire for Madeline only an echo of what had been when he was a civilized man. When he’d released the sword into her hands, he ignored the spark caused by the phantom ghost of their previous connection.

And then he’d stepped back, prepared to be the cool and impersonal instructor she needed to help her remember the sword. Only the sword.

Him, she could and should forget.

The training session lasted only an hour, but when they were finished, Madeline’s arm was trembling and rubbery, and she was panting with exertion. Sweat had dampened her hair, even though the mountain forest was cold.

Lev didn’t pant or sweat. He had shown her every thrust and twist and parry, often with his hands over hers to demonstrate technique, but other than a wind-kissed flush on his cheeks above his golden beard, he seemed wholly unaffected.

“Our lives consisted of battle and training for battle. Your muscles will remember even if your mind doesn’t,” Lev said.

“There must have been other things. Like singing...” Madeline thought of the lullaby. Then she tried not to think of how Trevor had been conceived. “Um, dancing?”

They had walked back to the horses. This time the dun didn’t prance at all, and the white merely snorted at Lev’s approach. It was Madeline who tried to prance away when Lev reached to help her tired body onto the back of the gelding. He caught her easily, but in deference to her avoidance, he deposited her quickly into the saddle and stepped away.

Her waist still burned from the memory of his short-lived grasp—so strong and sure—even after they headed back onto the trail. Her exhaustion was as much from resisting the effects of his touch during her training session as from the exercise itself. He had taken no liberties. Each time he’d positioned her hands on the hilt or her shoulders and hips, he’d released her the moment the demonstration was finished. Yet her body still became flushed and sensitive. By the time the session was over, she ached for his touch to become more personal.