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Legendary Beast

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2019
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She had counted the seconds each brush of his hands had lasted.

“We sang and danced. Of course. In between our battles with the Dark Volkhvy. And all the while we didn’t realize we were kept in Vasilisa’s gilded cage. We were her most treasured champions. Until we were not,” Lev said.

“Did the Dark Volkhvy cause my long illness?” Madeline asked.

Lev pulled the large dun to a sudden stop. He turned in his saddle to face her. Madeline’s horse stopped at the dun’s hip because the trail was too narrow for him to pass.

“Is that what the witch told you?” he asked. She was suddenly on alert again after being lulled by the gelding’s steady hoof beats beneath her. Lev was deceptively quiet. She could feel a new tension in the air. She could see his stiff shoulders and his white-knuckled grip on the reins.

“She only said I’d been ill. Not how or why,” Madeline said.

“Queen Vasilisa spelled you into an enchanted sleep. One so deep and so long that it clouded your memories. Your past wasn’t stolen by an illness or the Dark Volkhvy. There is no Dark and Light. All Volkhvy are evil. Vasilisa most of all. She wasn’t your savior, Madeline. She was your tormentor. She stole you and Trevor away from Bronwal before she cursed us all,” Lev said. The howl was present in his voice again. More than ever. His words were husky rasps in the shadowed forest. The sun had entirely disappeared. The canopy was dense, but clouds must have rolled in high above them in a sky they couldn’t quite see.

Madeline’s body no longer ached from physical exertion or burgeoning sensual need. She’d gone numb from her forehead to her toes. Her fingers had gone slack on the reins, and the gelding shuffled aimlessly in its tracks with no guidance except for the dun’s broad hips ahead.

“She was helping me recover. She was making sure Trevor woke slowly so he wouldn’t be affected the way I’d been. She tried to protect him from the marked Volkhvy when they attacked,” Madeline said.

“Whatever she does, she does for herself. For her own ends. She isn’t human—never forget it. Long ago she took my father from his family and manipulated his genes to create a supernatural champion. He helped her. He provided an entire family of supernatural beasts to fight her enemies. We married and brought our warrior mates into her service. And she repaid us with a horrible curse. The Ether ate us, again and again. Once every hundred years we materialized. She wanted to watch our slow demise,” Lev said.

He kicked the dun and it leaped forward into a trot in spite of the rough path. The white gelding followed, and Madeline’s hands were too numb to pull it back. Was everything she’d learned since she woke up a lie? The Volkhvy on Krajina had been kind to her. Very unlike the marked Volkhvy who had attacked the island. And she’d felt Anna’s warmth. She’d instinctively trusted one of the other women who wielded a Romanov blade.

Lev had to be wrong about the Light Volkhvy. And if he was wrong about the Light, then he was wrong about Vasilisa, too. She was Anna’s mother. Madeline’s sanity was currently being saved by the idea that wherever Trevor had been taken, he at least hadn’t been taken there alone. Vasilisa would take care of him until Madeline could get there. She had to believe that, in spite of what Lev believed.

Queen Vasilisa had created the Romanov wolves, and she’d forged the enchanted blades for their mates. That much was true. The rest? Madeline’s mind seemed shrouded in fog. She had woken too quickly, Vasilisa had said. She’d risen from her long sleep too fast and left her memories behind.

It had been the white wolf’s howl that had woken her up. She’d echoed it. His howl had ripped from her throat and passed her lips as it sprang from her own chest. The crystal bed she’d slept in had been shattered, Trevor gone.

But as her horse followed after the dun that had already disappeared down the curving trail, Madeline wondered who had shattered the crystal and taken the sleeping baby from her breast. She’d blamed the white wolf for waking her too soon, but perhaps the blame didn’t lie entirely with him alone.

Her skin was as soft as the petals of a flower. The faint scent of roses was tangled in the auburn strands of her hair. As he’d tried to focus on reminding her of her prowess with a blade, he was distracted again and again by observations he couldn’t ignore.

The forest canopy above them was dense. The majestic spruce surrounding the mossy bank were lined up in seemingly never-ending rows of bitter bark and evergreen bows. But sunlight still peeked through and found its way in beams down to the top of Madeline’s head. The rays of light turned the waves of her hair to fire. The strands were a myriad of colors, from light gold to the deep red of tarnished copper. He’d grown up with a ginger twin, but Soren had ordinary red hair. Madeline had flames.

He forced himself to only touch her when necessary. He corrected her hold on the hilt of her weapon, and his fingers burned where they touched hers. He nudged her feet farther apart with the toe of his boot against her foot, and he hated himself for remembering his bare leg welcomed between her naked thighs. He pressed a hand against the small of her back to urge her to straighten her spine, and he quickly pulled it away rather than allowing himself to press her body against his.

It was an hour of the worst torture he’d ever experienced, but he endured it because in spite of all the observations that hurt him, he also noticed her shoulders begin to line up with her blade the way they should, directing the sword. He noticed that the sweat on her brow didn’t stop her from going through the forms he suggested over and over again.

She would be prepared to wield the blade against the Volkhvy even if it killed her. She possessed the same determination as ever. She didn’t need memories to drive who she was at heart.

Of course, he also noticed her breath catch and her body go still when he leaned in close behind her to position her elbows. For only a moment their bodies had been touching, from her back to his chest all the way down to hips and legs. The swell of her bottom encased in tight fawn leggings had been pressed against the tops of his thighs. He had paused for only a second, allowed himself to savor the touch but only for the blink of an eye, and then he had stepped back before his response to their mutual stillness could betray itself against the small of her back.

He had ended the session soon after, no longer trusting himself or his focus. She had seemed as glad to back away and return to the horses as he had been.

And then Madeline had brought up her enchanted sleep. She’d reminded him of why they were undertaking this journey in the first place.

Vasilisa must be stopped.

She had endangered his family for the last time.

He would lose them for good when it was all said and done, but they would be safe. That was all that mattered.

The problem with travel on horseback down a narrow trail where she was required to do nothing but let her horse follow the one leading was that she had hours to think. Since she couldn’t ponder memories, she was left reliving every second of her time with Lev on the mossy bank by the stream.

His body was inhuman in its hardness, but instead of being repelled by his steely arms and legs or the solid rock of his chest, she was drawn to him as if her soft body could soothe away the centuries of hardship that had caused his to turn to stone. She could tell he tried to keep his touch impersonal. She could also feel him fail each time he brushed his hand against hers. He leaned into her as if he was freezing and she was the flame.

She tried to keep the image of the white wolf in her mind, but even though she’d sketched the monster a thousand times, she failed. Lev Romanov was intimidating. He was tall and broad and as lean as any hungry hunter could be. But he didn’t act like a predator. Oh, he noticed her every move. He sensed every time she reacted to his touch. But he didn’t exploit her weakness.

Not even when, God forgive her, she’d hoped that he would.

He had held her from behind, and she’d felt every inch of his hard body against hers, including his obvious reaction to holding the small of her back to him.

Then he had stepped away.

She had quaked like a leaf afterward. Perhaps he had thought she had overexerted herself. He had ended their practice. He’d headed back to the horses. She’d been left to mull over the impossible: the white wolf she’d been told to distrust had refused to devour willing prey.

Chapter 6 (#u6c7e6480-fd97-5698-89ec-a039af1b7cf8)

They were being followed. As the forest darkened around them, Lev could detect the scent of wolves on the breeze. He was well used to wild wolves. He’d run with them for over a hundred years. They naturally bowed down to his giant white-wolf form. In his supernatural body, he was easily the apex predator of the mountain. Volkhvy power might be evil, but it had given him the power he’d needed to survive when Vasilisa cursed Bronwal.

Now his ability to shift was gone.

For whatever reason, he couldn’t set the white wolf free. It was as if his human body was unwilling to risk disappearing for another hundred years or more. He was drenched with sweat by the time the sun set, but he was still a man. He’d asked Madeline to ride in front when he first scented the wolves. She hadn’t looked back at him since then. If she had, she might have drawn the ruby sword from the scabbard at her knee. She would have seen his tension. She would have anticipated the arrival of the white wolf she feared.

Now she might have to draw her sword to fend off natural wolves instead.

“We’ll stop here for the night,” Lev said. He directed his horse toward the side of the trail, where a large spruce had fallen following a heavy snowstorm several months before. The branches were still filled with green needles, although they were dry and rustled with a sharp skeletal rush when the wind blew through them. He liked the fallen tree because it would form a barrier wall between the shadows of the forest and the open trail. It would be a line of defense against any wolves that might come from the trees. They would camp against it, and he could build a large fire between the massive trunk and the trail.

“We should keep going. I have flashlights in my pack,” Madeline said. She’d turned her horse around, but she didn’t dismount.

“We’re being followed by a pack of wolves. A sizable one. If they choose to attack, it will be under the cover of darkness. We need a fire and a defensible position,” Lev said.

Madeline didn’t argue further. She jumped off her horse and led the animal to where Lev had dismounted. The white gelding seemed ghostly, and Madeline’s face was indistinct in the shadows, even to his eyes—and his vision was enhanced by the wolf that lived beneath his skin.

“We’ll need to keep the horses near the fire, which means they’ll have to be near me. They won’t like it, but it can’t be helped,” Lev said.

“They’re not as skittish as they were. The dun hasn’t reared once today,” Madeline said.

“The wolves will have them prancing if they come much closer,” Lev said. He raised his nose into the air and breathed in to try to gauge the position of the pack. Madeline watched him with wary eyes. She dreaded his shift. He lowered his nose and met her serious gaze. He stepped toward her without thinking. One pace and then two, stopping only a foot away from where she had frozen at his advance.

Once Madeline’s eyes had shimmered with ruby highlights. Now they were dark and brown. Lev reached and placed one crooked finger under her chin. Gently, with the slightest pressure, he urged her face to tilt upward so he could get a better look at her eyes. It was a mistake to touch her. It was a mistake to get too close. Because no matter how close he got, it would never be close enough. “I’ve told you I can’t shift, Maddy. Be wary of the wolves that stalk us, but don’t be afraid of me.”

“You are the wolf. I see him in your eyes. I see him in the way you move. So quick. So graceful. Your intensity is his intensity. You aren’t afraid of the wolves. You’re as ready for their challenge as the white wolf would be,” Madeline whispered.

She didn’t pull away. She didn’t move back. Her willingness to stay close to him even though she saw him as the white wolf seared him to his core. She was right. He was ready for the wolves’ challenge. It was her he couldn’t face. Or the memory of what they had been to each other. Not now, when empty desire rose in affection’s place. He wouldn’t take advantage of her attraction for him. He wouldn’t indulge the pull between them. Not even after centuries of being apart.

He looked at her lips as he made the decision not to taste them again for what she would perceive as the first time. They parted beneath his attention as she breathed a soft gasp of awareness. He wasn’t ashamed of the tremble in his hand on her skin or how it betrayed the amount of control he had to use not to dip down and suck on her full, sweet lower lip.

“Bring your sword with you and bed down by the fire. I’m going to find our stalkers and ascertain their intent,” Lev said. In truth, he simply needed to run away. From the soft flick of Madeline’s tongue as she moistened her unkissed mouth, and from his desire to lick her lips himself. He would be a fool to try to sleep beside her, enveloped by the fire’s heat.
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