Legendary Wolf

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Just a look. Nothing more. And he’d been hard-pressed to stand his ground without pulling her into his arms or backing away. He’d felt her hand on his head a million times before. She’d given him the comfort of her touch and the companionship he’d so desperately needed when Lev had abandoned him. It was beyond cruel that he would want her touch now that he was a man, even though she was no longer the woman she’d been before.

Her touch would be no comfort.

He shuddered from a yearning that refused to be banished by the cold or by his best intentions.

Soren missed Bell, but there was no denying he desired the witch she’d become.

His desire was a foolish physical reaction he would fight until he destroyed the sword. Surely the enchantment of the emerald in the sword’s hilt was the reason he was drawn to Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess. He wasn’t a young pup to be drawn to a woman based on her beauty or the feminine curves of her body. He was wiser than that. His reaction to her was manipulated by magic, and he didn’t need any more evidence not to trust it than the loss of his brother right when he’d been so close to bringing him home.

He should have prevented Anna from frightening Lev away. He’d been thrown by her sudden appearance after so many months. Soren fisted his hands and leaned his forehead on his knees to block out the infinite stars. He should have been completely immune to any old feelings he’d had as the red wolf. He should have driven her away before she could do any harm. Instead, he’d been shocked by his body’s yearning to touch her, to confirm the pull he felt was mutual. His reaction to her as a woman had distracted him from the Volkhvy power she could channel.

He’d been completely unprepared to face who and what she’d become.

His shock had allowed what had happened. It was his fault Lev had disappeared again. It would be on him if his brother never returned.

Beneath the crystalline sky, by the harsh light of a thousand stars, Soren vowed he would not be caught unprepared again.

* * *

Anna changed out of the white dress that hadn’t served her well. It did no good to wave the flag of truce with an enemy who didn’t believe in parley. Soren was blinded by his distrust of witches and his distaste of the Ether. As long as she channeled its power, he would see her as tainted. Yet how could he expect her to be anything other than her mother’s daughter—even if her mother was the Light Volkhvy queen?

She prepared for bed in new ways that weren’t at all automatic for her. Hot running water and soft new sleeping garments might be a delight to her for the rest of her life. She appreciated the luxury and comfort, even as she braced herself against the discomfort of other sensations.

There was a filament of enchantment stretched between her and Soren Romanov. It pulled painfully from deep within her chest to wherever he had gone to pass the night. Like a string stretched taut almost to the point of breaking, the filament threatened to release if she moved too suddenly or breathed too deeply.

She was caught and held by someone who didn’t want to hold her at all.

It was the sword that created the tenuous but inexorable bond in spite of her best intentions to let the red wolf go. She pressed both hands against her chest to try to ease the pain. For sleep, she’d allowed herself to remove the protective gloves. The tingle was slight now that she was alone. There were distant threats, but she was tired and her power ebbed low. As she pressed her palms against the pain, the natural body heat in her hands soothed her.

It would be a relief to sever the thread that bound her and Soren together. For a while, as the late-night world grew silent and the doubts in her head grew loud, Anna thought about her aviary. She’d retreated to the roof of the castle so many times. Did her aviary wait there for her still, even though nothing and no one else had waited for her?

The idea of running quickly through the sleeping castle on one of the routes she would know even in the pitch darkness was seductive. But this was no longer her home. She had been reduced to a guest. An unwelcome guest. Her aviary wasn’t hers anymore.

Besides, the red wolf wouldn’t be there.

It would be cold and empty, filled only with the echoes of a life that was no longer hers. Her pain increased with that vision of her new reality.

Would the sword’s destruction really end her torment?

She feared the enchanted filament that bound her to Soren Romanov wasn’t entirely dependent on the emerald sword.

Chapter 6 (#u740aa1bc-7ca5-5be8-8708-468e96d63461)

His sleep was never deep. Soren’s body had rejected the oblivion of the Ether for so long it couldn’t rest. But he did shut down occasionally. He lost the fight to stay awake. Never completely. He tossed and turned. He called out from the abyss of half consciousness, where his fear of nothingness and cold taunted him with familiar, icy fingers.

With Anna nearby it was suddenly much worse. He’d been running for days. He’d experienced the loss of his brother all over again. He’d had to face Anna’s transformation. As an enchanted Romanov shape-shifter, he was powerful. He had endurance unlike a regular man. But he wasn’t indefatigable. Sleep came for him eventually. It always did. But even asleep he couldn’t relax. He fought rest as if it was the Ether trying to pull him away from Bronwal and his family.

Or from her.

The witch was nearby and he couldn’t leave her. His panic as he sank into sleep thudded his heart in his chest and made his breathing quick.

His nightmare was always the same. He wandered a vast nightscape forest. Alone. Sometimes as the red wolf. Sometimes as a man. But always certain that he was almost out of time. He never understood what he needed to do before time ran out. He only knew with certain dread that if the Ether took him, all would be lost.

This time he was the wolf. He padded the pathways of the nightmare forest on four paws. Then he ran. It was useless. The pathways were always a maze with no beginning and no end in sight. Like the curse, his nightmare trapped him and held him until the Ether could claim him.

But unlike the curse, he had no one by his side to help him face the dark.

It was that loss that made him howl at the moonless sky in his nightmare. He called and called for a woman who couldn’t reply.

* * *

The next morning, Soren watched his brother approach. His spine stiffened, because he could see the dark thunderclouds on the alpha wolf’s brow even before he crossed the courtyard. Soren planted his feet and braced his shoulders as he stood with the horses an old groom he barely recognized had prepared for him and Anna.

Something was wrong.

He hadn’t expected to see Ivan again this morning. They had said farewell last night.

His hands tightened on the halters of the large mounts as they tried to toss their heads in response to the emotions of the alpha they could also sense as he came closer.

Ivan Romanov was in his human form, but there was no mistaking the gleam of the black wolf in his eyes. A hint of dawn was all that was needed to illuminate that flash of savagery waiting to be freed. Soren swallowed against the howl that tried to crawl up his throat to seek an emotional release. His red wolf was ferocious, but it bowed without his permission before his big brother, the alpha.

“Where is she?” Ivan asked in almost-pained tones.

Soren wasn’t surprised he didn’t begin with a “good morning.” The shift rode Ivan Romanov. It tightened his muscles and hardened his jaw. Ivan had often looked as steely and fierce toward the end of the curse, when he’d had to fight off the black wolf every day. His brother was moments away from howling at the rising sun.

But why? What new threat did they face?

Soren was no longer Anna’s protector, but his first instinct was to stand between his brother’s imminent shift and the witch who was supposed to join him in the courtyard soon.

“She’s meeting me here at dawn,” Soren said. He exuded calm in spite of his inner tension. He met the black wolf’s potential fury with ice and then tried to diffuse it. “That’s why I’m holding two horses.”

Ivan blinked and stepped back as if he’d only just noticed the giant destriers his brother held. Their reaction to the alpha’s close presence had intensified. Soren had to tighten his hold on their halters. The warhorses were afraid. Ivan noticed their fear, and the wildness in his eyes subsided. Soren watched as the black wolf retreated deeper within his brother, leaving a calmer leader in his place.

“I won’t ask where you’re going. If you’d wanted me to know, you would have shared that information last night,” Ivan said. Suddenly, he stepped to Soren and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. Instead of rearing, the horses calmed. Perhaps they could smell the man now that he had controlled his wolf. Ivan met him face-to-face, gaze to gaze. His seriousness was palpable. Soren’s forced calm only got icier with the eye contact. His brother was building to something big. He could think of only one thing that would cause the alpha to leave his warm bed and meet him at the break of dawn. “Make certain she doesn’t return,” Ivan continued.

Soren was the red wolf. He heard the alpha’s command in his brother’s voice. He saw the black wolf deep down in Ivan’s eyes. His whole body went numb from the cold of the calm he forced through sheer willpower alone.

Who had told Ivan about the sword?

The alpha was warning him away from an unacceptable mate. Soren agreed. Hell, Anna agreed. So why was his internal response a long, echoing howl of refusal? He tamped it down. He clenched his teeth. He held himself still, because if he moved a millimeter, it might become a shift to challenge the alpha’s authority. Ivan’s eyes widened. In spite of Soren’s best efforts, his brother was wise beyond his apparent years. He looked like a twenty-five-year-old man. He was, in fact, much older. He must have sensed or seen Soren’s visceral response to his order.

A noise interrupted before the standoff could erupt into violence. They both broke away from the stare to look up. Elena appeared at a window high above them. She’d thrown it open, and several ravens had lifted off from their sentinel perches on its ledge. White curtains billowed outward around her blanket-wrapped form. They were too far away to see her face, but the sound of Ivan’s name drifted with the sound of flapping wings.