Legendary Beast

Chapter 3

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.

“I am the red wolf’s mate. I am Soren Romanov’s wife. We are sisters, but we are also part of a sisterhood of warriors. The blade will wake in time. Trust it. Trust yourself and the warrior you’re meant to be,” Anna said solemnly, as if she recited a pledge.

“It isn’t myself or the blade I distrust,” Madeline replied. Although that wasn’t entirely true. She remembered nothing of how to wield a blade. Her hands seemed to be made for charcoal pencils, not for legendary weapons. It was only that her self-doubt took second place to her doubt of the man who was supposed to be her mate. She accepted the sword as a practical tool, not its Calling. Anna must have sensed her reservations.

“He never forgot you and Trevor. Not even after he’d forgotten how to be a man. His search carried on until he found you,” Anna said softly.

Madeline noted the woman’s persuasive tone. No one would be able to negate her memory of the white wolf on the stormy cliff. He’d been prepared to attack. Only the arrival of Vasilisa had seemed to prevent it. Madeline took the sword with her as she moved, and Anna let her go. The other woman’s hands fell to her sides.

“You are in as much turmoil as Lev. Please. Give him time. Take time to heal before you reject the connection you once embraced,” Anna said.

“We don’t have time to waste on healing or on each other. Trevor is in danger. We must find him and Queen Vasilisa,” Madeline said. Her hands tightened on the hilt of the sword.

“There’s a portal that will take us to Vasilisa,” Lev Romanov said.

Anna’s reaction to his sudden appearance caused Madeline’s chest to constrict and her breath to catch. Anna Romanov stiffened from head to toe, and she raised her hands from her sides.

Her fingers glowed with emerald light, as if she’d summoned power to meet an attack head-on.

Madeline had allowed the tip of the sword to droop, but she raised it again now in response to Anna’s defensive stance.

Lev paused on the last stone step above them. He was already much taller than Anna Romanov. On the rise, he towered over them both, in spite of Madeline’s height. He had changed his clothes. The shredded pants were gone, and he’d replaced them with black leather leggings that fitted his hard muscles like a second skin. He’d also donned a gray long-sleeved undershirt that looked like it had been made for a smaller man—as if it might burst at the seams should he decide to take a deep breath. Over the tightly stretched T-shirt was a black vest, similar to a jerkin but with more modern features, and on his feet were tall black boots. Like hers, his clothing was a mix of old and new.

Although he was lean—almost starved-looking—his frame was broad-shouldered and his muscles had been built with centuries of strenuous activity. He filled the vestibule in which they all stood with the wild presence she’d already seen in the tower room. Truly, her sword and Anna’s hands seemed like scant defense against the man or the beast he might become at any time.

But the scarred man didn’t attack. He glanced at Anna, and then his attention was all for Madeline. His gaze settled on her face as it had in the tower room, as if he would memorize her features before she left him again. When he spoke, he looked at Madeline, but his words were for Anna Romanov.

“The white wolf attacked you once. I remember. His memories are my memories. I won’t apologize. You’re a witch. I was trying to protect my brother. But know this—Soren has married you. You are a witch, but you are also his wife. I would die before I harmed you now,” Lev said.

“There was a time when I promised not to harm you as well, brother. But know this—I am pregnant, and I will protect my child,” Anna warned.

Madeline only saw Anna’s glow brighten out of the corner of her eye. She faced Lev without lowering her sword. The white wolf had attacked Anna? She couldn’t imagine the petite woman surviving the white wolf’s ferocious bite. She’d drawn his teeth in her sketchbook many times. Each had easily been as long as her hand.

Only at that revelation did Lev look from Madeline to his sister-in-law. Her obvious pregnancy must have escaped his notice since he’d returned to the castle.

“Rest assured, I’m leaving. The baby will be safe when I’m gone,” Lev replied.

His voice was as gruff as it had been before, his vocal cords roughened by centuries of howls. But the glow in Anna’s fingers faded until it was gone. The other woman lowered her hands before Madeline lowered her sword.

And the white wolf noticed, even though he was a man. Lev’s attention seemed to be on Anna, but his spine didn’t soften until Madeline lowered the ruby blade down to her side.

“Ivan destroyed the mirror portal when he found out Elena was going to have a baby. There is no longer a portal in Bronwal,” Anna said.

Lev came off the stairs and into the vestibule in several long strides. His physicality was startling. Madeline had been awake for a while, but she had yet to encounter another human being with such grace and speed. If he had decided to attack, her sword would have been useless even if she hadn’t lowered its tip to the floor. He might be on two legs instead of four. He might look hollow and hungry. But Lev Romanov was still dangerous. Along with the hunger in his appearance, there was also a deep, dark Carpathian wilderness behind his eyes.

“There is another,” Lev said. He spoke to Madeline, as if to reassure her rather than to inform. But he couldn’t be sensitive to the sudden clenching in her gut just above the womb, where Trevor had been carried so long ago.

“Yes. The fountain at Straluci. The fortress is in ruin, but the portal should still be there. It will take you to my mother in the blink of an eye, wherever she is being held. The portals are connected to her,” Anna said. “There are no roads. Only narrow game trails. You’ll have to take horses instead of all-terrain vehicles. It will take more than a week to reach the pass.”

The last was said for her benefit. Anna hadn’t taken her eyes off the white wolf in his human form, but she turned to look at Madeline now. Her green eyes flickered with the power she’d previously called to her hands.

“Then the sooner we leave, the better,” Madeline proclaimed. She wasn’t wearing a scabbard for the ruby blade, and her arm was already tired. The sword was heavy. She felt like a pretender as she stood with it gripped tightly in her hand, but even though her body hadn’t recovered its strength following her illness, her heart was filled with resolve.

“I could cover the distance in a quarter of that time on four legs,” Lev said. He had fisted his hands, and as he spoke he stepped closer to Madeline. One pace. Then two. He stopped and closed his eyes. His head fell back as if he would howl at the moon. The tendons on either side of his neck stood out in sharp relief as his body tensed. He braced his long legs wide apart, and veins bulged on his muscular arms...but nothing happened. The earth didn’t quake. His human form remained as imposing yet somehow vulnerable in all its scarred hardness, as it had been before.

Amazingly, his tight shirt hadn’t given way at the seams. It had only stretched with his flexed muscles as he strained.

“It’s probably best for us all that you can’t,” Anna responded. Madeline didn’t argue. She wouldn’t regret seeking help from Bronwal now that help had been found, even if Anna looked pale and troubled as the giant man beside them sought the shift that still eluded him.

She would face the threat of the white wolf for Trevor just as Anna had faced Lev for her unborn child. It didn’t matter that she had no Volkhvy power to back up her determination. Her determination alone would have to be enough. She would get stronger. She would get wiser. She would navigate this strange modern world with a deadly beast by her side in order to save her son.

But she couldn’t help the tightness in her chest, or the way the sword weighed too heavily in her hand. The witch on the train had tried to poison her. If the marked Volkhvy who had kidnapped the queen and her son wanted her dead, she faced more than the white-wolf threat by her side. She had to guard herself from magical stalkers as well. A longer journey would give the marked witches time to make another attempt on her life.

“The marked Volkhvy might have followed me here. They may try to stop us before we reach the portal,” Madeline warned. She allowed the sword’s tip to rest against the ground, and her arm sighed in relief.

Nothing escaped Lev Romanov’s notice. He had a wolf’s senses even in his human form. His intense glance went from the ruby blade up her arm to her face. Once again, she felt he must find her wanting compared to his memories of the warrior she’d been. Sketching didn’t require strength. Battling those witches who might try to kill her would, as would protecting herself should the shift come to the man who so desperately summoned it. If the white wolf proved to be the foe of the stormy cliff rather than the ally she sought...

Her thoughts were interrupted by the tight smile that claimed Lev’s angular face. He had the Romanov nose and sculpted jaw. His beard didn’t hide the perfection of his bone structure, nor did his scars detract from his symmetric features. He was many things—large, muscular and intimidating; scarred, wild and uncivilized—but he was also handsome. The smile startled her. It was a surprising punch to the tightness in her gut. The one-sided upward curve of his lips stole her breath and made her own lips go numb.

“I welcome them to try,” Lev said. His husky voice was pitched even lower than it had been before. His lids had lowered over his vivid blue eyes, his thick lashes creating dusky shadows on his cheeks. Though Anna was only a few feet away from them, the moment was suddenly intimate, and it was as though no one besides Madeline and Lev was there.

It was a promise to help her and Trevor. An uttered contract between them. Madeline forced her lungs to expand. She moistened her lips and nibbled the numbness away.

Lev didn’t blink or look away. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and met her eyes boldly, watching her soak in the promise he’d made.

She might not know if the white wolf was her friend or her foe, but at that moment, she knew Lev Romanov had been born a champion, and a champion he remained. After all he’d been through in his long, harsh life, he might no longer be her mate, but, shifted or not, he was still a Romanov wolf.

He would stand against the marked Volkhvy who stalked her, and he would help her rescue their son.

Chapter 4

Lev had ridden horses almost from the day he was born. He could ride as easily as he could walk. The question was whether the horses could handle being ridden by a man who had been a wolf for a very long time now.

As Lev approached, it took several men to settle the two large destriers Ivan Romanov had ordered prepared for his younger brother and the woman who had been his wife. Madeline had already been placed in her saddle on the smaller white gelding. She held on admirably well for someone who had been asleep for centuries. He noted the white-knuckled grip she had on the reins. He also noted the ruby sword in a scabbard that hung from the pommel of her saddle within easy reach should she need it.

He’d already seen how poorly she held the blade. Her grip had been uncertain, as if she’d never wielded a sword before. Somehow during their journey, he would have to help her remember her prowess with the blade in spite of the fact that she obviously thought he might be the one she would need to wield it against.

The second horse was an impressive dun stallion. Its polished black hooves stood out sharply from the fringes of long white hair. These were warhorses bred to carry armored warriors into battle. They, too, had been caught up in Vasilisa’s curse. Her spell had prolonged the lives of everyone at Bronwal merely to torture them. The horses looked as out of place in this century as Lev felt.

“You frighten them,” Soren said as he and Anna came out of the castle behind him. “Ivan does as well. They will calm down once they realize you’re not going to eat them.”

Although they were twin brothers, Soren had flaming red hair instead of blond. His beard and hair were also neatly trimmed save for a long bang that threatened to flop over his eyes. Lev was conscious of his own overgrown hair and beard. He’d pulled back the unruly waves into a thick queue at the nape of his neck. That was all. He’d refused to try to improve his appearance any more than that. If he looked uncivilized, it was only the God’s honest truth. He was a savage. His years as the white wolf had left him with that legacy.

Better for everyone to see and acknowledge the wildness inside him, while Soren had embraced more than a witch. His trimmed hair and beard proclaimed his mastery over the red wolf.

Then again, Soren had always been more man than beast.

So unlike himself.

Anna and Soren held hands. Lev watched his brother gently hold his pregnant wife as if she was a treasure he’d found. He’d once treated a pregnant Madeline the same way. He had to close his eyes and swallow against the ghost of tenderness that assailed him. He pushed the unwelcome memory away. Then he opened his eyes to watch Anna Romanov warily. Not as his sister-in-law, but as a threat. As always, the witch made his hair follicles tighten as if she brought with her a charge that fueled the very air around them.

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.