Legendary Shifter. Barbara Hancock J.
evidence of enchantment later darkened by the curse. The wavy stained glass glowed beautifully by the light of the moon while hungry ravens circled perpetually outside.
When Elena decided it was relatively safe to leave the room, she pulled the chain over her head and used the key to unlock the door. The sound of the tumblers moving in the lock echoed down the stairs with loud metallic clinks. She placed the chain back around her neck while she paused to wait for a reaction. No one came to stop her. From the top of the winding stair, she could only see torch-lit shadows flickering on the walls. Distant sounds came to her ears. Singing and sighs and soft sobbing from somewhere far away. The castle didn’t sleep. The atmosphere was one of restlessness and regret. Patrice wasn’t the only one who wandered. Romanov had warned her that it wasn’t safe. She risked running into Light or Dark Volkhvy or humans caught up in the curse and driven mad by their endless returns to the Ether.
Yet it was running into Romanov again that she most feared. His magnetism was at least as strong as the original pull that had drawn her to the mountains, but the curse had changed everything. She had to be careful about the darkness she’d found, in Romanov and in his castle. He was right. She had to resist her attraction to her host, but she also had to find the alpha wolf. Her resolve to resist Grigori was useless with no power to back it up.
* * *
Elena Pavlova would leave tomorrow. The training courtyard was the emptiest, most hollow place he had to endure during a Cycle and tonight it was rapidly becoming covered in a frigid blanket of snow. Nevertheless, Ivan had trained in it for hours. He rarely wasted a Cycle with sleep, but this time his restlessness had another cause. He would be haunted by her small, perfectly formed breasts for the rest of his days on earth. Her nipples had been hard from the cold and damp. Their rosy darkness had been vivid against the thin white silk of her unusual undergarments. He’d had to force himself to look away. And now he needed the snow and exertion to keep him sane.
She had been completely innocent of her inadvertent seduction. Not in the manner of a child, but in the manner of a woman who had more urgent matters than seduction to attend to. She had said she was a dancer. It showed in her every move. Even her limp was graceful, a careful shifting of weight and form. He was captivated by her manner of movement and her urgency. She’d flushed when she’d noticed his reaction to her disrobing. It had been a simple, practical removal of wet clothes not intended to shatter him completely.
But it had.
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.
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