Legendary Beast

by Barbara J. Hancock

  Anna turned. She led the way out of the room and toward the back of the castle. Madeline took a deep breath to try to dispel the tightness in her chest and followed. When they came to a large archway that framed the beginning of a spiral staircase, the pregnant woman paused and then stepped aside to make way for Madeline. The stone stairway twisted up and around until its treads curved out of sight.

  Anna still held the sword out in front of her as if it was an offering for Madeline. Madeline refused it as she stepped forward.

  “Whatever you find at the top of the stairs, you should know that he never stopped searching for you,” Anna said. “He never rested in all the years you were sleeping.”

  Madeline paused for a moment. Her back was turned to Anna, but she heard. She also doubted. Vasilisa had warned her that the white wolf was feral. She’d woken to his rage. If he had looked for her and Trevor, he hadn’t had benevolent intentions.

  Madeline climbed the stairs. This time, she wouldn’t raise a sword against the white wolf as she had done on the edge of Krajina’s sea cliff. The sword was as closed off and dead to her as her past was to her mind and heart. She only had her love for Trevor to guide her and strengthen her as she climbed up toward the tower room. Her maternal feelings offset her fear. She didn’t know what she would find at the top of the stairs, but she knew she had to try.

  Soft electric torches glowed from the soot-blackened walls where flaming torches used to be. Madeline could almost see them flickering. She could almost remember the scent of scorched tallow-soaked cloth as she forced herself to take step after step toward her greatest nightmare.

  But any gentler memories were overwhelmed in her mind by visions of the white wolf’s snarl and his red glowing eyes. He was a massive monster with long fearsome fangs and bloodstained fur. She had been filled with the absolute certainty that a dangerous presence had threatened her and Trevor and everyone else there that day. Madeline’s response had been visceral, from the howl that had woken her up as it ripped itself from her body, to the intent that had claimed her to lash out with her sword and kill the beast that seemed to be the only threat she could see.

  Anna had stopped her. The white wolf’s shift had stopped her. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to strike at the man as the rain fell and the wind whipped around them. She’d been racked by an internal storm as fierce as the one that tossed the ocean and the atmosphere around Krajina.

  The ferocity of her emotion had seemed too big for her body to contain, until Vasilisa had soothed it away with her cool magic.

  As she neared the top of the stairs, Madeline had to step around and over the busted-up debris and shredded remains of furniture and clothes. Feathers from pillows that had been torn apart swirled up and floated down around her feet like snow. Ripped-up pages of books joined this feather “snow” to cover the stairs.

  And still she climbed.

  Her body was heavy. The uncertainty in her chest and throat had expanded until it seemed to flow through her veins to every part of her. Her legs felt weighted down, but she moved them anyway. Her heightened anxiety pressed against her shoulders as if it tried to hold her back. She ignored the pressure. Once again, it seemed as if her body could barely contain the emotions it tried to feel.

  But her discomfort and the danger she faced didn’t matter.

  Trevor, Trevor, Trevor, Trevor.

  He was all that mattered.

  Each ringing step of her boots on the stone staircase seemed to echo with her baby’s name. She only paused when she came to the top and found a door torn from its hinges and lying to the side. The door had been crafted with heavy wood on its bottom half and scrolled iron bars on its top half, but for all its sturdy artisan construction, it had been busted loose and practically splintered by whatever force had shoved it aside.

  “Go away. I want nothing. I need nothing. How many times do I have to tell you to allow me to bleed?”

  Every ounce of trepidation that had filled Madeline’s body drained away when she heard the ragged rough voice ring out and echo down the stairs. Its deep reverberations flowed through her like rushing waters, leaving her hollowed out in their wake. For long seconds, she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t anything. She was only an empty husk that might float down to settle with the feathers and torn papers on the stairs.

  And then a basket whizzed past her head. Bandages and tape spilled from it, and the whole mess bounced down the stairs and out of sight. Silence fell, broken only by Madeline’s own respiration. Her breathing was quicker than it should have been. She’d thought the fear was gone, but she found it again, a more silent, calmer disquiet than the overwhelming emotion of before.

  She was certain that she was in trouble. She was also certain she would face any trouble imaginable to save her son.

  This time it was easier to take the last few steps that brought her into the tower room. She only had to reach up and hold the straps of her backpack and put one foot in front of the other.

  And then she saw him again. For the first time in six months.

  The trash on the stairs should have prepared her for what she would find, but her breath caught in her throat in a gasp when she saw Lev Romanov. Her fingers went numb on the straps of her bag, and her knees wobbled. She willed her joints to turn to steel, and she managed to stay on her feet.

  She’d seen him on the cliff, completely nude and kneeling in the rain. According to Queen Vasilisa, she’d known and loved him, and if that was so, she’d certainly seen him thousands of times before.

  Yet she was certain the man before her would have been a stranger even to the warrior she used to be.

  He was braced for battle in the middle of the room, with his feet planted wide and his fists clenched at his sides. He wore only torn and bloody trousers low on lean hips. The rest of him was bare. And every inch of his exposed flesh was tensed and hard with ropy muscles that seemed to scream from past exertions she couldn’t imagine. He also had fine white scars etched all over his arms, chest and abdomen. The marks seemed impossible because his flesh appeared too hard to brand. He was stone, a living, breathing statue to commemorate where a man used to be.

  He glared at her with intense blue eyes that blazed from behind a shocking white streak of hair. The rest of his hair was blond. It fell in wild locks all around his face and shoulders. His beard was as untamed as his hair.

  She couldn’t read his expression. The set of his features was hidden. But the set of his body was not. He stood as if he was in midbattle, always in midbattle, prepared for the next blow and the one after that.

  The meaning of his words, the bandages and the blood finally hit her, and Madeline breathed out a long shaky sigh. He was hurt. The blood on his ripped trousers was his own. His feet were crimson, and the flagstones on the floor were marked by his bloodied footsteps. A cold breeze filled the room, and there was glass from the broken windows all over the floor.

  “No. I will not allow you to bleed. Nor will I go away and leave you alone. Trevor needs the white wolf to save him,” Madeline said. Her voice sounded almost as rough as his had sounded. As if she hadn’t spoken in an age. But at least it didn’t tremble. She was shaken to her core by Lev Romanov’s appearance, but her voice was firm.

  She wasn’t prepared for the savage man in the middle of the room to approach her right away, though she should have been. He was obviously racked by adrenaline and fully committed to waging a war only he could see.

  He moved too quickly. Between one stunned blink and the next, he had crossed to her and taken her shoulders in his hands. His grip was too fierce. His fingers pressed into her flesh to hold her in place as he intently examined her face. And it wasn’t only his hardness or his hold that was intimidating. He was well over six feet tall, and she was too used to being the tallest person in the room.

  Suddenly, she was small and soft in comparison to him. She was also not nearly as braced for anything as she’d thought she was. He was midbattle. Her fight had just begun.
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br />   “Madeline,” he said, and it sounded like a secret they would share, but she couldn’t grasp its meaning. The intensity of his gaze was suddenly fully focused on her face. He scanned her features as if he would memorize them. She was caught and held by his blue eyes, just as he held her with his hands as if he would never let her go.

  For weeks, she’d been handled with care by Vasilisa and the entire palace of Volkhvy. She’d been given time and space and consideration as she’d tried to understand the world around her.

  Lev Romanov met her with an urgency that stunned her. He was wild with some need she couldn’t begin to understand, when all else was confusion. He fought something with every rise and fall of his broad chest. His fight showed in the grip of his hands and the tension in his entire body.

  He pulled her closer, the better to look deep into her eyes, but the move also brought her nearer to his large body. She had seen him nude in the rain, but her vision had been blurred. Here, now, only inches from her, she saw him clearly—every scar, every angle, every plane—and it was all too sudden and intimate for her senses, which had been sleeping for a very long time.

  Her breathing had gone shallow, but the scent of the wind trapped in his hair still filled her nose. The room was chilly, but his masculine body heat enveloped her where they stood.

  This man had thrown everyone and everything out of his room, but now he grabbed her and pulled her close. He looked deeply into her eyes as if he was preparing to...

  Her insecurity over her memory loss flared back to life and resonated all the way to her bones.

  “I don’t remember you at all,” Madeline said. “I’m not here for you. I’m here for Trevor. He needs the white wolf.”

  Her heart pounded, and the fear crowded out all else that might have been long ago and far away. She needed this savage stranger to help her. She didn’t need to remember him or what they had shared.

  His hands tightened for a split second and then released just before she cried out in pain. The sudden squeeze had been reflexive. He noted her pain and let her go as suddenly as the spasm had begun. She thought she saw regret flash in his eyes, but then he dipped his head, and his hair was in the way. Did he use his wild mane as a shield between them? If so, it was only somewhat effective, considering the rest of him was exposed.

  “The white wolf is gone,” Lev said. “I can’t shift. I can’t help you. This human body has me again, and it won’t let me go.”

  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.