Legendary Beast

by Barbara J. Hancock

  But he had used hands, not teeth or claws.

  Alek had failed to stop the red wolf and his mate, Anna, from claiming their connection to the emerald sword. They’d managed to claim it even when Alek had possession of the sword. Anna had taken it from him. It had practically leaped into her hand. But the powerful triumvirate of Romanov wolves would be diminished if even one was lost. He still had the chance to tear them apart by killing the white wolf and his family.

  But first, he had to find the child.

  Their plan to kidnap Trevor Romanov had encountered an unexpected glitch when Queen Vasilisa herself took the baby and disappeared. Aleksandr’s people had been searching tirelessly since. To no avail. Even with the Ether’s help, Alek could not find her. He’d discovered her island, but from there, her trail had vanished into thin air.

  Thankfully, the former wolf and warrior had led his people to a portal that would take them straight to the queen herself, wherever she was. Anywhere in the world. Alek was flying there now. He used Dark energy to power his plane because he was afraid to travel through the Ether itself. He could already feel its vacuum tugging on every cell in his body from the inside out. He would risk only a step through one of Vasilisa’s portals. He couldn’t chance a long journey.

  Alek raised a stained handkerchief to wipe at his weeping eyes. He was so filled with power that it constantly overflowed. It never occurred to him that his former self might be crying at what he’d become. He simply wiped away his oily tears and flew on toward his destiny.

  He would be king.

  Once Vasilisa and her wildest wolf were destroyed.

  * * *

  Lev woke with Madeline snuggled so close to him that it seemed she had tried to crawl into him while they slept. Her cheek was pressed to his neck, and it was damp. The tears she was too strong to shed during the day often claimed her as she slept—this was something only a lover would know. He had guarded that secret vulnerability in their former life together. He would guard it still.

  Unfortunately, she had also wrapped one leg around his hip and snugged her most intimate heat against his loins. He had to rise and leave her in order to protect his vulnerability.

  His desire for her was his greatest weakness. Especially if he must let her go to save her.

  He washed off with the cold water from the fountain. The chill had a dual purpose. It washed away the salty residue of her tears, and it cooled his rampant erection. She had begged. She had screamed. She had clawed his skin. In spite of the cold water, he couldn’t get her pleasure in his wildness out of his mind. She had woken from her enchanted sleep weakened by her loss of memory and her fear of the white wolf. Now, her memory was slowly returning. She’d moved past her hesitation with him.

  But there was still the white wolf to contend with.

  His blood was poisoned by the Ether taint, and it wasn’t going away. His human form couldn’t heal. The chill of the fountain water was nothing compared to the chill that had infected his blood. He could feel the Ether’s nothingness inside him, as if its vacuum would devour him from the inside out.

  He’d seen a witchblood prince devoured by the overwhelming flood of Ether he’d welcomed into his body in order to become more powerful. That same process had begun in him without his permission. The tainted wolves had broken his skin with their teeth, and the Ether channeled into them by the marked Volkhvy had spilled over into him.

  If it claimed him, he would be leaving Madeline and Trevor to Vasilisa’s cruel, unpredictable mercy. But he’d come to realize that the only way he could cleanse his blood of the taint was to shift.

  He would have to terrorize Madeline in order to save her. She might have accepted and even reveled in the wildness that stayed with him even in his human form, but she would not welcome the white wolf near their child. And he couldn’t blame her. He had respected her caution through every attack. He had held the instinctual drive to shift at bay. He had stayed in his human form—or mostly human—for Madeline.

  In part, because he shared her concern. He had always been the brother most claimed by the wildness during the shift. She thought he would be as feral as he’d been for centuries if he shifted again. She wasn’t wrong. He could feel the fury for Vasilisa burning in his chest even as the chill of Ether poisoned him. He’d felt it for too long not to recognize it as the white wolf’s rage.

  * * *

  Trevor was colicky. Madeline had been up most of the night with her fretful baby and she was groggy from lack of sleep, but once she found a lullaby that seemed to soothe him, she rocked the cradle gently and hummed without stopping in spite of her exhaustion.

  His little flushed face had finally gone back to the usual rosy hue that predicted the strawberry blonde fuzz on top of his head would eventually lean more to red. He’d fallen into a peaceful sleep while she hummed and rocked tirelessly.

  If only Dark Volkhvy were as easy to vanquish as colic.

  Lev had been called away to battle. He’d made her promise to stay, but she’d only agreed when the baby seemed to grow ill. Lev had been too solicitous over her during the pregnancy, and even now. Not that she wasn’t drained from caring for a newborn. But she was a Romanov warrior. She was the wielder of the ruby Romanov blade. It was time her husband remembered that.

  As the baby slept, she continued to rock the cradle beneath a large tapestry. She had begun to sew the likeness of herself when the ruby sword Called her. At first, she hadn’t known who the female warrior was, but stitch by stitch, prick by prick, her identity had been revealed. By then, she was already hopelessly in love with the ferocious Romanov who became the terrifying white wolf in the blink of an eye. He shook the world when he shifted.

  But he had shaken her world the first time he met her.

  Madeline began to think of several ways she could remind Lev Romanov that she was the fierce warrior he’d married, a mate who could meet his ferocity on the field and on the bed, no coddling necessary.

  But a step sounded in the hall outside and interrupted her thoughts.

  Queen Vasilisa swept into the room. As always, her elaborate white gown and long white hair formed a startling sight against the stone castle walls of Bronwal. Madeline continued to nudge the baby’s cradle, but she curtsied deep before her liege just as she would have done if Vasilisa had been sitting on a throne.

  It wasn’t until she rose from her deep curtsy that Madeline realized something was wrong. Queen Vasilisa, normally so perfect and pale, was flushed. Her cheekbones were as bright red as Trevor’s had been when he was crying. In fact, Vasilisa’s eyes were rimmed with red and shadowed with circles that looked like two large bruises on her beautiful face.

  “You must bring the baby and come with me,” Vasilisa ordered.

  Madeline picked up Trevor from his cradle. She didn’t hesitate. A toy Trevor had been sleeping with fell to the floor. It was a white wolf she had fashioned out of spare cloth. She had given the wolf vivid blue eyes with her embroidery thread. Trevor had laughed and loved the toy wolf right away.

  The toy’s legs sprawled out loosely on the floor, and for some reason the way it had fallen bothered Madeline. Its legs were twisted, its little face pointed at the sky as if it would howl in pain.

  “What’s wrong? What has happened?” Madeline asked. She reached for her ever-present ruby blade. It was in a scabbard she’d hooked on one of the bedposts. Vasilisa didn’t reply. She simply turned and walked away. Madeline followed Vasilisa out the door, glancing back only once. She saw the tapestry in the firelight standing watch over the empty cradle. Madeline carried Trevor in one arm and her sword in the other. She followed the queen down the hall.

  The queen walked with purpose toward the old chapel that held the mirror portal. There was no one around. The corridors were deserted. Trevor began to fuss against Madeline’s breast. She began to hum the same lullaby that had worked on his colic before.

  “That’s right. Sing him to sleep. I wager you’re getting sleepy as well,” Va
silisa said with an odd, tight voice Madeline had never heard her use before.

  “If something’s wrong, we should go to Lev. He can help us,” Madeline said.

  “He’s no use to us now. No use at all,” Vasilisa replied.

  Madeline would have stopped them. She would have refused to go on. But they had reached the chapel, and Vasilisa had reached to take the sword from her hand. She only released it because she needed both hands to cradle Trevor to her breast. Her arms seemed weaker than they should be, and she could hardly keep her eyes open.

  “What has happened?” Madeline asked again.

  Vasilisa reached for Madeline. The ruby in the sword flared bright, and by its light, Madeline saw the queen take her arm and pull her toward the mirror portal. She didn’t want to take Trevor through the portal. He was too young. The Ether was too cold. Even one step in its chill would be too much of a risk for a newborn. But Vasilisa tugged, and Madeline stumbled after her.

  Queen Vasilisa began to hum the same song Madeline had been humming. For some reason, the lullaby sounded eerie coming from the pale queen with her bruised and red-rimmed eyes. Madeline managed to balk then. Her heels attempted to dig into the stone floor. She was not a small woman. She towered over the queen. But it didn’t matter. The queen had all of Ether’s energy to increase her strength.

  The mirror swallowed the queen, Madeline and Trevor. And Madeline’s screams.

  * * *

  Madeline woke up with a start. Lev was gone. He’d left his leather vest rolled beneath her cheek in place of his arm. The memory she’d dreamed was fresh in her mind. Why hadn’t she realized that Queen Vasilisa had been crying? Her red-rimmed eyes and the bruise-like shadows underneath them had been in response to Vladimir’s betrayal. She’d decided to curse Bronwal, but she’d still thought of protecting Trevor. She’d come for them and taken them to Krajina as the curse had fallen. Madeline could remember those empty, echoing corridors. How had she ever forgotten those halls or the eerie lullaby that had put her into a sleep that would last over a thousand years?

  She couldn’t allow Lev to hurt Vasilisa, even though the Light Volkhvy queen had torn their family apart. She had been protecting Trevor from her rage and grief, and she had kept him safe all the same. It had been her singing, after Madeline woke abruptly when the white wolf found the island, that kept the baby from waking too quickly.

  Wherever they’d been taken, Madeline hoped Vasilisa sang for Trevor still. She prayed he would be guided gently into this new, modern world. And it was entirely up to her to make sure the white wolf didn’t finish what he’d started before Vasilisa could help Trevor wake, slowly and carefully, from his long enchanted sleep.

  Lev wanted to punish the queen for what she’d done. Madeline understood. The memory her dreams had unlocked was still too vivid in her mind. She remembered the leaden weight of her limbs as the sleep had claimed them while she was still trying to hold the baby to her breast. She remembered the desire to cry out for her husband, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that he would save them if she could only muster the strength to fight the enchantment long enough to call him.

  She’d failed.

  She’d trusted her queen, and even now she had to wonder if that mistake had actually been a blessing in disguise for the baby. If she’d resisted more effectively, they might have been lost to the Ether rather than sheltered on Krajina for all that time. For herself, she would have preferred to fight the Darkness by her husband’s side. She might have helped him hold on to his humanity. She might have protected him from some of the scars, both inside and outside. But when it came to Trevor, she had to be thankful he had slept, blissfully unaware of the passage of time and tides and how they had eaten away at his legendary father.

  Madeline had woken to a nightmare choice between her lover and her child. She didn’t want to raise the ruby blade against Lev. Not even if he shifted into his white wolf form. She might reject their enchanted connection, but they shared a different connection that needed no Volkhvy interference to enhance it.

  If she stood against him to defend Vasilisa, even that connection might be severed. She would lose him. Truly lose him, for the first time.

  Her determination to protect Trevor propelled her up and out of the crumbling castle in search of Lev. They would have to use the portal together. She had to be certain he didn’t go ahead of her and attack Vasilisa before she could stop him. She buckled the modified straps of her scabbard over her chest and arranged it as she headed to the courtyard. The ruby was still dead and dull. It didn’t matter. She’d been awake for weeks. Every day she became stronger. She’d remembered how to wield the blade. Each day she remembered more. Her body moved more gracefully, each muscle remembering its purpose as she pushed herself to be ready.

  The confidence of a warrior had been rekindled in her veins and burned brightly in her heart. For Trevor.

  She was wide-awake now. She didn’t need the light of the ruby to guide her.

  Lev stood by the fountain. The water from the spring had filled it to the brim, and a forceful flow poured from the statues, creating small, gurgling waterfalls from the open mouths. The streams of water fell away from the main body of the fountain into a channel that carried the water away and back into the ground. In contrast to the rushing water, the middle of the fountain at the base of the wolves’ feet was still and serene. Like glass, it reflected the sky as the sunrise painted the horizon with an orange-and-yellow glow.

  “They’ve found us. I can smell the wolves on the breeze. I can hear their paws scrabbling on the ground. They roil toward us as one entity made of many. There will be no posturing. No chance for me to challenge the alpha and take over the pack. It is completely under the control of the Volkhvy, who drive it ahead of them,” Lev said.

  Madeline strained her hearing. She thought even she could detect a rustling. As she listened, the noise increased, coming closer and closer, like an approaching storm. Only it would be a downpour of tainted fangs that caught them, instead of rain.

  “Hurry,” Madeline said. Her hand had automatically gone to the hilt of the sword over her shoulder. “We should use the portal before the wolves reach us.”

  Lev turned toward her. His hair was wild around his shaven face. Her heartbeat stuttered, and her breath caught. The morning sun created a halo of his blond waves, but if he had been an angel, he would be a vengeful one. She could see the anger tightening his jaw, better than she’d been able to see it before. Shaving him hadn’t made him civilized. It had only revealed more sharply the man he’d become.

  Her heart skipped because he didn’t repel her. Just as her sketches had revealed, she was fascinated by his passion and fury.

  She had reclaimed her warrior spirit, and she was no longer afraid of the wolf that showed in his eyes.

  “We can’t escape them. They will follow us through the portal. We will face whatever is on the other side, as well as the pack and the witches who control it,” Lev said. He stepped toward her, and Madeline’s hand fell away from her sword without her giving it permission to stand down. This was how it would be. She didn’t want to fight him. Her instinct was to fight alongside him.

  “And there’s something you should know,” Lev continued. “The wolf attack infected my blood with Ether taint. I’m fighting the Darkness with every breath. If I use the portal, the vacuum might take me before I step through on the other side.”

  “No,” Madeline said. This time, instinct drove her to reach for him instead of her sword. She grasped his arms as he faced her. His muscular biceps were so warm and strong beneath her fingers. He couldn’t disappear. He was forever and always. As much as she’d feared the white wolf, she’d expected to see him again one day the same way she expected the sun the next day when night fell. She had been wary of his feral nature, but deep down, she’d believed that he could be reached. Not tamed. Never that. But brought back from the savage edge of madness, where he’d been driven by the curse.

  “You’l
l shift,” she told him. “You’ll heal. The white wolf will shed the taint as you shed your human form.”

  A howl sounded in the distance. It was a howl made up of a hundred wolves’ howls, but all strangely together in one deafening cry. The synchronicity was unnatural. It jarred every expectation because it was impossible. How could wild creatures be so joined and manipulated? The pack was one weapon aimed against them, and it had reached the rhododendron field.

  “You don’t want me to shift, Madeline. The white wolf woke you too soon. The first sight you had of me, I was at my most feral. I had finally sensed you after centuries of searching. I was mad from grief and pain and exhaustion. And fury. I wanted to tear Vasilisa limb from limb. You and Trevor were there the entire time. I thought you were gone. And worse, she still had you. That was what drove me wild. You were still in her clutches. A witch. The worst of the Volkhvy. She used and abused us all,” Lev said. “And I couldn’t stop her. I had failed to help you for centuries. I wanted to tear myself limb from limb.” He stood with his arms at his sides as she held him. His face was hard and tight. Moisture swam in the blue of his eyes. He fisted his hands, trembling with emotion.

  Madeline was suddenly claimed by the same emotion. Her body trembled, too. Her heart pumped pure fury through her veins. Her teeth clenched, and a growl rose in her tightened throat.

  They thought they had rejected the connection.

  But it had been the connection that woke her from her long enchanted sleep.

  She had risen to face the white wolf in battle, but it had been the wolf’s emotion she’d been feeling. Lev had come back from the wild when they connected once more, and he had come face-to-face with his failure. His fury had been directed as much at himself as the queen. She’d been a nearly empty vessel, woken too soon to bring her memories back to life within her. She’d only had Lev’s thoughts and feelings to guide her actions, and his main thought had been one of self-loathing.