The howl was inevitable. It was always only a matter of where and when, not if. It wasn’t until he leaped for the front of the cart to position his giant wolf self between the handles that he understood the real danger: as the red wolf, the loyalty he felt toward Anna was as ferocious as it had ever been. It was less diminished by human reason. It was cemented in this physical form as muscle memory he would have to fight.
But not now.
For now, he unleashed it.
The cart was nothing to him. The tiny woman in it not much more weight than she’d been as a child. The only thing that slowed him down was the care he had to take over rocks and bumps in the terrain. Other than those, they flew.
Soren slowed when they reached the garden that surrounded the palace. The sprawling structure was located on a rise above this tangle. He carefully made his way around the lush rosebushes that grew in a wilderness of thorns. Once they arrived at the base of a winding stairway that led up to the palace doors, he stopped. The stairway was lined with black banners on silver poles. Each banner held white markings he couldn’t decipher. Some language he didn’t understand. It was Vasilisa who picked Anna up from the back of the cart and carried her upstairs. The creature she’d ridden had almost kept up with Soren in spite of its age.
If she hadn’t really needed his speed and strength to pull Anna to the palace, why had she manipulated him into the shift?
Vasilisa carried Anna up the stairway. Her white skirts trailed behind her gracefully as if she floated upward, step by step. Soren followed. As he walked up the stairway, he reclaimed his human form. His physical wolf attributes—hair, fangs, claws—disintegrated and rose from his newly reformed human shape as a fine smoky mist. He ignored the pain.
The soul of the red wolf, unlike its accoutrements, settled deep in his chest to inhabit the dark reaches of his heart.
Between one step and the next, he reached for one of the banners that flanked the stairs to wrap himself in a makeshift robe. He was comfortable with his nakedness. As a shape-shifter, he would have to be. But he was entering Anna’s mother’s home. Until he could find something better, the banner would have to do.
He didn’t feel vulnerable in his human skin, but he did feel exposed as he followed Vasilisa into a great hall with a high, arched ceiling and black iron accents on pillars and posts. He couldn’t hide his concern for Anna as well as he’d hidden his nudity.
Vasilisa paid him no notice. She walked through the hall and into an antechamber that led to another flight of curving stairs. When they finally reached the top, they came to a large round room lit by streaming beams of sunlight that poured through a faceted glass dome that formed its ceiling. Only then did he stop. His gaze tracked over a myriad of keepsakes he recognized from years of familiarity. The shelves and tables in the room as well as the windowsills and corners were stacked with Anna’s magpie collection from the Bronwal aviary.
This was Anna’s new bedchamber in her mother’s palace.
Like the aviary, it was bright and ringed with windows that were open to the air and sun. Through those arched openings, he could see the ocean far below. It kissed the sandy shores of Krajina with soft curls of foamy white. But Anna’s bedroom also had heavy doors and shutters that when closed would provide a solid defense against intruders.
She’d always been brave but cautious. Bold but careful.
Vasilisa placed Anna on a large canopied bed draped with diaphanous clouds of ivory fabric and jewel-toned silken coverlets and pillows. It was a bed fit for a princess, and more than anything else he’d seen on the island, more than the luxurious palace or the magical beast or the enchanted weather, the bed made him acknowledge that the waif he’d known was gone.
Bell had made do with dusty, deteriorating bedclothes and the empty aviary with its rough stone floor. She’d looked out on cold sunset mountains. She’d shivered and starved and barely survived.
And she’d loved still.
“I am your maker and Anna carries my blood in her veins. The white wolf’s attack was an abomination against the Light power I used to create him. That’s why she won’t heal without my help. The enchantment I worked to create the Romanov wolves was tainted by the darkness of Lev’s violent actions against my daughter. His bite carried with it the Ether itself poisoned by his hatred as if it was a venom,” Vasilisa said. “I can cleanse her, but I’ll need your help.”
“I’m no longer your champion,” Soren said. He looked at the pale woman on the bed instead of the queen he addressed. The drape of the borrowed banner was forgotten to sag low around his waist and one shoulder, but it was the focus of his attention that exposed him more than his bare skin.
He couldn’t look away. Or turn away. He could only tell Vasilisa with his words and actions that he was here for Anna, not for her, and even that was temporary. He would never be tied to the Volkhvy again.
“Be that as it may, you shifted to bring her to the palace, because you will always be her champion whether you realize it or not,” Vasilisa said. She held one hand toward him with her palm facing up and fingers spread. She gestured for him to take her outstretched hand and waited.
His attention had left Anna at Vasilisa’s shocking claim. The shift had been a test of his loyalty to her daughter. He was too surprised to protest. Besides, Anna was dying. Now wasn’t the time to argue that he and her daughter had decided to destroy the sword that tried to bind them together.
“What would you have me do?” Soren asked.
If he could fight the poison with tooth and claw, he would. Whether or not it gave Vasilisa misconceptions about his and Anna’s relationship.
“She’s lost too much blood. We need to cleanse her wounds so they can knit,” Vasilisa said. A slight sea breeze came through the windows, gently shifting the gauzy bed hangings and the queen’s hair. The silvery strands sparkled with the movement in the sun. “There’s no hate in you for her. We can use your blood to undo what your brother has done.”
“No,” Soren said. He didn’t hate Anna, but he did hate the Volkhvy. He had to. Vasilisa had tortured the Romanovs for centuries. “My blood will only hurt her more.”
“You know your own heart better as the red wolf than you do as a man, Soren Romanov,” Vasilisa scolded, obviously impatient with his hesitation. “You came here so that I could save my daughter’s life. Let’s get on with it before it’s too late.”
Soren forced his legs to carry him to Anna’s side.
“Anger at injustice isn’t hate. You’re angry and you have every right to be. But you do not hate as your brother hates. He is the one Romanov that I wronged the most. I can never make right what was done to him. I took his wife and child. I drove him into the wilderness of his despair. For that, I never expect forgiveness. But you...you don’t hate as your brother does. One day you’ll come out on the other side of your anger, and you’ll find yourself much as you ever were.”
Vasilisa took one of his arms in her hands. It looked impossibly large and savagely scarred and muscled compared to her pale, soft limbs and graceful fingers. But he misjudged her savagery based on her feminine appearance. When she sliced his wrist with a sharp, pointed ring of sterling silver thorns she wore around the third finger of her left hand, he sucked air in between his clenched teeth in surprise.
Crimson blood welled up from the shallow cut, and the queen urged him to move. She positioned his bleeding wrist over Anna’s bandaged wounds, where her Volkhvy blood had soaked through. His blood formed a scarlet teardrop before it fell to splash on Anna’s shoulder. It hissed and bubbled as it soaked into the bandages. Several more teardrops of blood fell until steam rose from Anna’s shoulder. As the steam rose, Vasilisa released his arm and began to speak in a low voice, muttering words in a language he didn’t understand. Soren backed away as Vasilisa reached to place her hands on Anna’s steaming shoulder. The glow she’d summoned wasn’t green like Anna�
�s. It was purple, like the color of the mourning dresses she’d worn for centuries.
Anna cried out, and Soren clenched his fists. He was helpless to prevent her pain just as he’d been helpless to save her from the curse her mother had worked or the impossible choices the emerald sword forced them to make.
Whether he hated Anna’s pain or not, he had to save his brother. The white wolf’s poisonous bite was only more evidence that Lev was nearly too far gone. Soren and Anna had no future together, regardless of what the queen might think or how she manipulated them with her magic.
His only future was in saving his brother and protecting his family from further Volkhvy manipulations.
Anna wasn’t welcome at Bronwal.
And Ivan had every right to protect his wife and child.
Soren watched as the color returned to the Light Volkhvy princess’s cheeks, and then he held the banner around his hips and slipped away.
Chapter 11
It took three days on the island for Anna to recover her strength. By then, her shoulder no longer needed bandages and Lev’s bites had nearly healed. There were only pale pink marks where the ugly puncture wounds had been.
She hadn’t seen Soren since the day they arrived. From beneath barely opened eyelids, she’d watched him shift to pull her cart back to the palace. She’d seen him sacrifice his blood for her. Even near death, she’d been struck by his large, naked form in the doorway to her room, covered only by a torn banner he’d draped over one shoulder and around his lean, powerful hips. The drops of blood he’d shed for her had shone brightly against his muscular forearm. She’d been dying, but he’d seemed so vulnerable in that moment, nearly nude and his lifeblood bared for her.
The healing had burned through her like cold fire. Soren’s blood was the heat. Her mother’s power was the ice. She’d opened her eyes within moments, but Soren had already backed away. She watched him leave the room. His attention had been focused on her face. He hadn’t met her eyes. What she’d seen in his had shot more arrows into her soul.
He’d brought her through the Ether. He’d given her his blood. But he still rejected the idea of a Volkhvy as his mate. Lev’s hatred for her was so great that his bite had turned venomous. Soren had saved her, but he wouldn’t give up on his brother.
She wouldn’t want him to.
And now, there was another Romanov to consider. Ivan and Elena’s baby would be a fresh, innocent life at Bronwal. One that should live completely free of the curse and all the pain it had caused. She didn’t blame Soren for protecting his family from her. She would rather err on the side of caution herself.
But that didn’t make what they had to do any easier. Especially now that she’d kissed him.
Anna had almost died, but she could still remember Soren’s full, lush mouth slowly tasting hers when she’d lost her powers. Her favorite window allowed a view of the beach in the distance. She sat on its wide sill, bathed by the salty sea breeze, and she dwelled on those remembered moments.
Soren, as a man, was big and real and tempting to the touch. When he’d leaned close, how could she resist? The kiss had been intensely physical—the flick of his rough tongue against hers, the velvety suction of his mouth, the nip of his teeth against her lower lip, the friction of his beard. She’d tasted the salt as his temperature rose against her lips. His body heat had radiated out like a silent confession. As if he was wordlessly pleading for the kiss to continue...or to become more.
And then she’d touched his face.
That beautifully masculine face she’d longed to see for so many years. His human features were older, wiser, harder, but more handsome than she could have imagined. Especially when his cheeks were flushed with desire for her and his lips were swollen from their mutual hunger.
She hadn’t lied to him. The sword must be destroyed. She was Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess. One day she might even become the queen. She felt the promise of power thrumming beneath her fingertips even when she wore thick leather gloves. She couldn’t deny her blood, nor could she reconcile it with his need to protect his family from her.
In a moment of panic, she’d transported them through the Ether after the white wolf’s attack.
It had been an instinctive use of her abilities that violated everything Soren wanted for himself. She’d taken him into the nightmare world that had haunted him every night since the curse had been broken.
Her Volkhvy abilities were dangerous, and there was no guarantee that she would ever have them fully under control.
She wasn’t sure if the sunset was real or borrowed from wherever her mother borrowed the false Mediterranean atmosphere. To anyone who might pass, the island was rocky and uninhabitable, a typical skiff of earth in the Sea of the Hebrides among numerous others. Its true nature was blanketed by its false atmosphere to hide the palace and gardens and all the inhabitants. Krajina was yet another show of her mother’s immense power. Power Anna probably possessed herself. She tried to enjoy the sun’s glow. Shades of pink, orange and vivid yellow painted the azure sky. It was beautiful, but also vaguely threatening just like Vasilisa herself.
Anna touched her lips lightly with fingers that tingled even when she hadn’t consciously called on her powers.
The kisses they’d stolen would have to be enough. She only wished it didn’t feel as if the memory of his lips would become a new curse. Heat spread from her mouth down to her tight chest and then seductively lower. Her nipples peaked against the satin of her ivory nightgown made blush by the reflected glow of the sunset sky. She would have to live for an eternity of lonely nights with only two kisses to sustain her.
She would never forget them. The Ether’s energy might tingle her fingers, but the feel and taste of Soren permanently tingled on her tongue.
Curse seemed apt.
* * *
Soren wanted off the island. He’d paced its confines since Anna had woken up. It was no surprise that he preferred outside to in. He might be in his human form, but he still wanted the sun on his hair and the breeze on his skin. Plus, when he was outside running across the windswept valleys and hills or along the craggy shores, there was no danger that he’d find himself at Anna’s bedroom door.
Was he avoiding her?
It was a stupid question. One he didn’t even have to ask himself. Of course the less time they spent together, the better. She needed to heal so they could go after the emerald sword. He remembered the blade. He could perfectly recall the gem’s green glitter in its hilt. Only now did he recognize the same green in Anna’s eyes and in the power her Volkhvy abilities channeled from the Ether.
She needed to heal, and he needed to develop more self-control.
He’d kissed her. The horror of Lev’s attack and her near death afterward didn’t diminish the impact of tasting her lips—the heat, the hunger, the intimate blending of their tongues. The allure of finally having a man’s body to join with her womanly one paired with the absence of her power had tempted him beyond any seduction he’d ever known.
They’d experienced one quick, hot taste.
Then one slow, deep exploration.
It would never be enough.
He’d ache for another kiss for the rest of his days.
Of course he needed to avoid her. He should get off the island and never return. But even if the mirror was still intact at Bronwal, he wouldn’t be able to take such an easy escape. The emerald sword couldn’t be ignored. It had to be silenced. He wasn’t the warrior it Called. He couldn’t hear its song, but he felt the connection it tried to establish between them.
Even if he saved Lev, he could never trust his brother around Anna again. He could never risk another white wolf attack. And he also had to shield her from Ivan’s alpha protectiveness.
He had circumnavigated the entire island several times. Today he found himself at the entrance to Vasilisa’s wild, tangled rose
garden. It looked as if it had been tended and well manicured at one time. There was evidence of a plan in the shape of its layout and rock-lined pathways, but vines hadn’t been pruned in so long that they had crept and wound into an intricately knotted, untamed display of greenery.
Even though it was the queen’s garden, there was something appealing about its wildness on an island that was mostly rolling green hills above a rock-strewed shore and rugged coast. The tangle drew him, and he jogged along one of its spiraled paths. He couldn’t avoid Anna forever. The memory of her lips followed him wherever he went. But he focused on stretching the muscles in his legs and his breathing.
Until he came to the center of Vasilisa’s rose garden and an impossible sight took his breath away. They’d told him that his brother’s wife and child had been protected from the Ether and the curse. He’d wanted to believe it, but he couldn’t bring himself to trust the evil queen who had tormented them all for so long.
In the center of thousands of rosebushes where the scent of lush blossoms weighted the air with perfume, a formation of rocks jutted from the earth, forming a natural centerpiece sculpture to the spiral path he jogged.
He stopped, spraying tiny pebbles out from under his feet.
He’d borrowed running shoes, shorts and a T-shirt from a well-supplied closet in the bedchamber he’d been given. Like the wardrobes in Bronwal, the palace had been in existence for ages and many different cultures and styles were represented in its art and textiles, in the clothing of its inhabitants and the offerings to its “guests.”
A woman lay sleeping beneath the glass of a coffin-like compartment that protruded from the rock as if it had grown like crystals from the earth’s heart. It was Madeline Romanov. He recognized Lev’s wife and the medieval clothing she wore. The babe in her arms was held to her chest as if she’d simply rocked him to sleep before falling asleep herself.
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