Legendary Shifter. Barbara Hancock J.
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nothing. Elena slowly shrugged out of her backpack as her host ignored her, and Patrice took it from her only to drop it on the floor as if she wasn’t aware she had taken it. The chubby woman had crinkles around her eyes and merry red cheeks, but her silence negated who she’d once been. Her features seemed to indicate that she’d once been a jolly soul, but she wasn’t fully with them. Her eyes were distant and her movements were automatic. It wasn’t only that she didn’t speak. She didn’t seem to hear them well. The backpack landed near the russet wolf and the giant creature nosed it and then ignored it as if it had proved of no interest.
“You’re here after all this time,” Elena said. She’d come looking for champions. She’d hoped to find enchanted wolves and their masters. She’d never imagined she’d find the original Romanovs themselves. “You’re the oldest son of Vladmir Romanov. One of Queen Vasilisa’s champions. Fully awake and aware.” The heat from the fire began to warm her again. Her shivering had stopped. Her teeth didn’t chatter. Romanov filled the room with his restrained energy. He’d let her go, but she could still feel his hold. He was powerful, but his power wasn’t merely physical. There was no way he had faded from what he had once been. Why did he want her to think otherwise?
“In time I’ll fade away too,” he said. “In one month, Bronwal will go back to the Ether. Maybe this time I’ll stay there, vanished, like the rest of my family.” He shrugged, but the light gesture didn’t match the shadows that haunted his eyes. He’s not sure what each materialization will bring. Who will remain and who will be gone forever. Elena’s body was beginning to adjust to the heat from the fire, but Romanov’s circumstances left her heart permanently chilled. It must have been torture through the decades to lose his loved ones, one by one.
He sat in the opposite chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him in a deceptively relaxed position. The white wolf, Lev, had found them. He came into the room reluctantly and slumped at his master’s feet as if he had grown unused to such comforts. The russet wolf, Soren, stretched out on the other side. Without saying goodbye, Patrice left the room. Would she wander the halls aimlessly until the castle went back into the Ether? Would she even exist during the next Cycle or would she be lost to nothingness, never to be seen again? Elena had come looking for help against Grigori, but she had found more darkness here than she’d expected.
“I need the alpha wolf. My grandmother said he was the Light Volkhvy’s greatest champion. Are you his master? Will you help me find him?” Elena asked. It made her nervous to see her bag so close to the subjects of the book inside of it. It might seem childish to Romanov even though it had served as a lifeline to her. But her knee throbbed and that was the more pressing problem. She stood and leaned to unbuckle her boots. She carefully took them off without jarring her knee. Then she reached to unzip her ski suit and pull it down. Beneath its down-filled pale blue polyester, she wore simple white silk thermals. Gooseflesh rose on her skin at the sudden rush of air against the thin material. Finally, with some painful maneuvering, the damp suit was peeled away. She draped it over the back of her chair and she sat again, free to massage her troublesome knee. There was a scar where the first surgery had extended her use of the knee. Without that repair, her walk through the snow would have been impossible, not merely excruciating.
It wasn’t until her pain eased that she noticed the tension in the air. Elena stilled. The fire had caught and it blazed brightly, bathing her in a flickering spotlight. She understood her mistake even before she lifted her eyes. Romanov wasn’t a modern man and she had basically stripped in front of him. She was a ballerina. Her body was an instrument, a tool. Her every movement was a deliberate placement of everything from her spine to her toes, but she was completely disconnected from the sensuality of her lithe limbs. The theater had no patience for modesty. They hurried to change from one costume to another in hallways amid a rush of similar nude forms.
But this man wasn’t a dancer. He didn’t even belong to this century at all. He’d been born in the Middle Ages. Her book was very old and it told a tale much older than its pages.
She’d always thought of the Romanovs as legends. Larger than life and not quite human. But this Romanov was a man. One she didn’t know, from a time she couldn’t understand. And he was a man tortured by a cruel curse. When she did look up and her gaze collided with his, he looked stunned, as if shedding her wet clothes in front of him was more shocking than his cursed castle, monstrous wolves and disappearing people. He also looked even more real. The leaping flames reflected in his eyes seemed to reveal the emotion he’d tried to hide before. His glance dropped to sweep her body. There was color in his cheeks and his lips had softened. Her stripping might have surprised him, but he was appreciative of what she had revealed. His lingering perusal made her cheeks heat. The flush was a tingling pleasure in the cool room.
In time, he might fade as he predicted, but he was fully here now and she must seem nearly naked to his old-fashioned standards. He didn’t look away, but he did raise the direction of his gaze from her breasts to her eyes.
“You won’t find help here. Loss. Despair. Resignation. Those you will find. But not help,” Romanov said. His hands had grasped the arms of his chair with a white-knuckled grip and his voice was strained. His accent was exotic to her ears. His vowels and consonants were slowly uttered with deeper inflections as out of place and uninfluenced by current civilization as his leather and furs. He must have had contact with the outside world each time he materialized. She could understand him, but it was as if he was a time traveler speaking a language that wasn’t his native tongue. It was a visceral experience to have to listen to him so carefully and watch his eyes and his lips move as he spoke. She had to attune her entire body to him in order to communicate.
Elena trembled again, but not from the cold. She didn’t see resignation in Romanov’s eyes. The waves of black hair around his face were highlighted by a halo of firelight. From that glowing frame, his green eyes shone with repressed passion...and anger. Beneath his dramatic brows and offset by pale skin, the emotion in his irises caused her heartbeat to kick in her chest and her breath to quicken.
He didn’t want her here.
In her nightmares, she had wings, but they were always clipped. She was flightless. Caged. Kept at the whim of Grigori for reasons that caused her to beat against the bars of her cage until her white-feathered breast was stained with blood. She’d danced Odette many times—the swan tormented by a sorcerer. Her performances were as prophetic as her dreams. Grigori had seen her dance as a young girl. He’d vowed to have her. Her mother had used every last drop of her blood to bind him away from her daughter.
She’d never known why her mother had killed herself. Only a few months ago, Grigori had revealed the truth. Her mother had traded her life for her daughter’s and it had only bought Elena’s safety for a limited time.
“I’ve had my share of despair and loss,” Elena said. “Resignation? Never.”
She wouldn’t be frightened by his anger. Or not cowed by it anyway. She had done nothing but search for a way to survive. She was going nowhere until she found it.
Suddenly, over Romanov’s shoulder, she saw bars on the door to the tower room. They were artistically twisted in patterns of vines and flowers, but they were iron bars nonetheless. Romanov had drawn his legs back and he’d straightened. His wolves had also straightened to sit at attention by his side.
Three sets of eyes stared her down.
She had nowhere else to go, but that didn’t matter. Not if she was trapped in a tower of a cursed castle and kept from finding the alpha wolf she sought.
I am the last Romanov.
He hadn’t said it in a tone of resignation. He’d said it like his soul stood rooted in its last stand for eternity if need be. Had she disturbed his lonely vigil? Was that why he was looking at her with anger in his eyes?
This man ruled here. There were no councils or committees. He was a king and she was a trespasser. For some reason, he had decided to stand between her and the alpha wolf she needed to find.
“The Romanovs were given great power by the Light Volkhvy to fight against the dark. You were given powerful enchanted wolves to fight by your