Chapter 1

      The thick evergreen wood was nearly impenetrable save for the hollowed-out paths that wound through the snarled low-hanging branches and twisted tree trunks. Wild animals had made the paths—the deer headed for clearings where grass and water could be found, and the predators, who naturally followed in the deer’s footsteps, hungry for hot blood.

      Anna was neither predator nor prey, although she was on the hunt.

      It was dawn and a cool, damp mist rose around her and the gnarled spruce trunks as the sunrise heated the mountain air. The white fog curling down the same pathways she tried to traverse contributed to the forest’s shadows. It would disperse eventually. It was autumn and the temperature would rise high enough to dry the air, even in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, where the chill of winter settled in earlier than elsewhere.

      But it wasn’t warm yet.

      Her breath, quickened by the uncertainty of low visibility, came from her parted lips in visible puffs. The hood of her scarlet cloak protected her hair from the damp, but the cool misty air still managed to brush her face and encroach with fingerlike tendrils on her neck and chest. Her hands were encased in long black leather gloves. They kept her fingers warm...although that was merely a side benefit.

      She might be forced to take them off.

      She dreaded taking them off here, of all places, but she would if she had to.

      There were wolves in these woods. Natural ones that posed a certain amount of danger and the deadly unnatural ones she sought. Those were the ones that made her dread taking off her gloves while possibly making their removal necessary all at the same time.

      She clenched her hands into fists at the thought of using her newfound Volkhvy abilities at all, but against one legendary wolf in particular.

      The forest was silent around her.

      No birds called. No breeze stirred the evergreen needles. Only the silent mist swirled and eddied as if it was caught in the maze created by massive trees and winding pathways. Anna felt trapped, too, but it was a familiar feeling. One she was well used to accepting and persisting through. She’d been trapped in a cursed castle for centuries. This ancient wood was nothing in comparison.

      Or, at least, it would be nothing in comparison, if she weren’t here to find Soren Romanov.

      Her connection to the Romanov wolves—and the red Romanov wolf in particular—was a decidedly tortuous entrapment. She’d wanted to avoid Soren for the rest of her life after they’d discovered that her mother was the Light Volkhvy queen, Vasilisa, who had cursed the Romanovs for centuries.

      The Volkhvy were a race of witches that drew their power from the Ether, an invisible plane that surrounded the earth with energy. But the Ether was like a black hole. Its vacuum expelled energy and, at the same time, it took. Light witches managed this hunger carefully, most of the time. Dark witches...didn’t. And sometimes even a Light Volkhvy could be consumed by the Ether’s Darkness.

      Her mother was a powerful witch who had made Dark decisions and her actions had cost Anna and the Romanovs tremendous pain and sacrifice. Elena Pavlova and Ivan Romanov’s love had defied the Light Volkhvy queen’s rage. They had broken Vasilisa’s curse six months ago.

      But all was not forgiven.

      Soren’s rejection of Anna following the revelation of her blood when the curse was broken would haunt her forever—and witches, like legendary wolves, lived a very long time.

      She had embraced her new name and accepted her position as the Light Volkhvy princess because this was her life now. There was no place for her with the Romanovs.

      If she could stay far away from the red wolf who had once been her most loyal companion, she might be able to recover. She might be able to come to grips with the power in her blood and maybe even learn to control it. She might forget Soren...eventually.

      But the emerald sword had other ideas.

      Even now, with her chest rising and falling too quickly in almost-panicked respiration, the sword’s Call couldn’t be ignored.

      Her mother had created the legendary Romanov shifters as champions of the Light Volkhvy. With her magic, she had crafted three enchanted swords for the warrior women who would eventually become the enchanted shifters’ wives. The sapphire sword had Called Soren’s brother’s mate from across impossible time and distance to fight by his side. Elena was a human, but she had risked her life to find Bronwal and the legendary black wolf so he could help her defeat an evil witchblood prince who stalked her. She and Ivan had then worked together to break Vasilisa’s curse.

      It was cruel irony that the red wolf’s sword would decide to Call the one woman who would prefer to stay as far away from the Romanovs as possible.

      Her.

      They had been her friends and companions. The red wolf had helped her survive a curse that had trapped her at Bronwal. The curse had threatened her life and her sanity for hundreds of years. Waiting to see Soren Romanov’s human face again had helped her endure.

      Only to have him turn away from her in his wolf form and desert her once the curse was broken—because as the curse broke, it was revealed that Vasilisa was her mother.

      Anna