Legendary Shifter. Barbara Hancock J.

of her breath dissipated in wisps blown away from her face, taking most of the sound with it. The snow had claimed all feeling from her legs, and the numbness climbed steadily up her hips to her waist.

      He heard her. He stopped and lowered the lantern so its light shone in her eyes and on her face, leaving his in shadow.

      “Whoever you are, I’m not the man you seek,” he said.

      The wolves had leaped down from the peaks on either side of the pass while the castle and the man had distracted her. Their large, powerful forms had eaten up the distance much sooner than ordinary canines might have done. They came to the man—one on each side—and he chided their eager prancing without taking his attention from her face. She’d been right about the wolves’ size. Both came to their master’s chest, and he was no small man.

      The wolf she’d come to find would be even larger.

      She needed larger-than-life legends to help her escape Grigori’s clutches.

      “I’m not here for a man. I’m here for the wolves,” Elena said. The wolf she needed was the alpha of the Romanov pack and he would be as black as midnight. The old legends said that only the alpha wolf could defeat the strongest of the Dark Volkhvy.

      The creatures paced toward her, but the man called them back to his side by name.

      “Lev. Soren. Heel.” Though his face was shadowed, she could see the stern set to his lips and jaw. “Then you have come for nothing,” he said to her bluntly.

      He gestured and the two wolves churned snow as they spun around to rip back toward the castle in the distance. Oddly, she felt abandoned rather than spared. Her stomach hollowed within her as if she’d fallen from a great height. The cold reached relentless icy fingers into her heart. Its thumping had slowed as if the muscle that pumped her blood was beginning to freeze.

      “You risked your life,” the man said. “For nothing.” He didn’t follow the wolves. He stepped closer. His clothes were fashioned with tooled leather and thick stitches. The wool of his cloak was thickly woven and the fur of his mantle blew this way and that in glossy chunks. There was a richness of texture to his entire appearance that made her frozen fingers twitch. Though she’d come for the alpha wolf, a being more fantasy than reality, this man looked solid and strong. Against the backdrop of ice and snow and plain gray rock, he was sudden, vigorous and very alive.

      Far from nothing.

      Only his eyes kept her from reaching out to him. They were green. A frigid pale green. Ferocious and intense. Bright against his black hair and the deepening darkness, but also intimidating.

      “I risked my life to escape from a nightmare. I’ve accomplished that. At least for now,” Elena said. His words had caused the pulse beneath her skin to fade. She was left on top of a mountain in a snowstorm with nothing to anchor her there. No certainty. No song.

      “You won’t find escape here,” the man said. But he knelt down beside her. Elena was so cold, the heat from his lantern seemed to warm her, or maybe it was the heat of his large body so close to hers.

      This was the right place. She wasn’t mistaken. Even with the physical pulse of the compulsive call to climb diminished, her instincts to trust the old legend wouldn’t fade. She was here for a reason. The book in her bag had shown her the way. Her grandmother had told the old tales as if they were true. They might have fueled her nightmares, but they might also prove to be her only hope against Grigori once the protective binding her mother had bought with her blood ran out.

      “I won’t go back,” Elena said.

      Her body was done. Frozen. If he refused to help her, she would die. But it was force of will, not bodily exhaustion, that caused her to take a stand even as she knelt in the snow.

      “Not tonight anyway,” the man said. “The storm is only getting started. I won’t leave you here to die.” She cried out when he reached to pick her up, but she quieted when his hold turned out to be surprisingly gentle for such a large man. He stood easily, trading his lantern for her body in one smooth, easy move. “But this isn’t an invitation to stay,” he continued.

      “You are a Romanov,” Elena murmured against his windswept hair. He turned to walk back through the deep snow. The ache in her knee throbbed in time with the thudding of her heart. Her weight in his arms didn’t slow him down and neither did the drifts of snow. He left the glowing lantern behind them, so every stride carried her closer and closer to the dark where his wolves had disappeared. She’d seen his face earlier. She’d recognized his features—the square jaw, the sculpted nose. She’d seen their like in the book that had brought her here, but her book’s illustrations had been fanciful compared to the actual man.

      “I am Ivan, the last Romanov,” the man replied. “You came for a refuge, but you found nothing but cursed ground.”

      * * *

      When she’d fallen to her knees, Ivan Romanov wanted to rush forward to her aid. That very human reaction had slowed his response. It wasn’t the fall that caused his heart to swell and his chest to tighten with concern. It hadn’t been the pale blue of her lips or the porcelain of her skin or her thick dark lashes crusted with a dusting of white. Her sapphire eyes, vivid against the blowing snow, and the stubborn light that intensified in them even as darkness fell, had compelled him forward. Whatever had driven her up the mountain in winter hadn’t faded with the fall or the intimidating appearance of the wolves.

      She would rise.

      She would press on.

      And if he didn’t do something to prevent it, she would die at Bronwal’s great gate. Her eyes revealed a different person than her slight form suggested. When he picked her up, she weighed nothing in his arms. He had trained for centuries, but it wasn’t until he felt her delicate, mortal burden that he had the insane idea he had trained for just this moment.

      For centuries.

      She reached to hold around his neck. In spite of the stubborn light in her eyes, her arms surprised him with their strength. Only the wisps of respiration that came too quickly from her lips betrayed her fear. She was bundled in insulated clothing of a make and design he’d never seen. It had been many years since anyone other than the Volkhvy had ventured close during the Romanov materialization. The glimpses he’d seen of the modern world as it progressed had created an incomplete picture in his mind, always changing.

      Her clothes told him little about the woman who wore them, but her determined journey through the pass should have alerted him. Her size was deceptive. Her eyes and tight hold as well as the tension in her body against him—those things revealed the woman to him.

      Her limp did not define her.

      She wouldn’t be frightened away. Not easily.

      “You can shelter here for the night out of the storm, but when it passes, you leave,” Ivan said. He’d left the gate open. Lev and Soren stood on either side to guard the entrance. He’d seen them do so thousands of times before. The momentary electricity that had claimed his limbs when he’d lifted the woman in his arms drained away. He recognized the numbness as it returned. He was beyond weary. More worn by the years of coming and going from the Ether than he’d ever been worn by battle.

      His father, Vladimir Romanov, had betrayed the Light Volkhvy queen centuries ago. He hadn’t been satisfied to be a champion. He’d wanted to rule. The queen’s punishment had been unrelenting. She’d cursed Bronwal and all the people in it to be bound to the Ether for eternity. Every ten years, the castle materialized for one month. It was taken into the Ether after the month was over, again and again. Each materialization, fewer survivors materialized. His father had been the first to succumb.

      The quickening Ivan had felt in himself when he’d rushed to the fallen woman wasn’t respite. It was torture. The years had piled on until his soul was crushed by too many losses to bear. And yet there was always one more.

      Not always.

      His enchanted blood had prolonged his life as had Vasilisa’s