Legendary Shifter. Barbara Hancock J.

or if it was an automatic response to her mention of the Russian witches who had cursed his family.

      “My father betrayed the Light Volkhvy. He wasn’t satisfied with leading a pack of champions. He wanted Vasilisa’s crown. His actions brought the curse down upon us. There are no champions left here. Only the dishonored and the walking dead. My father doomed himself and all of his people to this endless punishment. You’ve wasted your time,” he said.

      “You’re not dead yet,” Elena whispered. He was anything but dead. He shone with life. That was what captured her attention when lantern light, torchlight or firelight illuminated his face. She’d seen many dancers glow on the stage, backlit by spotlights and painted scenery. With only the gray of his cursed castle’s backdrop, Romanov glowed—with anger, frustration and restrained passion—but he was definitely alive.

      “All I ever held dear are dead. Gone. Vanished into nothing. My time will come. It must come. And soon,” Romanov said.

      His hands were fisted. This man was part of the legend she’d sought, but he was also more—more human, more fallible, more tortured than the tales had led her to believe. She’d been an innocent child fascinated by the three-dimensional paper images that had popped up from the pages of her grandmother’s book. What had she known of love and loss? Since then, she’d lost her mother and her grandmother. And, finally, she’d lost the dance. Everyone she’d ever loved and her lifelong purpose. But that didn’t mean she was ready to give up. She’d been called here for a reason. She refused to be turned away before she understood the tingling in her veins that said this was where she was meant to be.

      If he wouldn’t help her find the alpha wolf and fight Grigori, she would have to find the wolf and face the witchblood prince on her own. Romanov was a living, breathing legend, but he was finished. Fed up with the love and loss of this world and all the people in it. He wanted her gone because he wanted to die.

      She jumped up when he turned toward the door. She couldn’t be caged. It was too much like her nightmare. But instead of running for the door, she rushed to her backpack. She unzipped the top and rummaged until she pulled her precious book from its depths. Instinct drove her now as instinct had driven her to follow its stories into the mountains. Her grandmother had been a wise woman. She’d treated the legends with respect. Romanov was at the door when she turned to show him the book. He needed to be reminded of what his family had been in the fight against the Dark Volkhvy. Of what he could be still.

      “Stop,” Elena commanded. She held the book toward him and opened it as if she was the witch casting a spell. But in this cold, dark stone fortress, the book had lost its magic. It seemed small. Its colorful pages were more worn and faded than she remembered. It opened on her favorite scene. A lush forest of dozens of paper trees popped up from the page, and from between the trees three wolves ran. The white. The red. And the black. But they paled in comparison to the real wolves in the room, and they were so crumpled from use that they didn’t leap from the page as they had when she was a child.

      Romanov looked from the book as the trees fluttered in her trembling hands up to her face.

      “This is what brought you here?” he asked. The whole hollow castle seemed to still around them. His soft, pained voice echoed down the quiet stairs.

      “My grandmother’s stories brought me here. She told them while we looked at this book,” Elena explained. The book itself wasn’t as impressive as her grandmother had been. In the same room as the last Romanov and his wolves, it wasn’t impressive at all.

      But she couldn’t explain the pulse beneath her skin that had drawn her to his castle as if it were magnetized and she was raw ore dug up from the earth by an unseen hand.

      He turned away again, from her and the legend, and Elena closed the book and dropped it onto her chair. She wouldn’t be locked in the tower. She would fight if she had to. The wolves led the way. They disappeared down the stairs in front of their master. Romanov’s large body blocked the door. He turned back to face her when he crossed the threshold. He slowly reached for the door to swing it closed.

      “No. Wait,” Elena said. She rushed forward, but he shut the door too forcefully for her to prevent its closing. The lock clanked home as her hands gripped the iron vines. She pressed her face to the space between the bars. Romanov stood inches away from her, separated by the thick oak of the bottom of the door and the scrolling iron at the top, but also by centuries of experience that had left him jaded and untouchable.

      Roses. She saw them closely now. Dozens of iron roses “grew” along the vine-shaped bars. The door was an ancient artisan’s masterpiece and a horror at the same time. She was trapped. The only thing that kept the scream from rising up from her gut was the absence of bloody feathers. As long as she was still herself, she could fight.

      “You can’t keep me in here,” Elena protested.

      Romanov leaned down. The firelight illuminated his face once more. He leaned so close that his raven hair brushed her cheek through the bars. He was older than she could imagine, even though he looked barely older than she was. He was more savage than anyone she’d ever encountered with his leather and furs and several white jagged lines from battle scars on his face, but he was also fiercely handsome. His rough, masculine beauty caused her to gasp at the sudden intimacy of his closeness. The door was between them but it felt like nothing at all.

      She’d come looking for a legend, but he was real. She breathed in the scent of wind and snow held in his hair. And then she held her breath to keep from appreciating the wild bouquet. Of its own volition, her gaze cataloged every scar, every dark eyelash that lushly rimmed his eyes and the oddly vulnerable swell of his sensual lips. His eyes were hooded and hard, but the tenseness in his jaw eased when he noticed her catch her breath and hold it. He must have seen her sudden surprise at the physical attraction she felt for him in spite of her desperation. His gaze tracked over her face. She held her body still. She bit a lip that suddenly tingled because his were so kissable and so close. His attention dropped to her lips and then to her tight-knuckled grip on the bars. When he spoke, his voice was quiet.

      “I’m not locking you in the tower, Elena Pavlova,” he said softly. His voice still vibrated against her even though they weren’t touching. It was deep, low and raw with some restrained emotion she couldn’t name. He looked back up, into her eyes. His gaze held her for long moments so that when he lifted an iron key scrolled with tiny vines and roses that matched the bars, she released her breath in surprise. The key dangled from a delicate silver chain and it bumped her hand again and again through the bars while he waited for her to move. She released the bar to open her hand for the key. Her fingers were shaking. Rather than dropping the chain, he lowered it slowly down into her palm to pile on top of the cool key in a slow, lazy coil of precious metal. For several seconds, his large hand rested over hers. His touch was light and warm. He stilled her trembling. She’d thought she knew his story, but his tale was still unfolding right before her eyes. She’d become a part of it, and it was a tale rife with danger.

      She’d responded to the call. She’d come to the mountains for a legend and his wolves.

      She’d found a man.

      “The tower is for your protection. You hold the key while you’re here. Don’t be fooled by your pretty book. This isn’t a fairy-tale castle. Bronwal is cursed. Those who come and go from the Ether are forever changed and even while we’re in this world the Ether isn’t fully dispelled. Whatever you do, don’t consider this a refuge. The Volkhvy, both Dark and Light, aren’t to be trusted and neither am I. The Romanov curse is real...and deserved. Don’t forget that while you’re here,” Romanov said. He was warning her away. He wanted her to keep her distance. But he uttered the warning only after he’d leaned down until their lips were even closer together—nearly touching—between the iron bars. The door was nothing. It didn’t seem to exist at all. She looked up into his eyes and rather than repel, they caught and held her more thoroughly than any cage.

      Perhaps it wasn’t the castle that was the magnet.

      She’d been wrong. He was worn, not jaded. And he was touchable. Very touchable. It took all her self-control not to touch