Barbara Hancock - Legendary Wolf

The girl he’d loved...

...has become a woman he despises

Once upon a time, Anna was an orphan girl, her only friend a shifter. Then the red wolf Soren Romanov learned that the girl he loved was the daughter of his family’s greatest foe… Now grown and beginning to master her own power, Anna knows that only Soren can help her stop a great evil. Can he learn to trust the woman—and the witch—she’s become?

BARBARA J. HANCOCKlives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where her daily walk takes her to the edge of the wilderness and back again. When Barbara isn’t writing modern gothic romance that embraces the shadows with a unique blend of heat and heart, she can be found wrangling twin boys and spoiling her pets.

Also by Barbara J. Hancock

Brimstone Seduction

Brimstone Bride

Brimstone Prince

Legendary Shifter

Darkening Around Me

Silent Is the House

The Girl in Blue

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Legendary Wolf

Barbara J. Hancock

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08215-0

LEGENDARY WOLF

© 2018 Barbara J. Hancock

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the believers.

And for those that want to believe.

Hang on—you’ve got this.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Extract

About the Publisher

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.