Barbara Hancock - Legendary Beast

Her fingers flexed with the sudden desire to shave the wild growth that prevented her from fully appreciating his cheeks and jaw and chin. His beard was darker and more burnished gold than his blond hair, with no trace of the white streak that was more of a nod to the white wolf’s fur than to Lev Romanov’s age. The centuries showed more in Lev’s muscular hardness than they did in his general appearance. He looked as if he’d been born twenty-five or thirty years ago. Not in the Middle Ages.

She’d stared at herself in the mirror. Her age wasn’t apparent at all. She looked as if she’d fallen asleep at twenty and woken up the next morning. Except for the absence of light in her eyes. She was missing...something. The brown of her irises wasn’t as liquid as it should be. She needed to move forward, but the past she couldn’t remember might remain an emptiness in her for the rest of her days.

“Moving forward will help you recall. Whether or not you reclaim your memories will be your decision,” Lev said. He leaned slightly toward her, his face tilted down. Strands of thick, wavy hair fell forward, released from the binding at the nape of his neck by his movement. She clenched her fingers into fists to keep from reaching out to touch the startling white locks that sprang free.

“This sword was made for your hand. Your body will remember if you expect it to.” His eyes gleamed a brighter blue behind the white. She was relieved when he moved back to bring the sword up between them. He held it as Anna had held it, horizontally, as an offering for her to take.

“I’m not the woman I was before,” Madeline said softly. She’d seen him looking for the warrior she’d been. He searched for her now in between one blink and the next. His intense gaze burned its way deep into her soul, but he must have felt that his search came up empty because there were still no memories for her to recall. There was nothing but the weight of Trevor against her breast. “I can only remember the baby. I held him forever as I slept. I protected him in my arms for centuries. That’s the only knowledge of the past that I have.”

Now her fisted hands weren’t to keep from touching Lev’s hair. Her fists were for the witches who had kidnapped her child. She didn’t need any memories of being a warrior to know that she would fight to save the baby they’d stolen.

“Take this blade to save our child. Remember it, and it will remember you,” Lev said.

Madeline’s fingers opened, and she lifted her hands to accept the blade. Lev laid it across her outstretched hands. For a stunning moment, the sunlight shone through the trees and onto the ruby. It seemed to flicker to life. But then the leaves whispered with the wind, and shadows fell once more.

The ruby was as gray and dull as it had been before.

T ake this blade to save our child. Remember it, and it will remember you.

He’d wanted to say “Remember me.” The words had risen from his heart to his lips, but he’d stopped them just in time. He’d hardened his mouth against them. He was here to help Madeline save Trevor. He was here to find and kill Queen Vasilisa. That was all. As she’d said, the past couldn’t be reclaimed. But not for the reason she thought. She was still a warrior. She would always be a warrior. She’d been a warrior while she was sleeping, protecting their baby against her breast. Her eyes were troubled and wounded, but they still gleamed with determination and fury, even if they didn’t gleam with ruby fire.

He was the one who couldn’t reclaim what had been lost. Even as he’d reclaimed his human form, he’d known it. It wasn’t only his skin that had been scarred by the years of ceaseless wandering and torment. The white wolf’s rage continued to live beneath his skin like a never-ending howl only he could hear, and its claws had dug away his humanity too deeply for him to ever fully find it again.

His body was a sham, his desire for Madeline only an echo of what had been when he was a civilized man. When he’d released the sword into her hands, he ignored the spark caused by the phantom ghost of their previous connection.

And then he’d stepped back, prepared to be the cool and impersonal instructor she needed to help her remember the sword. Only the sword.

Him, she could and should forget.

The training session lasted only an hour, but when they were finished, Madeline’s arm was trembling and rubbery, and she was panting with exertion. Sweat had dampened her hair, even though the mountain forest was cold.

Lev didn’t pant or sweat. He had shown her every thrust and twist and parry, often with his hands over hers to demonstrate technique, but other than a wind-kissed flush on his cheeks above his golden beard, he seemed wholly unaffected.

“Our lives consisted of battle and training for battle. Your muscles will remember even if your mind doesn’t,” Lev said.

“There must have been other things. Like singing...” Madeline thought of the lullaby. Then she tried not to think of how Trevor had been conceived. “Um, dancing?”

They had walked back to the horses. This time the dun didn’t prance at all, and the white merely snorted at Lev’s approach. It was Madeline who tried to prance away when Lev reached to help her tired body onto the back of the gelding. He caught her easily, but in deference to her avoidance, he deposited her quickly into the saddle and stepped away.

Her waist still burned from the memory of his short-lived grasp—so strong and sure—even after they headed back onto the trail. Her exhaustion was as much from resisting the effects of his touch during her training session as from the exercise itself. He had taken no liberties. Each time he’d positioned her hands on the hilt or her shoulders and hips, he’d released her the moment the demonstration was finished. Yet her body still became flushed and sensitive. By the time the session was over, she ached for his touch to become more personal.

She had counted the seconds each brush of his hands had lasted.

“We sang and danced. Of course. In between our battles with the Dark Volkhvy . And all the while we didn’t realize we were kept in Vasilisa’s gilded cage. We were her most treasured champions. Until we were not,” Lev said.

“Did the Dark Volkhvy cause my long illness?” Madeline asked.

Lev pulled the large dun to a sudden stop. He turned in his saddle to face her. Madeline’s horse stopped at the dun’s hip because the trail was too narrow for him to pass.

“Is that what the witch told you?” he asked. She was suddenly on alert again after being lulled by the gelding’s steady hoof beats beneath her. Lev was deceptively quiet. She could feel a new tension in the air. She could see his stiff shoulders and his white-knuckled grip on the reins.

“She only said I’d been ill. Not how or why,” Madeline said.

“Queen Vasilisa spelled you into an enchanted sleep. One so deep and so long that it clouded your memories. Your past wasn’t stolen by an illness or the Dark Volkhvy . There is no Dark and Light. All Volkhvy are evil. Vasilisa most of all. She wasn’t your savior, Madeline. She was your tormentor. She stole you and Trevor away from Bronwal before she cursed us all,” Lev said. The howl was present in his voice again. More than ever. His words were husky rasps in the shadowed forest. The sun had entirely disappeared. The canopy was dense, but clouds must have rolled in high above them in a sky they couldn’t quite see.

Madeline’s body no longer ached from physical exertion or burgeoning sensual need. She’d gone numb from her forehead to her toes. Her fingers had gone slack on the reins, and the gelding shuffled aimlessly in its tracks with no guidance except for the dun’s broad hips ahead.