Legendary Beast. Barbara Hancock J.
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Название: Legendary Beast
Автор: Barbara Hancock J.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
isbn: 9781474082167
isbn:
Yet somewhere out in the forest, Lev ran alone on two legs instead of four, and even though they were no longer connected, Madeline couldn’t put him from her mind as she lay by the fire. Invisible strings seemed to run from her consciousness out into the night as if they connected her to him, seeking to knit them together.
Madeline turned toward the fire. The ruby sword was within reach. The dancing flames illuminated the dull gray gem, seemingly bringing it to life. She couldn’t reclaim the connection she’d once had with Lev Romanov. Not when she knew the beast that hid beneath his skin. She’d seen his wicked maw. She’d seen the blaze of fury in his eyes. The control he’d displayed today was a lie.
Madeline opened the backpack that sat beside the sword. She took out her sketchbook and flipped through its familiar pages. The firelight illuminated the ferocity and anger of the white wolf. His savagery. His menace.
Much better for Trevor that she focus on this truth: Lev Romanov couldn’t be trusted. He was a monster waiting to happen. Her son had been through enough. Once he was back in her arms, she would protect him from all harm, including the threat posed by his own father.
The sword was waiting. It didn’t have to glow with ruby light to be a weapon. Madeline reached for its hilt and stood up. This time, her fingers settled into the slight grooves of use that were invisible to the naked eye. Something in her knew where each digit should rest, where they had rested long ago.
Illuminated by simple firelight in the absence of Volkhvy power, Madeline went through the practice motions Lev had shown her. The ruby didn’t glow. There was no connection between her and the blade and the white Romanov wolf. But there was muscle memory, just as Lev had said there would be. The moves came more smoothly with each repetition. Her body knew which way to bend and flow, so she allowed it to take control.
The night was long, but it was also familiar. Although he didn’t have fur to warm him or giant paws to eat up the ground over which he traversed, running through the Carpathian woods had been his life for so long that it was anything but a hardship now. Within minutes, he had found his rhythm with two feet instead of four paws. He loped more easily than any other man could through the game trails that ran through the trees in a nearly invisible network of lines.
After a time, he found the pack, far enough away from Madeline and the horses to soothe his mind. He settled in to watch them from an upwind vantage point high in a tree he had easily scaled with his strong arms and legs. With his back braced against the trunk, he counted the wolves as they milled around. If their aimless wandering hadn’t clued him in to an abnormality, their numbers would have. He’d been right. The pack was large. Too large. And as he watched, more wolves came from all directions to join the others already amassing beneath him.
He and Madeline wouldn’t make it to Straluci without a fight.
But Madeline had also been right.
He would be prepared for the challenge, shifted or not. The white wolf inside him raised its head and howled with a ferocity unmatched by the natural wolves below him.
Madeline slept fitfully, always waking in time to refuel the fire when it died down. It was nearly morning when she woke to discover that Lev had stoked the fire. He was wrapped in another sleeping roll that had come from a pack on the dun horse’s back. He faced away from her toward the trees on the other side of the fire. The dancing flames painted his broad back with shadows and light.
He wasn’t asleep.
She watched his breathing rise and fall, and somehow she knew he had sensed her waking. Neither of them spoke. The silence stretched, straining the strings she imagined between them, but just as she thought she would ask him about the wolves, another howl sounded. It was as far away as the last one she’d heard.
“I couldn’t find the Volkhvy that are influencing them, but they aren’t acting alone,” Lev said. He didn’t roll toward her. His back looked stiff.
“Will they try to prevent us from reaching Straluci?” Madeline asked. Her hand had gone for the hilt of her sword. The move was instinctive, driven by memories she couldn’t recall.
“They won’t succeed,” Lev replied.
It was the answer she expected because it was the one she felt deep in her bones. She would save her son, come witches or wolves. The only other option was death.
He didn’t sleep. He waited. Finally, when the night mist began to rise toward a hint of pink sky, he rose from his bedding. Madeline had been restless throughout the night, but she’d fallen into an exhausted slumber less than an hour ago. He’d sensed when she no longer watched his back. He knew when her eyes closed.
Before he left their campsite to check on the wolves again, he made sure the fire still had enough fuel to burn until the sun fully came up. Then he stepped lightly to his companion’s side. She murmured indistinctly in her sleep. He couldn’t be certain if her sounds were ones of protest or appeal. The firelight danced on her pale cheeks. The ruby sword was forgotten beside her.
But it was the position of her hands that stabbed him with invisible blades, cleaving his heart in two.
Her arms were crooked over her chest, and her hands were cupped as if her palms supported a baby’s head and bottom. Trevor was in danger somewhere out in the world. Only Vasilisa and the marked witches knew where, but Madeline still tried to hold him safely to her breast.
Madeline murmured again and her fingers twitched as if her body knew something was wrong, even if her sleeping mind did not. It would be doubly cruel to wake to empty arms if her dreams were filled with lullabies and the powder scent of Trevor’s sweet curls.
Lev’s chest constricted. He knew that cruelty from personal experience. He fisted his hands at his sides and kept his spine straight and tall. She wouldn’t welcome him leaning over and smoothing the waves of her fiery hair back from her forehead. She wouldn’t want him bending down and holding her empty hands.
He had failed to protect his wife and child for centuries. He couldn’t undo the harm that had been done to them. He could only try to protect them now. The pack of wolves he’d seen would be tired this morning. With the sunrise, they would probably collapse from their frenzy of the night before.
He still couldn’t shift, but he was far from an ordinary man. He would go to the alpha wolf and try to overcome the unnatural influence he suspected the wolf was under. He would try to disband the pack and send them on their way before the Volkhvy could use them to try to stop Madeline from reaching their child.
It was a risky move. The alpha had the power of the pack behind him, and somewhere, the Dark power drawn from the Ether by the marked Volkhvy was also at work. Lev could almost scent the smell of Darkness caught and held in the ozone of the morning mist.
He turned away from Madeline’s prone form and headed into the forest. He couldn’t shift, but he had decided he would still try to challenge the alpha wolf with the ferocity of the white Romanov wolf that lived in his heart.
Aleksandr worried the raised skin of the brand on his forehead. His fingers had long since grown used to the roughened shape of the bellflower that Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess, had СКАЧАТЬ