Legendary Shifter

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue (#ue243427a-3fef-5d70-9f6e-5b1affd3a2df)

All he could do was watch and wait.

He found pleasure in it, surprisingly enough. Anticipation made the torment sweet. Elena Pavlova’s mother had slit her wrists to protect her daughter ten years ago. Her sacrifice hadn’t kept him from visiting her daughter’s nightmares with delicious visions of the future they’d have together. He couldn’t physically have Elena, yet. Her mother’s blood had bought her a reprieve. But the protective power of the spilled blood was running out.

As a witchblood prince of the Dark Volkhvy, Grigori was used to getting what he wanted. He was part of the royal family in a culture that condoned Darkness. He stood just inside the open window of Elena’s bedroom and watched her toss and turn in her sleep. The soft sounds of her fretful sighs were mere whispers compared to the noises she would be making in the nightmare that disturbed her sleep. Because he was in control there, unbound by her mother’s rough folk magic.

What a shocking surprise that had been.

The voluminous curtains on the window billowed outward to brush against him, stirred by a midnight Saint Petersburg breeze. He’d seen the girl dance. He’d decided to have her. But her mother had been raised to believe in the old ways. She’d died so her daughter could live.

Or so she’d thought.

The curtains continued to flutter around him like white wings on either side of his tuxedo-clad body. When he was finished here, he would make other clandestine appearances throughout the city. He was a royal among Dark Volkhvy circles and the Dark Volkhvy ruled from the shadows. Their power was rising, bubbling to the top of a world rent by betrayal and hunger.

The mother’s blood had run out before he was bound forever. At best, she’d bought her daughter time. Time to be stalked. Time to be hunted, night after night in her dreams. Elena had been a lovely swan as a teen. She’d only grown more graceful and more alluring as she’d aged into a prima ballerina. His anticipation had grown with every passing year. Every time she donned the pristine white feathers and pirouetted across the stage.

Then an injury had interfered with her dancing, and her vulnerability had inflamed his desire to even greater heights. He had fought against the binding. He’d done everything to try to break it, to no avail. She still had a grandmother who lived and watched over her with all the old folk magic most modern-day Russians had forgotten. He could only send more violent and vivid visions to Elena each night, fueled by his frustrated passions.

Finally, her grandmother had died and he’d sensed the power of Elena’s mother’s blood fading. She’d sacrificed every last drop to fuel a protective barrier spell around her daughter, but it wouldn’t last. She might have known some of the old ways, but she was no Volkhvy. Lately, he’d been able to approach Elena and speak to her. He’d added to the torment of the visions he sent to her nightmares by telling her that they were true.

She would be his.

When the protective spell her mother’s blood had created ran out.

Grigori watched his delicate swan whimper in her sleep. He couldn’t even approach her bed to get a closer look at the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the flush on her porcelain cheeks, the heat rising off her sweat-dampened skin.

Love was abhorrent to him. The residual love of her grandmother was infused into every object in this house and, combined with her mother’s sacrifice, continued to hold him at bay...for now.

Power was everything to one of his kind. Once a witch turned to darkness, the taint was passed down through the generations—growing stronger with every birth. And his family was the oldest and darkest of all the Dark Volkhvy. He gloried in subjugating innocence. His conquest of Elena would be more satisfying because it hadn’t been instant. Her fear and his anticipation fed the dark taint in his blood, making it—and him—stronger.

The breeze from the window must have soothed her. She quieted as he watched, and he knew it was time for him to leave.

But soon. Very soon. He would be free to make her nightmares come true.

Chapter 1 (#ue243427a-3fef-5d70-9f6e-5b1affd3a2df)

Wind blew stinging clouds of icy dust from the jagged gray rocks on the side of the mountain. The snow was so white the exposed rock glistened darkly against it in the fading light of the sinking sun. Every surface was coated with a fine sheen of ice. Elena Pavlova had only been outside the full cab all-terrain vehicle that had brought her this far for a half an hour, but in spite of the preparations she’d made—her ski suit, insulated boots, gloves and scarf—the protective clothing didn’t prevent her face from feeling as cold and hard as the frozen rocks.

Mountain tours never came this far in winter, but it had been imperative that she get as far as possible before she sent prying eyes away. She’d insisted that the driver leave her, but only a substantial bribe had finally persuaded the man, who obviously thought she was on a suicide mission.

And maybe she was.

Night was falling in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania and she would never survive the elements if she didn’t find the shelter she sought. Refuge. Redoubt. Haven. Her eyes teared against the biting wind and the moisture froze on her eyelashes until her lids were heavy and her vision obscured.

She’d heard the tales since she was a child. She’d listened, rapt, as her grandmother had read from the worn but beautiful book Elena currently carried in a small pack on her back. Her childhood had been two things: dancing and the Slavic legend of the Romanov wolves. Bloody toes and even bloodier stories of the fight against evil.

Hundreds of years ago, the Light Volkhvy had chosen a younger son of royal blood to stand against their dark brethren. They’d spirited Vladimir Romanov away to become their champion. He’d been given enchanted wolves and a castle enclave deep in the Carpathian Mountains. In return, he’d been bound to an endless fight. Grim fairy tales to read to a child, but, looking back, Elena realized her grandmother had been preparing her to fight the darkness herself. The old ways were wise ways, but knowing them wasn’t only a defense. Playing at the edges of Volkhvy power by telling the tales and practicing the small hearth magics with charms for luck and wellness ran the risk of attracting the attention of true witches. Ones from the dark as well as the light.

Too much dabbling could lure an ordinary person into a Volkhvy world they weren’t prepared to face. Perhaps her family remembered the Old ways too well.

Elena was living proof. She was stalked by a witchblood prince and her fascination with the legend had turned into a call she couldn’t ignore. She’d been pulled across thousands of miles from Saint Petersburg to Cerna, and the call only became stronger the closer she came to the mountains.

It was almost physical now. In spite of the cold, she was aware of a strange pulse beneath her skin that compelled her onward. Her choice had seemed so clear—heed the call or stay within Grigori’s grasp.

By the time she came to the pass, her lungs hurt with every frigid breath and her weak knee was on fire. She wouldn’t have made it this far over the ice and rugged terrain if she hadn’t spent years pushing past physical pain to achieve the optimum performance from her muscle, sinew, heart and will. Prima ballerinas weren’t born. Or made. They were forged in the fire that was the Saint Petersburg Ballet Academy.

Elena paused. She wiped her eyes with gloved fingers, but they weren’t so hindered by icicles that they missed the castle she’d come to find. She couldn’t see it because it wasn’t there.

She’d chased help that only existed in a book of legends. No more. No less. She’d followed landmarks in the illustrations and carefully tried to sleuth her way to the right place. But her beautiful book crafted of intricate, hand-painted and cut designs that leaped from the page in three-dimensional depictions of a castle, the Romanovs and their enchanted wolves was nothing more than a storybook.

Her grandmother had blamed Elena’s nightmares on the book, but ten years of bad dreams hadn’t prepared her for the true horror of the witchblood prince who stalked her. She’d been haunted by the loss of her mother, only to learn her death had been a heroic sacrifice and not a suicide. Her mother had spilled her own blood to protect her daughter from a Dark Volkhvy prince. Her blood had fueled earthy folk magic. Nothing compared to the power it faced down and held back, but her mother’s fierce love had strengthened it.

He had stood out from the other patrons even before he spoke—tall, lean and beautiful to the point of being unnaturally perfect as if he was a mannequin, not a man. Not a hair of his glistening gelled hair had been out of place. There hadn’t been so much as a speck of lint on his tailored tuxedo. He’d moved like oil into her path with a flow to his gestures that was less grace and more fakery. His appearance was a charade. One meant to obfuscate his true nature. Yet one that revealed all, if you looked closely enough.

The sun was almost gone. Suddenly the white glare of ice and snow turned russet as it reflected the orange glow of the sky. Elena had nowhere else to go. The guide in his all-terrain vehicle was gone. He had taken his money and followed her orders: Don’t wait for me. I won’t be coming back. The dire economics of the region precluded any squeamishness over what she might do once he drove away.

It was true. She would freeze to death rather than go back and give in to Grigori’s demands even though she hadn’t found the help she’d hoped to find.

You’ll be utterly mine. Your mother only ensured I would require even greater satisfaction from our time together because of the delay.

A sudden sound dispelled the ice in her veins. A long, echoing howl—both mournful and triumphant—filled the air and conquered the wind as the king of sound on the mountain. Adrenaline rushed lifesaving vigor to her limbs. Her heart pounded. Her breath poured from her lips in vaporous puffs of fear and hope. The call that had brought her all the way from Saint Petersburg seemed to respond to the howl. It rose in her throat as if she should cry out a reply.

But her head was more rational than her heart.

Freeze or fangs?

Probably both, yet the possibility that the legend was true sent her scrambling farther along the pass in spite of her terror and the pain in her leg. The Romanovs controlled powerful wolves that were trained to fight the Dark Volkhvy witches. The alpha wolf was her last, best chance to defeat the witchblood prince. Another howl swelled up and out from the unseen chest that gave it birth. Paired with the decreasing light, the howl seemed to raise hungry shadows to consume the world. She hadn’t brought a flashlight. Or a tent. She didn’t own a weapon of any kind. Weapons were useless against the witchblood prince, and mortal shelter would only protect her from the elements long enough for him to find and claim her.

Perhaps she’d been seeking death after all. If the call that had drawn her here was a lie, death would be preferable to a life spent as Grigori’s captive.

Even sleep hadn’t given her peace in years. Every night she suffered horrible nightmares in which she was caught by Grigori and unable to escape. She’d thought they were only nightmares. Now that she’d seen her tormenter in real life, certainty had settled into her bones. Death wasn’t the worst fate she could suffer. As his stalking had escalated, so had her resolve to escape.