Madeline didn’t sheath her sword, but it was dead in her hand again. Its glow was gone. Lev’s howl had snuffed it out. The sword had been created to channel Ether’s energy into the warrior who fought beside the white wolf. But the connection between the wolf and the woman and the ruby had to be embraced to be complete.
She wouldn’t embrace it. She couldn’t. The connection wasn’t safe for Trevor. It wasn’t safe for her. The fear she’d woken to on Krajina wasn’t only a memory. It stared across the ravine and howled in the form of a man.
Lev dropped to his knees, his head bowed down into his hands. He grabbed fistfuls of wild blond mane in his fingers. Was he fighting the shift or begging for it to come and take him away?
Madeline tightened her grip on the sword’s hilt and raised the tip in defense. Lev still hadn’t looked her way. Her heart still pounded from the death-defying leap they’d made together. Her chest rose and fell as heavily as Lev’s, as if she’d also exerted muscle and will to cross the bridge.
Her fear hadn’t stopped her from using the connection to aid in the leap across the ravine. In those moments, she discovered the rush of accepting the sword’s Call. The ruby was hers. Ether’s energy had been channeled through the gem to enhance the white wolf’s power. Lev had barely made it to the remaining planks on the bridge midway across the ravine.
But he had made it.
The superhuman feat was more evidence that she couldn’t take the connection between them lightly. It was real. It was powerful. And she had to reject it. Lev would shift again. It was inevitable. The white wolf was a part of him. It wouldn’t stay dormant for long. She could see the wolf in his eyes, could feel it in his muscles. When he’d leaped from one disintegrating board to the next on the bridge, he’d been more wolf than man. His grace and fury had saved them, but at what cost?
Madeline waited for the ground to shake. She waited for Lev’s human form to morph into the creature that stalked her nightmares. If he attacked her, she would have to fight. But even with her remembered skill with the blade, she wasn’t sure she’d survive.
Lev’s breathing had slowed. He straightened and dropped his hands from his head. And still the shift didn’t come. He looked up at the sky and his back expanded, then relaxed as he inhaled deeply. Then he rose to his feet. Slowly, he turned toward her.
His face was a handsome tragedy of scars and resignation.
“We were connected again, you and I. I felt the ruby’s power flow through us. And then it was gone,” Lev said. He stepped away from the ravine’s edge. Madeline backed away in time with his approach. When he noted her retreat, he stopped. His hands fisted as if he was dealing with some inner frustration he couldn’t help displaying. “I join you in rejecting the connection, but experiencing it and then losing it again? I find I would rather have fallen onto the rocks.”
She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. Her lips were numb. Her body was a hollowed-out husk. When the ruby’s light had gone out, it had taken a part of her with it into the dark.
Lev closed his eyes. He stood, stiffly, obviously holding himself together while maintaining his distance from her. He seemed to accept the necessity of their separation even as he endured the discomfort of their discord.
Madeline swallowed. She, too, felt less now. Less herself. Less powerful. One third of a whole. But the hollow inside her chest didn’t help her to trust the white wolf. If he was part of their triumvirate, then she would walk alone.
Lev’s eyes suddenly opened again. His chin lifted, and his body flowed easily and quickly into movement. One second he stood stiffly, and the next he burst into a running leap that took him away from her and into the trees behind them. He disappeared and Madeline let him go without protest, even though her hollowed chest might have echoed his earlier howl.
She slumped as the tension left her body. Her sword arm fell, and the tip of the Romanov blade stabbed the ground. The sun was sinking in the sky. Its crimson glow cruelly lit up the ruby, making it wink in the dying light. She wouldn’t go on without him. They hadn’t brought any supplies with them as they’d fled, but she would set up a rough camp with whatever she could find.
She would prepare. Either Lev or the white wolf would return, of that she was certain, and she would need to brace herself for one or the other...or both.
He had been fully joined with her again. He’d felt her heartbeat. He’d tasted the mountain air in her gasp, and he’d felt the river’s moisture on her skin. Madeline didn’t understand. She didn’t remember the true nature of the connection’s power. She didn’t realize all the sensations she was experiencing weren’t merely her own.
Sweet torture, dear God, because he did.
It wasn’t his desire for her that caused him to run into the forest. It was hers for him. He was left with no doubt that she hungered for his lips and thrilled at his hardness and longed to soothe his pain.
But he’d also experienced her fear and distrust of his shift.
She feared the monstrous white wolf.
She might desire him, but her fear of the wolf overpowered and negated everything else.
Because he and the white wolf were the same.