The standoff seemed to last for hours. Elena’s arms protested the weight of the blade. For all her fitness, the particular muscles needed to brandish a sword hadn’t been developed. Sweat dampened the waves of hair on her forehead, and her lower back screamed. Finally, because she had to, she made a decision. If he attacked, she would die before she had to admit she’d been wrong.
Elena lowered the sword. She released it with one hand and used the other to deliberately place its point on the floor beside her. The black wolf trembled in reaction to her movement. His entire body was stiff with tension, but he vibrated with energy as if one wrong move would cause him to leap. She lifted her free hand anyway. She placed it on the side of Romanov’s great wolf head.
She wasn’t sure if it was her shivering or the alpha wolf’s she felt.
“You won’t attack me. Not as long as you’re in control,” Elena said. The black wolf blinked, but he continued to shudder beneath her hands. Was that Romanov seeking to maintain control? Or was it Romanov trying to let go? Standing her ground and reaching out to the alpha wolf was the bravest thing she’d done. It was also the most dangerous. She’d seen the fatigue in Romanov’s spirit. She’d seen all of his loss and pain. She had to trust that he would continue to stand and fight even though she had seen so much evidence that he should choose the contrary.
The black wolf rumbled low in his chest. Her body jerked in response and the tip of her sword came off the ground. But it wasn’t a growl. It was vocalized pain. The great beast backed away from her touch. The rumble built and built until once again she felt it in the soles of her feet, but when the alpha wolf threw back his mighty head and released the sound in his massive chest as a ululating howl, it was that devastating call that shuddered her bones.
She had magnified Romanov’s pain.
She couldn’t undo it. She couldn’t drop the sword or retreat back down the mountain. Not without giving up her freedom and the newfound sense that her purpose was here. As a dancer, she’d had to learn to press through the pain, to push past it. Romanov had been nearly consumed by it for too long. Maybe it was time for him to face it down.
“Come back to us, Ivan Romanov,” Elena urged as the howl trailed off to nothing. The black wolf’s nose came back down and he looked at her from where he’d retreated across the room. “Come back to us and help us fight.”
Soren and Lev had howled along with the alpha. Their smaller voices had joined with him in expressing grief and frustration. Lev had leaped to his feet and Soren had allowed it, but the white wolf didn’t attack her. He followed the example of his alpha wolf.
“I want to be ready when Grigori comes,” Elena said. “I thought it was the wolf I sought, but I was wrong. It was the blade...and the man who can train me in how to use it.”
The black wolf whirled around and ran away with powerful strides. Lev yelped and followed after. Soren stopped to look at her for several seconds before he followed his wilder brother.
She was left alone.
The Romanov blade easily took her weight when she leaned against it. Her legs suddenly felt insubstantial as if all her muscle had turned to smoke beneath her skin. She’d faced down an enchanted creature who might have eaten her in several gulps. Her head had told her to run, but her heart had told her to stand her ground.
She still wasn’t certain which had been right.
She might have seen the last of the wolf and the man. They might disappear into the Ether and leave her to face Grigori alone.
* * *
As the legendary black wolf, Romanov ran through the snow. His great paws churned icy clouds into the air, and as they fell down all around him he was dusted with a fine coating of white. It glistened as the sun rose, dazzling his eyes. The airborne ice particles stung his nose and weighted his lashes.
Still, he ran.
Soren and Lev howled behind him. The hunt was on. There was a stag. Its blood pumped, warmed by the chase. It would have been natural to run the prey down. To take its life to fuel his own and that of his pack.
But something told him he’d better hold on to more of his humanity than that.
His hold was tenuous.
There was a powerful thrill in the idea of letting go to become a simple-minded animal driven by instinct. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. But this time he wanted to more than ever before. No wonder Lev had escaped into the white wolf form when his family had disappeared into the Ether. Romanov understood that decision better than he ever had.
He crested a rise and looked down at the stag as it raced desperately across a clearing between patches of evergreen below. It was difficult, but he reined in his instincts and he let the animal reach the opposite side. It paused, as if startled by the possibility it could escape the giant, hungry wolf. Its head lifted, and white billows of respiration puffed from its flared nostrils. Its sides heaved and it stomped one of its front legs. It dared to try to warn him away?
That defiance was almost his undoing. The alpha wolf tried to wrest control from the shreds of his humanity. It almost succeeded. But then the stag must have scented his hunger on the cold breeze because it startled and turned to plunge into the woods.
He let it go.
Soren and Lev caught up with him. Even Lev respected his pause on the ridge top. His brothers didn’t race around him as they once would have to nip submissively at his chin and heels. He hadn’t been the alpha around them in a very long time. They were afraid. Both crouched at a distance. Watching and waiting to see what he would do.
Back at the castle, there was someone else waiting for him to choose, as if his choice hadn’t been made the moment she’d materialized out of the snowstorm on the pass. The sword had known. For how long? How powerful was Vasilisa’s magic? Could it really have found his intended mate across so many decades and miles? Or was this another cruel aspect of the punishment she’d leveled against the Romanov family?
Loss and love. Love and loss. The cycle seemed as endless as the Cycle of the curse.
He wouldn’t accept the sword’s decision. He wouldn’t court the same devastation Lev had faced. He wouldn’t ensnare Elena in the Romanov curse. But he would reclaim his human form. He would honor her decision to wield the blade. That much he could do without risk. He could help her learn to defend herself against Grigori now that the sword had chosen.
The Gathering approached, as did the Ether.
He didn’t have much time to ensure that her stalker wouldn’t enslave Elena before he and the sapphire blade disappeared. The risk wasn’t in the blade, because he would die rather than bind her to the Romanov curse. The risk was entirely in the shift.
Because he would give in to the wolf rather than allow her to suffer for the witchblood prince’s pleasure. He would save her from the Ether and from Grigori even if it meant all else was lost.