He didn’t need a suit to be striking. He was breathtaking in a homespun tunic, open at the neck, and leather leggings. Mainly because the clothing rode his muscular legs, arms and chest without covering up his masculine power.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m a man, not a wolf.
A woman would have to be dead not to notice, and Anna’s breathless reaction proved that, in spite of everything, she was very much alive.
He stalked into the room, and Elena gasped. Maybe because she still wasn’t used to seeing him in his human form. Maybe because he looked as if he should be out hunting for dinner rather than preparing to sit down and eat at a table with them.
Anna glanced at her friend and saw the queen’s eyes widen and her cheeks flush. She saw Elena reach for her husband’s arm and squeeze as if she was making an unspoken request.
“The witch is our dinner guest, brother,” Ivan said. His voice was calm, and Anna’s heartbeat sped up because she recognized it as similar to the voice Soren had used to try to reach Lev in the forest. Was Soren so wild that the king felt it his responsibility to soothe him?
The tingling in her fingers increased to an almost-painful gathering of electricity. Her breath caught. Every hair on her body stood to attention. Only Soren noticed. Elena and Ivan were completely focused on him. But he was looking at Anna. He stopped several feet away. His eyes met hers. She felt her eyes widen, and she fisted her hands. His gaze left hers to sweep from her head to her feet and then back again.
He stayed frozen except for the working of his throat as he swallowed.
“Shall we eat?” Elena said into the sudden stillness.
The electricity in Anna’s fingers faded as Soren held himself back. She wasn’t under attack. He wasn’t going to pounce. Not to harm her...or for any other possibility that suggested itself in the echoes of tingles that flowed along her veins for reasons other than magic.
And suddenly, as their gazes met again, his amber to her green, she realized he wasn’t going to throw her to the alpha wolf, either. He didn’t mention the emerald sword or its Call.
Her secret was safe for now.
* * *
He had charged into Elena’s parlor with concern for Lev fueling his every stride. He’d seen no sign of the white wolf, although he’d searched all day. Then he’d come back to Bronwal for the first time in months, only to be confronted by its obvious signs of healing. People bustled. People laughed. There was hot running water in a dressing room that had been converted to a bath off his bedchamber.
He eschewed it all.
Every guffaw. Every clean, sparkling corner. Every damned piece of perfect clothing tailored with modern cloth.
Lev was lost while Bronwal and everyone in it recovered.
And Bell was lost, as well. Long gone somewhere he could never follow.
Ivan had come to his room while he threw off the torn and soiled rags he’d worn for weeks in the forest. While he’d bathed and changed into his usual homespun shirt and leather pants, he’d told his brother about Anna’s use of magic and Lev’s disappearance.
He hadn’t mentioned the sword.
He hadn’t known why until he saw the petite witch standing beside the alpha wolf with panicked eyes and fisted hands.
And then he’d looked at Anna, daughter of Vasilisa, the Light Volkhvy queen—really looked from her beautiful chestnut curls to her figure-hugging silk gown—and his ability to reason had flown out the nearest window.
He didn’t know why she was frightened.
Maybe anyone in their right mind would fear the alpha wolf, the Romanov king, the once and present champion of the Light Volkhvy. Ivan was the largest wolf. The black alpha. The last one left standing on two legs when he and Lev had failed. Did it really matter that Soren’s failure had been on purpose to take care of his brother, the white wolf? That by sacrificing his human form, he’d given up the only years of living by Bell’s side as a man he might have had?
Ivan Romanov would be even angrier over the emerald sword than he was himself. Ivan’s truce with Vasilisa was uneasy at best. Nearly hostile at its worst. He needed her help as Bronwal recovered from the damage she had caused with her curse, but Ivan didn’t fully trust the queen. He probably never would.
Or was Anna afraid of the power she might unleash if Ivan Romanov shifted to protect them all from her claim on one of the Romanov blades?
Soren chose not to find out.
He swallowed his wolf. He controlled his concern for Lev. It helped that Anna’s appearance left him with barely enough energy to walk into the next room, where a small, intimate dinner had been set up on a long table he could remember as being covered in dust and debris.
It had been washed and sanded and polished. Candles filled the room on every surface. Elena must have commandeered every candelabrum in the castle and some from the towns in the valley below.
“Elena informs me eating at a fine table is like riding a bike. Although, as you know, I’ve never ridden a bicycle in all my long life,” Ivan said. He walked to the head of the table and pulled out the queen’s chair as if he hadn’t lived as a recluse in a cursed castle for more years than she’d been alive. Elena smiled at him, and Soren forgot how to breathe for long seconds as the love his brother had found punched him in the gut with the knowledge of the love he’d lost.
“Don’t worry. This is a family meal. No more. No less. No prying eyes as we learn how to do this again,” Ivan continued. He sat in a chair beside his wife at the head of the table. But the two other place settings were beside them in an intimate configuration that would be brutal for him as long as it lasted.
“Soren doesn’t consider me family. Not anymore. I’m an unwelcome guest at best. I’ll excuse myself. Perhaps I should have asked for some bread and cheese in my room,” Anna said. How often had he watched her nibble on a crust of stale bread? How often had he helped her forage for food or whatever else they needed?
Not her.
Bell.
He wouldn’t feel sympathetic for a witch who didn’t feel welcome.
“Sit. Eat. We are free to enjoy an actual meal at a table and we will enjoy it, by God,” Ivan said. But Soren’s spine stiffened, because he heard the alpha wolf’s command in the order. His brother, the king, wouldn’t be denied.
Nor should he.
If Soren’s main responsibility was restoring the white wolf to life and limb, Ivan’s main responsibility was restoring Bronwal and all the people in it to normalcy, or the closest thing to normalcy that people out of time and no longer cursed could have. He hadn’t worn the suit Elena had provided for him. But he would eat with his brother and his wife, even if they insisted that a witch princess sit at the same table, too.
* * *
Had she hoped a dress and some lipstick would soothe the savage beast?
Anna was angrier with herself than with the stubborn man who sat across the table from her. He tore into his chicken and potatoes with gusto, and she nearly did the same, pausing only to wash down large mouthfuls with sweet red wine. The sooner they finished, the sooner she could escape back to her room.
If one meal together felt like the end of the world, how would she survive the coming days...and nights...when they would be forced to travel together to retrieve the emerald sword?
Thank goodness for her ability to travel through the Ether.
The sooner they retrieved the sword and destroyed it, the better.
Elena was the only one at the table who picked at her food. She was as slight as a former ballerina would be. Not to mention she’d been sitting at tables to eat her