Legendary Shifter. Barbara Hancock J.

       Prologue

      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.