Читать книгу Immortal Bride - Lisa Childs - Страница 9

Centuries ago…

Crouched on the boulder on the rocky shore, Gray Wolf’s image reflected back at him from the moonlit surface of the Lake of Tears. The stripe of white had widened in his black hair, but other than that, he didn’t look much older than he’d been before the lake had formed.

Remembering the ravine that water had filled, he winced as he felt again the rocks and branches tearing at his skin as he’d dropped into what his people had believed a bottomless abyss. Yet the rocks and branches had not inflicted the scar that shone faintly on his deeply tanned skin, on his chest, where an arrow had pierced his heart.

He had been dead long before the arrow had killed him, though. The same shaman who’d shot the bow had killed the mother of Gray Wolf’s son. But Gray Wolf hadn’t known, so he had blamed invaders from a far off land and himself until those invaders returned with the woman. Anya—with her hair like moonlight and her eyes like chips of a light blue sky.

The shaman had called her a sorceress, and although he hadn’t admitted it, he’d been fearful that she was more powerful than him. So the Wise One had ordered her death as necessary to protect the sacred land of Gray Wolf’s people. Only on their land grew the special herbs that could be used in potions that induced supernatural powers. Anxious to redeem himself for what he’d considered his failure to protect his people, Gray Wolf had accepted the mission to kill her.

Instead he had fallen in love with the flaxen haired, pale-skinned beauty. As her touch could bring slain warriors back to life, it had brought him back to life. Twice. First from his self-imposed death due to guilt and remorse and then from genuine death. She had filled the ravine with her tears, so his body had floated to the surface. She’d dragged him onto this very boulder on which he crouched and had brought him to life again.

And to love. He had never loved another like he loved his Anya. And he never would…

Water splashed as the surface of the lake broke. Arms, as pale as moonlight, glided like ripples through the water, bringing her to him. He gazed down into her light blue eyes, and his once-wounded heart clenched with love. “Anya…”

“My warrior…always protecting me,” she said with a wistful sigh.

Even impaled with the arrow, he had saved her from the shaman—throwing her crude dagger and killing the Wise One. Yet Gray could not help but feel the man’s spirit lurked, waiting to seek his revenge against Gray Wolf’s descendants. But Gray wasn’t the gifted one. Anya was, as was a female from every other generation of her family. They had no children together—just his son whom she treated like her own. Gray wished for his son, and all his descendants, to find a woman like Gray had, a sorceress, who could save him from the vengeance of the shaman and whose love would create their own Legend of the Lake of Tears.