Page 36 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

I TRAILED ALONG behind Dmitri as he stalked through the hallways of the castle. I had tried to calm him down, but I had to admit that I hadn’t had enough information to really know what had happened.

There was one incontrovertible bit of evidence, and it was that Johannes had gone into Aurelie’s room at 2:00 in the morning and he hadn’t come back out until 6:00. So, he’d been in there for four hours doing something.

I tried to tell Dmitri that Johannes wouldn’t, but I wasn’t sure anymore.

I tried to tell Dmitri that even if he had, it didn’t matter, because these things were going to happen eventually, and it wasn’t as if he was signing on for a monogamous relationship with her.

I tried to say a bunch of things, but Dmitri was already heading out to find Johannes at that point.

So, now, I trailed along, quiet, hopeful that if it came down to it, I could calm them down.

I wished I would have had the chance to talk to Johannes alone before all this, but that wasn’t possible. Dmitri wanted to talk to him now.

Johannes wasn’t in his bedroom.

He wasn’t in the breakfast parlor, which was a room in our wing where the staff would lay out a serve-yourself breakfast each morning.

We asked around, and we found out that he’d gone riding.

Great. He might be out on the horse for hours, then. I was hoping we weren’t going to get on horseback and go after him. I wasn’t afraid of horses, per se, but it seemed to me that getting on the back of a huge animal with huge hooves who couldn’t really be fond of having you on its back was a kind of singularly stupid thing to do.

No thanks.

Luckily, when we got out to the stables, Johannes was brushing down his mount, something he liked to do himself instead of allowing the staff to do. He said it was zen or something.

He grinned up at both of us. “What are you two doing out in the stables?”

Dmitri was a stormcloud. “Looking for you, obviously.”

“Right,” he said, coming out of the stall. “Look, Dmitri, I think I screwed up last night, and—”

“Did you.” Dmitri’s voice was lethal.

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have told you to back out of it,” he said.

“I told you it would only hurt her feelings,” I said.

“She wasn’t hurt,” said Johannes. “More resigned, I think, but even that—I don’t like being the cause of her disappointment in any way. That feels pretty crappy. I’m not getting in the way of her and you, Dmitri, not at all, not anymore, and it was crazy to even think that I could, because—”

“Getting in the way?” Dmitri interrupted. “Did you fuck her last night?”

“What?” Johannes pulled back. “No.” He considered. “Oh, ‘cause I slept there. Yeah, but nothing happened. I might have wanted things to happen, but also I didn’t, because… I don’t know, but there’s this way I’m getting with her, where whatever she wants is what I want, and it’s kind of perfect, in this amazing way, and—”

“You slept there?” said Dmitri.

“Just slept,” said Johannes. “She wanted me to.”

Dmitri was trembling.

“Should I have not done that?” said Johannes.

Dmitri slugged him.

Johannes jerked back, hand coming up to his chin, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring.

One moment passed, both of them simply glaring at each other, and then Johannes started to move forward.

That was when I shoved myself in between them. I put one hand on Johannes’s chest, shaking my head at him.

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