Page 78 of My Dark Horse Prince

My best friend stares at me for a moment, and then she nods tightly.

“Great, then let’s go.” I realize as we’re walking outside—my leg is sore, but doing much better—that I’ll have to touch him to shift his shape. I practically recoil in horror, and I’m not anywhere near him yet. “I don’t think I can.” I stop walking.

“He’ll shift immediately, and then if you’re still upset, you just have to change him back and Aleks and I will take you home.”

“With or without Grigoriy?”

“He’ll have to come with us—he’s a sitting duck out here alone. But we’d have rules. Once we’re there, he won’t be allowed on your side of the property.”

Great. We’d be like a divorced couple, but at Kris’s place. Maybe over time, he won’t fill me with as much terror and dread. Maybe. It’s hard, marching behind Kris into the clearing out back. Aleks is standing in front of Grigoriy, who has already stripped down.

“Hey,” Aleks says. “You turn around.”

Kris is laughing when she does an about face. “As if I didn’t see him already that first day.”

“No reason you need to be blinded again.”

No one’s worried about me being blinded, obviously. But Aleks does block most everything from my view as I approach, and he stays in place, even when I’m only about two feet away.

“I’ll stay here,” Aleks says. “You can reach around me.” Kris must have explained what I’ve been through. I kind of hate that he knows, but at least he’s not abandoning me.

“I won’t hurt you,” Grigoriy says. “I never would.”

He doesn’t get it. He’ll probably never get it. He already has hurt me—by hurting other people.

I don’t bother trying to explain. I just reach around Aleks’s solid frame and extend one single finger until it’s touching some kind of skin. “I wish you were a horse.”

There’s a tiny whoosh of air, and suddenly, it’s the horse, Charlemagne, standing behind Aleks. It helps to think of it by a different name.

I remember different things with him than I do with Grigoriy. The wind in my hair. A gentle nudge of his nose. His movement beneath me, carrying me, saving me that first day. Warming me the night before. Healing me when I was almost dead.

I have no bad memories with Charlemagne.

“I need you both to call him Charlemagne,” I say.

“Charlemagne,” Aleks mouths. He frowns.

“It’s what I named him that first night, before I knew.”

“We can do that.” Kris walks closer. “You don’t mind, do you boy? It’s a good name.” She reaches out a hand and rubs his nose, just like she would with any horse. Her hand slides up, then, rubbing along the flat front of his face and ruffling his forelock.

He whuffles.

Even Aleks, who usually doesn’t like having Kris anywhere near Grigoriy, doesn’t seem to mind.

Because it’s not the same. My heart decelerates more every moment.

He’s a stallion now, not a man.

He can’t talk.

He can’t drag daggers across people’s necks.

He can’t even argue with me.

“Okay,” I say quietly. “We can take him with us.”

It takes us a day to get things gathered and ready to leave, and even once we’re ready to go, the drive is long. I sleep through part of it, but I take my fair turn behind the wheel. We’re only a few hours from Daugavpils when Kristiana’s phone rings.

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