Page 92 of The Promise

“I feel like someone needs to remind you of reality. You won’t be able to lock yourself away in a room to play house with another man forever, Karine.”

“Stop it. That’s enough.”

Masha sighed, slapping her hands to her jean-clad thighs when Karine stood, turned, and rushed up the steps back into the lodge. Today would be another one of those days—one where she did nothing but lie in bed for the rest of the day—and she wasn’t going to feel guilty about it, either.

But before she could slip through the front door, Claire came running out with a phone pressed to her ear.

“Has he left? Has Roman left already?” she asked.

The panic in her voice froze Karine to the porch. Her throat went dry because she could see it in Claire’s eyes, too. That fear.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Claire was too busy trying to pay attention to whatever was being said on the phone to see that her panic had triggered something in Karine that she couldn’t control. The rational side of her didn’t even have a chance.

“Maybe I can get one of the bulls to follow him?” Claire asked.

For the first time, Karine was viscerally cognizant of an alter coming to awareness. She felt the way Katina slipped into her skin, blinked and suddenly looked through different eyes. It was so fast, but still, she heard herself ask, “Is Roman in trouble? Is he going to be okay?”

It took more effort than Karine could stand to fight back Katina from speaking—being. She knew what it was that triggered it—the heady, taunting taste of anger and fear.

Katina’s favorite.

Claire held up a finger, and Karine choked at the sudden, loud ringing in her ears. She could already see the trail of destruction Katina was capable of—wanted to—leave as the metallic tang of blood swept over her tongue.

She’d bitten it.

Hard enough to bleed.

She even tried to bargain with Katina—just let me know he’s okay first. I need to know. The repeated mantra did little but distract Karine from Claire’s fast words to the man on the other end of the phone call.

“Yeah it’s better if he—no, he doesn’t have his phone. He said he left it in New York on purpose,” Claire said, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand, and pressing her eyes closed. “But, Demyan—”

The darkness came to Karine fast. Just before everything went pitch-black, she felt Masha’s hand on her arm and heard Claire calling her name.

After that, there was nothing.

Nothing but Katina.

Her voice, a sweeping echo.

You shouldn’t have trusted him, Karine. You shouldn’t have trusted anybody.

NINETEEN

Roman rolled through the four-way, driving with an arm hanging out of the window in the dark, a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He squinted his eyes when the smoke rose up in front of his face, a split second when his attention wasn’t one hundred percent on the road.

Or his gaze, anyway.

His mind was another matter.

Instead of Karine, who always took up all his headspace, but especially when the world was quiet, the person he currently thought of, was Masha.

Rather, the words she said to him earlier. Words she said partly in fear, he knew, and because of the unknown. He didn’t doubt they were still words of truth, though.

He might have been angrier with her stupid need to take a stand, if he didn’t think Masha was right. She wasn’t entirely wrong in saying that Karine was in a different kind of prison now. Just because she liked her new prison and was happy there—well, that didn’t really change what it was.

It wasn’t like Roman wanted to hide her away in Vermont forever. She deserved normalcy in her life.