I didn't know what to say to Adrian's revelation, so I ignored it. It was too uncomfortable. I still had so many questions, but I also had a stable full of horses that needed turned out for their nightly exercise. I pushed back from the table.

"I need to go take care of the horses," I told him.

He was on his feet in an instant. "I'll go with you."

I had actually been hoping for a few minutes alone, to try to sort out everything that had happened in the last hour. But when I looked at Adrian, I couldn't make him stay behind. He was gazing at me with such a hopeful expression. So, I nodded and led the way back through my front door.

The stable was about a hundred yards away from the house. Now that the sun had gone down, it was almost pleasant outside. There was even a hint of a breeze. There was a small gravel path that split off from the driveway, ran between the stable and the house, and led to the row of cabins that vacationers used when they stayed at Changing Fate. There was a light on in the first cabin, the one that Ben called home. I glanced that way, worried that Ben might be outside and see us as we walked past, but he wasn't in sight.

How was I going to explain the strange man who seemed content to follow me around like a lost puppy? I shook my head and kept walking. That was a problem for later.

As soon as we entered the barn, a chorus of neighs greeted us. Heads popped out over stall doors and the nearest horse bobbed his head in greeting. "Hey, Sage," I greeted the big red roan gelding, walking over and petting his nose. He whickered a greeting and gently bumped my hand with his nose. "Sorry I'm late." I told him. "It's been a strange night." I shot a glance to where Adrian had stopped a few feet away.

"Ben already fed them tonight," I told Adrian. "They just need turned out into their pasture for the night."

He watched as I pulled Sage's halter off of the hook on the front of his stall. Patting the big red head again, I slipped the halter over his nose. Sage was my favorite of all of the riding horses on the ranch. He had a steady temperament, loved attention, and a perfect diamond shaped star on his forehead that reminded me of my best friend, Kate's horse. Sage nuzzled me, looking for a treat, and then blew air out of his nostrils noisily.

"I can help," Adrian told me, stopping me before I could lead Sage out of his stall. They're all going into the same pasture?" He asked me.

"Yeah," I told him. Sage bumped his nose into my shoulder impatiently, but I ignored him.

I watched curiously as Adrian went to the nearest stall and reached out to pat the dark mare looking out over the top of her door. My riding horses were all gentle and well trained, most of them were older, and they were tolerant of inexperienced people working around them. They were as safe as a horse could be, out of necessity. Many of the guests who stayed at the ranch didn't know anything about horses. But Adrian was a horse, sometimes, and I was wondering if that would mean that he would understand them better.

While I watched, he soothed the mare and slipped the halter that had been hanging on the front of her door over her head. With practiced ease, he clipped a lead rope to her halter and swung her door open.

Feeling a little silly that I had worried about his ability to work with horses, I finally gave in to Sage's impatient nose bumps and let him walk out of his stall. The big gelding's hooves clomped noisily on the  concrete barn aisle as he walked next to me, and a second later I heard the mare's noisy steps behind us.

Outside, the gate to their pasture was directly across the driveway, and I led Sage through it. Adrian followed right behind us, and I pushed the gate closed before unclipping the lead rope from Sage's halter. The big red gelding trotted off into the darkness, and a second later, the dark mare followed him.

"It's been so hot, I've been keeping them inside during the day," I told Adrian as we walked back to the barn. "I don't usually like keeping them locked up so much."

"The sun has been brutal," he told me. "Finding shelter from it has been almost impossible. I'm sure they appreciate coming inside."

I frowned a little. He had been running wild as a horse through the past several harsh years. It was amazing that he had survived the ordeal in such good shape. Trees of any substantial size were mostly nonexistent out here, it was one of the things that had taken me a long time to get used to when I first arrived. "How did you all cope out there?"

We were back inside the stable again. Adrian had gone to the stall of my biggest horse, a Belgian draft who weighed over two thousand pounds. The big man was dwarfed by the giant horse who waited patiently to be let out. He shrugged, and then reached for the halter. "We had each other, my brothers and I. It was hard. We couldn't talk to each other like you and I are doing now, but we worked it out. We looked out for each other, found places to rest, or water to drink. Finding food wasn't an issue until more recently," he smiled wryly. "There used to be grass everywhere. I just kept hoping that someday the curse on us would break, and we would be free."

I nodded. What he said made sense. What else could they have done, beside just survive and hope for better days. With my next horse haltered, a leggy gray who was missing half of his right ear, I started out of the barn again. "How did you end up where I found you?" I asked him hesitantly.

"After my brothers and I were separated, I was trying to track them down. I spent an entire day moving from one spot to another that we had been using as shelter, but I didn't find any sign of any of them. I was starting to get desperate, and I cut through an area that we usually avoided, trying to save time. We never went to that place because the Mustangs were usually there."

Back out in the pasture, we both unclipped our horses and started back for the barn.

"Whenever we got too close to the wild herds, the herd stallions would get aggressive, as you can imagine. They didn't know that we weren't normal horses, all they saw was four new stallions coming too close to their mares. We figured out early on that it was best to keep our distance. Anyhow, I was cutting through that field when I heard the helicopter."

I cringed. The helicopter round ups were brutal, terrorizing the wild horses into a blind panic. Horses died every year.

"A stampede of about forty Mustangs came flying into the field and I didn't have much choice but to run with them. It was either that, or get run over. I thought that I could work my way out of the group and slip away, and it almost worked, but a half a dozen cowboys on horses came after me. I was tired by then, we had been running for miles, and it didn't take them long to catch up. Before I even knew what was happening I had ropes all over, and they were dragging me into the pen with the Mustangs."

He stopped talking then, and I stayed quiet, horrified by the images his story evoked. We had our next pair of horses haltered, and we took them outside in silence. He was still quiet as we turned out  the next two rounds of horses. There was only one horse left in the barn then, the old Appaloosa gelding  named Zippy who had been Grandpa's favorite. I gave his neck an extra pat before putting on his halter. Adrian stood back and watched, but I got the feeling that he was lost in thought. As I led the final horse out of his stall, Adrian finished his story.

"The first day, no one seemed to notice that I was any different from the rest of the horses. We were crammed into small pens and let out into that system of chutes one by one. I made sure to stay as far away from it as I could. I was trying to figure out a way to escape, but the fences were too high. But then I was the last one, and they came for me. I refused to be herded at first, but eventually I had no choice. I couldn't just stay there in a barren pen forever, and by then I'd figured out that I couldn't escape from there. I was hoping that the next place they put me would have lower fences, or a latch I could work. So I went into the chute."

I unclipped Zippy's lead rope and let him go. He neighed into the darkness and hurried away after the rest of the herd. Adrian had been holding the gate for me, and he shut it behind me as I came back out onto the driveway.

He sighed and his forehead wrinkled with an unpleasant memory. "Maybe I should have stayed in that first pen. The chute led straight to a stockade, and once I was in there I was helpless. They branded my neck." His hand came up to rub the right side of his next reflexively. "They were just finishing that when a guy I'd never seen before came up to them and told them to stop and move me to a pen by myself. The workers let me out and I ended up in that round pen that I was in when I first saw you. The guy who had told them to stop was there. He was talking on his phone to someone. I heard him say that he'd 'Found one of them', and then he paused."

"I don't know who he was talking to, but then he said he'd 'take care of it' and 'he would have a vet come out, there would be no way anyone would ever know that they hadn't euthanized a real horse.' I knew that he was talking about me, and I had to get out of there. I tried, but the fence wasn't budging. And then, I heard your voice." He sounded almost shy as he said the last.

I couldn't believe everything that had happened to him. If I hadn't seen him turn into a horse with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed any of it. "I'm sorry that all happened to you,"'I told him sincerely.

"Me too," he replied.

I didn't know what else to say after that, so I began slowly walking back into the barn. I needed to return the lead ropes and turn out the lights for the night.

I was exhausted, if I was being honest with myself. It had been a long day, and at that moment I just wanted to retreat back to my house and try to make sense of everything that had happened in peace. I looked at Adrian as I flicked off the light switch. What was I going to do with him? He was probably still in danger, and he had no where to go.

Outside, I noticed that the lights in Ben's cabin were still on. That gave me an idea. Adrian could stay in one of the empty cabins for now. It wasn't like I was using them for guests at the time. I turned to face him. "Look, it's late and I'm tired. I'm pretty sure you're tired too. Why don't you pick one of the cabins over there," I pointed. "They're all empty except for that first one. Choose whichever one you want. They are not fancy, but they have everything you'd need for the night. You can get some sleep and we'll figure out what to do next in the morning."

Adrian was already shaking his head before I even finished speaking. "No, I don't think that's a good idea," he told me. "They are going to be looking for me, and it's only a matter of time before they come looking for you to find me. I don't want to be that far away in case they come."

I stared at him. "Well, you can't sleep in my house," I told him. "No way. The cabins aren't that far away from the house."

He shook his head again. "It's not safe. If I was asleep way over there, I'd have no idea if anything happened to you in the house."

I looked around in frustration. He was clearly not going to budge. "Just how much danger do you think I'm really in?" I asked.

His voice was sharper than I'd ever heard it. "They forced me to be a horse for ten years, and planned to murder me."

He wasn't wrong. Someone who could do those things was probably capable of anything. I sighed.

"I'm sorry you got dragged into this situation," he told me, voice calmer. "But it happened, and now we have to figure out how to keep everyone safe."

"They will come, won't they?" I asked him.

He stepped closer. "I think so."

"What am I going to tell Ben?" I asked him. "He lives here too. If I'm in danger, so is he."

Adrian looked towards Ben's cabin then. "You can't tell him I'm a shifter," he told me. "The world couldn't handle it if they knew we existed."

He was right. "Ben wouldn't believe me anyhow," I told him.

Adrian nodded. "I know. I don't know how you want to explain my presence. But I think it's best that he knows as little as possible. For his own safety too."

I nodded, and started walking toward the house slowly. "Are you coming?" I asked as my way of inviting him. "You can stay in the last room upstairs. The bed already has clean sheets on it."

He fell into step beside me and we walked through the darkness toward the house. I had no idea what I was going to tell Ben in the morning, and no idea how I was going to get any sleep with Adrian just down the hall.