Ch. 281..285: The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy Chapter 281-285

Chapter 0281

“I was a catastrophe of a person,” Jackson groans, laughing softly as he presses his eyes shut and remembers his first few days in the city. “I was…so shocked by the noise, Ariel, and the pavement – god, stone and metal everywhere - and the people. God, I didn’t think that there were that many people in the world, let alone one city.”

I stay quiet, letting Jackson tell at his own pace. He moves pretty quickly through the story of how he was chosen from the ranks of the young men in his community to attend the Alpha Academy, to gain what new military knowledge he could and bring it back to his own world.

Jacks leaves out a lot as he tells me about how they barely prepared him and then dropped him at a boarding house in the city three months ahead of time, I think not wanting to remember all of it. But he tells me how he showed up basically with a spare set of clothing, a handful of cash, and the order to acclimate himself.

“I stayed inside for a whole week,” he murmurs, shaking his head with an embarrassed smile on his lips. “Like, inside my room. I had this little window? And I sat at it all day, just watching people walk by, trying to…to figure out who they were, what their lives were like. I felt like a complete alien – like I was from another planet, Ariel. There were just – men and women, walking together, holding hands, in these weird clothes – and just like, kids everywhere…” he shakes his head at what must have felt so bizarre.

“Well, what changed?” I ask, desperately curious.

“The landlady came,” he murmurs, looking down at me with a smirk. “Demanding the next week’s rent. And that’s when I realized that…I was going to run out of money very, very soon.”

“What!?” I gasp, horrified that he was out of money after a week. “Jackson, how much did they send you with?”

“Like, fifty bucks,” he says, laughing and shaking his head. “Which I’m sure to them felt like an insane amount of money to just hand over – we don’t deal with a lot of cash in the community. I’m not sure they knew how fast it would run out? Or maybe they did.” He shrugs like it doesn’t matter.

I curl up closer to him, so sorry for my mate and feeling guilty that I’ve never once wondered about paying rent or whether or not I’d have enough money to get by. “So, what did you do?”

“Some of the other guys in the house noticed how miserable and scared I was,” he says, smiling at me and stroking his hand over my hair, “and that I hadn’t eaten in a week. They took pity - got me a job washing dishes at one of the restaurants in town. It was enough for some food, and the rent, and the utilities. And it made me leave the room, made me go do what I was supposed to do – which is learn how to be in this world.”

I’m quiet again as Jackson continues, telling me that he was basically a little mouse of an employee – always on time, reliable, hard-working, but silent. That he spent his days listening to people in the kitchen talking to each other, learning about modern life, starting to pick up the vernacular and get more comfortable here.

“I was lucky,” he murmurs, “that pretty much everyone in the kitchen was a man. There were some waitresses, of course,” he smiles here and covers his face with his hand like he does when he’s embarrassed. “And I realize now that they may have been…hitting on me. But I refused to talk to them – I was terrified.”

I laugh along with him at this and press myself closer, secretly grateful that none of those other girls got their mitts on him. As hypocritical as it is, the idea of another girl touching Jackson makes me want to bare my fangs and tear her stupid face off. And even if Jackson has hinted that there was another girl in his past…well. I guess I don’t want to talk about her right now, do I?

 

Chapter 0282

“I hate that,” I murmur, working to press myself closer to him, even though that’s not really possible. “I hate the idea of you scared, and alone, and talking to girls when I was just like…half a city away.”

“But you were engaged,” he says, his voice strange – I think a little amused? I don’t know. I can’t quite parse it.

“You knew about that?” I ask, looking up at him wide-eyed.

“How could I not?” he asks, grinning at me. “You were all over the media – and it’s all anyone would talk about, especially as it got close.”

“Well,” I say, smiling myself a little too and reaching up to stroke my fingers through his hair. “What did you think about it?”

“You’ll be disappointed in me, Ari,” he murmurs, lowering his face and taking a sniff of my hair. “I didn’t really think about it. It was all very far from what I had been instructed to think was important, what I could understand – a royal wedding…” he shakes his head. “I didn’t have a way to understand it, why it was important.”

“Oh, come on,” I say, shoving his shoulder a little, my smile deepening. “You must have thought something.”

Jackson grins at me for a long moment before he breaks, looking away from me like he can’t hold my eyes while he admits it. “Fine,” he says, heaving a little sigh. “I thought you were…very pretty.”

“Pretty!?” I say, grinning and sitting up straighter with a happy squeak. “You thought I was pretty!?”

“Just in passing,” he mutters, still not looking at me, a faint blush on his cheeks. “I saw a few pictures on the covers of magazines –“

“So then how did you not recognize me when we met!?” I shout, laughing and tugging on his shirt, wanting him to look at me again. My mate, ever obliging, turns his head to smile at me.

“Because you were a boy, Ariel – and you smelled like a boy, and I had no reason to equate the lowest-ranked Candidate at the academy with the pretty girl I’d seen on a magazine cover –“

“You thought I was prettttty,” I sing, a little delighted, wiggling victoriously in his lap.

“And I was right,” he growls, snatching me closer and bending me back a bit in a way that makes heat coil in my core. “You are pretty. Much prettier in person, and not dressed up in all that bride-y gauze.”

“Yes, all that bride stuff really was crap,” I say with a sigh, staring up at him, starry-eyed and swept away by how wonderful he is – at once handsome, and powerful, and cute. God, how does he manage it?

But there’s still so much more I want to know, and I’m being selfish, turning this conversation away from him.

“So,” I ask, quieting down, sitting up straighter and resolving to be good. “How’d you spend your time off? Did you hang out with the guys that you lived with?”

All I want in the world right now is to sit right here in my mate’s lap, listening to him talk for hours, spinning out the story of his life. I’d listen for days, if time and circumstance would let me, even though I know they won’t.

“In my time off,” Jackson murmurs, thinking back on it and raising his hand to my hair, petting me again, “at first, I just sat alone in my room. But then the guys I lived with – they were kind, but…a little rough, you know? They told me I’m a sad sack and that I was being a creep, just sitting in there

in the dark. They made me come out into the communal living room, which is where I discovered… television.”

“What!?” I gasp, unable to keep from laughing a little. Jackson laughs along with me, though, giving a self-deprecating little shrug. “You didn’t know what television was!?”

Chapter 0283

“I mean, there was a tv in the living room of the boarding house,” Jackson says on a sigh, even as he starts to laugh. “But…before they showed me what it was for, I thought it was a computer.”

“So, you knew what a computer was,” I say, grinning, “but not a tv?”

“Yup,” he says, smiling down at me, nodding because he knows how ridiculous that sounds in my world. “We used computers sometimes as part of our education – we had a few in this building in the Community. Ones that I now realize are very, very old. But tv? I’d never watched tv in my life. And I was completely freaked out when they turned it on and showed it to me, but then I became… obsessed.”

“You did!?” I squeak, kind of charmed by the idea of my sweet Jackson just spending three months before the academy rushing home from his job to watch TV. “Jackson, what did you watch?”

He sighs, deep and contented, and grins at me again. “Ariel, I watched women.”

“What!?” I gasp, completely not understanding. And then my eyes go wide. “Jackson,” I whisper, “do you mean that you watched…like, a lot of porn?”

Jackson bursts out laughing and covers his face again. “No, Ariel, no,” he says, shaking his head, unable to help his smile. Then he drops his hand and looks back at me. “I mean, the guys I lived with showed me that too – and it was…” his own eyes go wide and his cheeks puff out with his breath, “it was a…a lot, wasn’t it? God…” he shakes his head as if to scare the ideas away. “But no, I wasn’t ready for that – I’m not sure I’ll ever be. No, I mean, I just watched a bunch of shows with women in them. And I was fascinated.”

My heart swells completely as I stare up at him, even as my stomach drops to my feet. Because how – how does this man exist? On one hand Jackson is so brutal, and so powerful – and on the other…

God damn it, he’s just so sweet.

“What did you watch?” I ask, my voice a whisper.

“Anything I could find that had women on the screen,” he says, completely honest. “I mean, you have to understand, Ari, we were always fascinated by girls and women when we were growing up because we were forbidden to talk to them – even looking at them was discouraged. Women were these great, entrancing mysteries. And there were like, rumors? Passed down between the boys? About what girls were like, and that you could kiss them – whatever kissing was - and that there was once a guy in the military training who had found his mate, whatever that was, and he tried to run away with her, and they killed him for it.”

My face goes pale at the idea of it, but Jackson just strokes my cheek.

“I don’t even know if that was true,” he says softly, shaking his head. “But you have to understand how forbidden women were. And then to come to a place where I just got this magical box where I could stare at women? And listen to their stories, and hear them talking to each other?” He exhales deeply, shaking his head. “God, I…I couldn’t get enough.”

I smile up at him, nodding, doing my best to understand as he starts to laugh, remembering something else.

“The guys I lived with,” Jackson continues, “they were pissed, because I was always hogging the tv, and I never wanted to watch sports. I liked the boxing – that’s where I first saw Luca, too – because I understand fighting. But the other sports,” he screws his mouth to the side and shrugs, “I mean, who cares? Why would I want to watch another guy play a game instead of playing it myself? I was shocked that they wanted to watch them – like, didn’t they know that there were stories about women? I mean, I know these guys liked women, sometimes they even brought them home. But they didn’t want to watch the kinds of shows I watched. It never made sense to me.”

“So, what did you watch?” I ask, soft.

“I liked sitcoms,” he says, again stroking my hair as he smiles at me and tells me his story like it’s a great secret he’s been dying to share. “I liked that they showed women talking to each other in their everyday lives, and being friends, and that they talked about what they wanted from life. It felt like… like I was finally getting answers to things I’d been wondering my whole life. It allowed me to see women as just…people. Not forbidden, mysterious things.”

My heart swells in me with every word my mate says. “Did you have any favorites?” I ask, my question a whisper, not wanting to break the spell.

Chapter 0284

His brow furrows as he tries to remember. “There was one, um…about the six friends? Who all lived in apartments across a hall from each other? Three guys and three girls?”

“Besties,” I say, immediately supplying the name of the old sitcom we’ve all watched a thousand times, smiling softly because I absolutely love that he loved this show.

“Yeah, that one was the best one,” he says, nodding like it’s a fact. “The girls were…really nice to each other, and so supportive, and so funny. And I learned about…boyfriends and girlfriends and dating. And what mates were. And with movies, I liked…um, what do you call them? Romedies…?”

“Romantic comedies?” I offer. “Romcoms?”

“Yes,” he says, giving me a decided nod that makes me grin. “I loved romcoms, and what the guys called ‘chick flicks’ – any movies and shows about women’s lives, I wanted to watch. And then when I found out that the library existed? And that you could borrow movies and whole seasons of shows?”

He puffs out his cheeks again, like it completely blew up his world, and I laugh with him.

“I put that library card to work,” he murmurs, staring off into the distance, “never had a late fee and watched…probably every movie in their collection that had a woman on the cover. And I got books, which answered…so many questions.”

“What like, romance novels?” I ask, curious.

“What’s a romance novel?” he asks, snapping his attention to me, immediately intrigued.

I grin at him and shake my head. “I’ll tell you about those later,” I say with a little laugh, knowing that it will open a whole new world for him. “But tell me what you mean – what books did you get?”

“Books on science, on the world,” he says, staring down into my eyes. “I…well, that’s how I figured out that I’d been told a lot of lies at the Community. I read everything I could on history, and biology, and nature. I…I mean, I didn’t even know the earth was round,” he murmurs, closing his eyes on a deep sigh, like he’s embarrassed. “Or that there were…other planets.”

“That is so insane, Jacks,” I whisper, wondering what else he still doesn’t know he doesn’t know about.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, sighing. “Some of the science fiction shows I watched made absolutely no sense until I got my hands on a children’s picture book about the solar system. That was…that was a big day for me.”

I sigh, and reach up, and stroke his cheek. There must be so many gaps in his knowledge, so many things about the world which he just doesn’t know. And, I mean, it’s not like I know everything…

But I have had the benefit of a world-class education. And Jacks is so clever, and so hungry for knowledge that it breaks my heart. Suddenly, if I could give it to him – everything I have had, even if it means I had to give it up - I’d do it. In a heartbeat.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jacks murmurs, gentle, looking down at me with a little sadness in his eyes.

“Like what?” I whisper, confused.

“Like you pity me,” he murmurs, shaking his head.

I sigh, realizing that he’s right – that I am pitying him, and it’s written all over my face. I reach up, running my fingers through his hair, tucking it back behind his ear. “You’re just so lovely, Jacks,” I whisper, meaning every word of it. “I want you to have had…more than what you were given. I know that the people who raised you…that you didn’t know any different, and that some of the must have

done their best. But I wish they’d done better by you – given you more. I want you to have everything, Jackson. You deserve it. You deserve the world.”

“Well, I’ve got that now, don’t I?” he whispers, tightening his arms around me and giving me a shy smile, clearly meaning what he says and believing it – like now that he has me, he can’t possibly be lacking, at all, ever. He leans forward, nudging my nose with his, opening his feelings to me, letting me understand just how happy and content and whole he feels when we’re like this, curled up with each other, our own little world. Complete.

And I can’t help it. I’m just completely overwhelmed, absolutely consumed by how much he loves me already, and how much my feelings match his, inch for inch. I lift my chin, closing the short distance between us and wrapping my arms around my mate’s neck as I kiss him, desperate for him to know that he’s mine – mine forever – and that I’m going to do everything in my power to give him the life he deserves.

 

Chapter 0285

A tiny groan escapes Jackson’s lips as he pulls me tighter, moving his mouth slowly over mine, cupping my face in his wide palm as he kisses me breathless. Things move fast, as they always do with us, and it feels like hardly a moment has passed before my hand wraps in the fabric of his t- shirt, pulling him closer so that his body is leveraged over mine.

Jackson complies, bending me backwards in his arms as he’s done before, kissing me deeply and taking control, dominating me in a way that feels natural, instinctual to us. Immediately I cede him power, wanting him to be in charge. Jackson moves his hand away from my face, sliding it over my shoulders and down my back until he takes a firm grip on my ass, using his leverage there to press me closer against him.

When I feel the hard length of him pressing, ready, into my hip, I lose control a bit – lose my mind, if I’m being frank. A moan slips from me as I kiss Jackson harder, more fervently, tightening my arms around his neck and using my weight to pull him further on top of me.

Because right now, I want to be laid out on my back, and I want Jackson’s weight on me, and I want to slip my hand down between us and feel him in my palm – I want –

“Oooookay,” my mom’s voice says, tired but not without humor, from the direction of the door. I freeze, my eyes flying open to see Jackson staring down at me, shocked.

Slowly, we both turn towards her voice.

“I mean,” mom says, leaning against the open door frame and grinning at both of us like the sneaky cat she is, “I’m very pleased to see that my daughter has in fact inherited some of my passionate tendencies and is doing me proud here –“

“Mommmmm,” I groan, covering my blushing face with my hands, completely mortified and letting my entire weight rest in Jackson’s hands. Jackson just laughs, sitting up as best he can and pulling

me up with him.

“But!” mom continues, and I slip my hands down from my face to see that she’s grinning even more now. “It’s time for bed, chickens. Clean all this up, and then let’s go. We have a busy day tomorrow.”

I sigh, still embarrassed, but I just shake my head in disappointment because…well, because it was just getting good, isn’t it? But Jackson and I pull ourselves together, and quickly clean up the blankets and the pillows. I’m about to dump our mostly undrunk wine down the sink when mom protests, hurrying over to tuck it into the fridge for later, scolding me for being wasteful.

I just smile at her, reaching out and wrapping her in a hug as Jackson tucks the last of the blankets away in the shed, I think going deliberately slow so that he has a moment to…pull himself together, as it were.

“Are you mad at me?” I whisper, holding her tight.

“No, baby,” mom replies, laughing a little. “You’re a young woman who just found her mate – I’d worry something was wrong with your relationship, honestly, if you weren’t sneaking off to steal a few hours with him. But,” she pulls back a little to look me in the eye. “Tomorrow we’re going to have a serious chat about birth control, okay?”

I blush bright pink at this, looking down and biting my lip, but mom just laughs cheerfully and I glance back up at her. And then I smile back, because I know she understands, and that she isn’t trying to make me feel shameful about it. It’s just practical, yes?

Because I have a very, very difficult time controlling myself around Jackson, and had mom not shown up at the door tonight…well, some things might have happened. Things with some very natural consequences for which I am very sure I am not ready.

So, it’s a chat that I think I need and very much want to have.

My mom gives me a wink as Jackson comes to stand with us. “I’m sorry, your Highness,” he says, his face very serious. “I don’t want you to think I was…rude, or disobedient, or breaking your rules.”

Mom just laughs, a little delighted, and steps forward to pat Jackson’s cheek. “It’s fine, Jackson, you’re young and sleep seems very unimportant when you’re young. But please – I’ll only be mad if you keep calling me Highness. It’s Ella.”

“Ella,” he says, smiling at both of us as he tries out the name. He nods once, I think deciding that he likes it.

“All right, now go,” mom says, giving me a little shove and gesturing towards the door. “Because I need to sleep, even if you don’t, and I’m not going to get any if I keep having to herd my children back to their beds.”