Ch. 96..100: The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy Chapter 96-100
Chapter 96
But of course, time does pass, and we do eventually stop kissing when things again get heated. Because what Jackson said before really was the truth this is not the time or the place for it.
–
Somehow we separate ourselves from each other, though we’re never really more than an inch apart, and we take a moment to get comfortable, organizing our supplies and taking inventory before Jackson passes an apple to me.
“Here,” he murmurs. “Eat, please. And then you should probably get some sleep.”
I take the apple but laugh at the suggestion that I’m going to get any sleep. I mean, I just confessed my deepest secret to my mate what, does he think I’m going to just curl up and take a nap?
–
“I’m serious,” he growls, though I wave a hand at him, dismissing the implied danger in his voice that probably makes other men quail. We’re both well aware that he’d never hurt me. “You should rest, Ari.”
“Well, so should you!” I protest. But when I look up into his smirking face I scowl, shaking my head. “You seriously just don’t need it?”
“Nah,” he says, shaking his head and reaching for the canteen. “The water I need, we have to share that. But food and sleep that’s all for you. I’ll keep watch.”
–
“I’ll rest,” I say, hesitant. “But Jackson….there’s still a lot we need to talk about. And I’m not going to be able to sleep until we…come to terms with some stuff.”
“Okay,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me tight to his side. I smile up at him, pleased that he’s not fighting me on it, but then I realize that he’s….well, he’s got a ton of questions, doesn’t he?
But before he gets to those…I have to start.
“Jackson,” I murmur, turning more fully to him now and taking his face seriously in my hands, gazing at him. “I am so…so sorry that I’ve had to keep this from you.”
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“It’s okay,” he says, instantly willing to forgive, his broad hand coming up and wrapping around my wrist like he wants to be touching me all the time.
A little smile takes my lips as I shake m easily, Jacks. You were tortured by this
head back and forth. “You shouldn’t forgive me so I know you were.”
“Well, yeah,” he says, the corner of his mouth turning up in a smirk. “But now that it all makes sense – why I could catch whiffs of my mate’s sense all over the castle, why her trail always seemed to lead to you. I mean, I get it now.” He frowns a little, lowering his head to my neck and taking another long sniff. “Is that..Jesse? Has he been scent marking you?”
Quickly I nod. “My cousin,” I whisper, seeing the possessive question already in his eyes. Slowly he nods, believing me. “Again, Jacks, I hope you can forgive me for it, over time. It wasn’t easy but…I didn’t have a lot of choice, not if I wanted to stay in the Academy.”
“No, it’s okay,” he says, giving an easy shrug, already over it. “I don’t care. I didn’t mind waiting, Ari – I just wanted to know that you were safe.”
“You should care,” I say, smiling at him but still feeling a little guilty. Luca’s response in some ways made more sense he punished me, a little, and rightfully so. I lied to him for weeks. But Jacks he’s so instantly ready to move on.
–
“Nah,” Jackson replies, wrapping me up closer in his arms, pulling me cozily into his lap. again and against his chest as he presses a kiss to my hair. “It’s all worth it. I don’t want to make myself feel mad just because I should. I have you now, don’t I? It’s all that matters.”
I find myself feeling quite touched, and a little overwhelmed, as I lean against his chest, tucking my head for a second beneath his chin, cozy and warm despite the chill in the night air. Because…maybe he should be mad. There is…there is more coming, after all, that he’s not going to be pleased about it’s actually not so simple as him having me now.
–
And if he just forgives me at every turn, even though none of it is my choice either, even if the Goddess herself gave us this path…
Well, who is going to watch out for Jackson’s heart, in the trials to come?
We are, my wolf growls, fierce.
And I set myself to the task, immediately agreeing. Jackson he’s big, and he’s powerful,
–
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but he’s quite tender, beneath it all, isn’t he? And..
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As sad as it sounds, Jackson is a bit more desperate for love and affection than I’d like him to be. He’s willing to wipe away all the offenses against him, just to have me in his arms.
God, he’s too good, to pure and sweet. I press my eyes shut, begging the Goddess for strength so that I can be as good to him as he deserves.
“What?” Jackson murmurs, nudging me with his nose, and I realize that I’ve gone quite still and rigid in his arms.
“Nothing,” I murmur, lifting my face to look into his. “Just…thinking about a thousand things.”
“Well, don’t worry about them,” he says with a little frown, like it’s so easy to just not. I grin at him, laughing a little. “We’ll figure it all out. It will all turn right.”
I smile at him, unable to stop myself as I reach up to stroke his hair, tucking it back behind his ear over and over again. “Jacks,” I murmur, as he looks down at me with such tenderness in his face, his expression. A tenderness that is…not totally unfamiliar, if I’m being honest because he has looked at me that way before, even if he thought I was a boy. “Did you really not know?”
His face bursts into a grin and I can feel him laughing all around me in his chest, in the way his arms shake. My smile widens and I find that I quite like being all wrapped up in him. “Ari, I definitely did not know. It was the shock of my life when you pulled your shirt. up and I saw you had a girl body under your uniform.”
“Really, though?” I ask, laughing outright now, shaking my head a little in disbelief. “Like. no hints before? No inklings nothing about my face, or my mannerisms? I was just…all boy to you?”
–
—
“Ari,” Jackson sighs, shaking his head, growing a little more serious even as he smiles. “I have… absolutely no context for any of that. I don’t know any girls everyone I’ve met is a guy. So, if there are social cues that I’m supposed to pick up on to be able to tell that you’re a girl? I just don’t know them.”
I tilt my head, considering him, remembering what Ben said about me reminding him of his sisters. “Ben says I laugh like a girl,” I blurt out, saying the words as I think them.
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Jackson grins. “I like your laugh,” he murmurs. “So, if that’s how girls laugh, then…I guess f
like that.”
“Were you attracted to me?” 1 hear myself ask, curiosity getting the better of my mouth.
Jackson’s smile grows. “No.” he murmurs, shaking his head.
1 squeak a little, sitting up straight, indignant.
“I mean, I am now!” he says, laughing as he works to correct himself.
“What, just because I show you my stomach and you realize I’m a girl suddenly you think I’m pretty!?”
Chapter 97
“Well, kind of” he replies, laughing louder now, freer. “I mean, I just didn’t let my mind go there before. You were just another guy. A little shrimpy one who I liked hanging out with, and who I worried about sometimes. But..I didn’t think of you that way.”
I narrow my eyes at him, leaning a little closer, inspecting his face for lies. “That’s not how attraction works, Jackson. You can’t just decide to turn it on and off.”
He stares at me stoically for a long moment before his mouth twitches in the start of a
smile.
I
gasp, pointing at his face. “You totally were!” I whisper, thrilled. “You were into the Shrimp! You had a crush on me!”
He laughs, snatching my finger out of the air and wrapping his hand around mine even as he leans closer. “Fine, I thought…I thought you had a nice smile, okay?”
I grin, leaning into him, making him say more.
He groans, sighing and rolling his eyes. “And nice skin and…and pretty eyes. But! I thought you were my mate’s twin, okay? That was my best guess. So, I was just imagining what she looked like, which was probably a lot like…you?” His face twists up now, getting all muddled in the truth.
I laugh with him, leaning back against him, pleased. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t find me totally repulsive.”
“Not totally,” he murmurs, lightly tracing his fingers down my arm and then around my back, settling me cozily against him again. “What about you?” he asks, his voice a little wicked.
“Oh,” I sigh, leaning my head against him. “It was terrible.”
“What?!” He’s laughing now.
“Rafe had to drag me back to the room all the time,” I say, looking up at him, a little embarrassed. “Told me I wasn’t allowed to moon after you in the hallways –”
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“What!?” Jackson repeats himself, I think shocked, but laughs harder.
“It was very embarrassing, Jacks! My stupid wolf always telling me to do ridiculous things, like just leap on you in the hallway when we’d see you between classes, or steal your shirt and hide it under my pillow, god
He’s shaking with his laughter now and I can’t help it, I join in with him, delighted as I look up into his face to see him looking so…..
Well, so happy. My serious mate, who sometimes looks like he’s never had a happy day in his life, laughing like that. God, but it does wonders for my heart.
When his laughter fades his turns his head back down to me, his eyes shining. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t disappoint. That your wolf,” he presses a finger against my chest, where I suppose he imagines she
lives, “likes me, at least.”
She preens inside of me, happy to be addressed and acknowledged directly. “Oh, she’s a big fan,” I sigh, looking down at his finger and smiling. But then I turn my face back up to his, returning to the question at hand. “Jacks,” I say quietly, and he turns his face to mine, more serious now but nodding to invite the question he can hear in my voice. “Why…why were. you so shocked to find out I was a girl? Why don’t you know any of the cues?”
Jackson releases a long sigh and drops his eyes from mine.
My heart drops along with his gaze, and I worry that I’ve said too much, or the wrong thing
“No,” he murmurs, reaching out and taking my hand, wrapping it in his. “It’s fine – I want to tell you. It’s just…I have been taught, all my life, to keep it a secret. So, it takes a little bit of unlearning, you know? To muster up the courage and tell you everything.”
I bite my lip, worried for different reasons now, and press myself against him, hoping to communicate my support, my genuine interest, my faith. He raises his face to mine with a small smile, and I give him mine in return.
“Honestly, Ari, it’s probably better that I didn’t know you were a girl when we first met, really,” he murmurs, smirking a little, “or else I’d never have been able to talk to you. Not at
all.”
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I work hard to fight my grin, wanting to be serious, but his own smile brings mine forward. “I know,” I whisper, nodding. “I saw you with Daphne.”
“Oh my god,” he mutters, taking a deep breath before slowly releasing it. “I thought my heart was going to pound through my chest when she came in.”
“Why?” I ask, laughing. “Daphne is really nice
“Because she’s a girl – it’s like meeting–I don’t know, a gigantic whale, or a unicorn or something. Even if you know it’s nice you still don’t know what to do what it’s going to do
“We’re unicoms to you?” I squeak, pleased to death.
He laughs, shaking his head. “Almost nearly as mythical,” he murmurs. To me, at least.”
I narrow my eyes a little, suddenly struck by something. “That was one hell of a kiss, Jackson,” I say, tilting my head and wrapping a hand in the fabric of his shirt, possessive, “if it was your first one.”
His mouth twists a little and he looks away for a second. “Well, no, he murmurs and I gasp a little at the drama of it all. “I knew…I knew one girl. For a little bit.”
My eyes go wide and a thousand questions are instantly on my lips, but they all fall away when he turns back to me.
“Please, he murmurs, shaking his head, his eyes a little sad. “I…I will tell you about her okay? Just… not right now. Not when I’ve just found you, and…there’s so much else to explain first.
I nod, agreeing to it, though my hands tighten their grip on his shirt. I find that I do not like, at all, the idea of this singular other girl. It is somehow, bizarrely, worse than Luca’s fifty anonymous women.
So, I let him move on from it, because I’m….honestly not sure I want to know. At least, as he says, not right now.
“The world I grew up in,” Jackson begins, his voice soft and hesitating, “well, we called it the Community. It’s way, way up North, in the mountains. It’s really pretty there, honestly, Ari.
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Like… much prettier than here”
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I smile a little, cozying up against him, settling in to listen and pleased that he grew up somewhere beautiful. But I don’t say anything, wanting him to talk.
“But, um…” he hesitates again, “we do things…really differently. Like, for instance, I grew up with boys. And only boys. The girls were…kept elsewhere.”
“Kept?” I murmur, confused.
“Yeah,” he replies, and I can feel him nod. “We grew up in barracks – which is why, I think, it was easy for me to fall into life here, I’m kind of used to it. Except you all talk a lot like constantly, Ari, everyone is always chatting most of the time about nothing –”
“Jackson,” I murmur, lifting my head to look into his face, frowning, “what do you mean grew up? Like, from how young?”
He pauses his harangue against chattiness and goes a little still before he shrugs. “Since I can remember. That was my home.”
I frown, not understanding, and then I remember suddenly something that he said last night…
God, was that just last night, when Daphne came over and Jackson mentioned that he…
“Jackson,” I murmur, shaking my head, “where were your parents? Were they there too?”
“No,” he replies, his eyes suddenly wary as he confesses what, I think, is part of the great secret of his life. “I don’t…I don’t have parents. Or, I mean, obviously biologically I do, but…I was raised apart from them. We all were. If I ever met them,” he shrugs, “I didn’t know who they were. And they probably wouldn’t have known I was theirs.”
My mouth falls open in shock and horror as I stare at my mate.
Because what…what the hell!?
Chapter 98
Jackson works hard for a smile when he sees my reaction to my story, though he kind of fails at it. “I take it,” he murmurs, “that you have parents? And you like them?”
“Well, yeah, Jacks!” I reply, staring wide–eyed into his face. “They’re kind of great!”
Jackson laughs a little, tightening his arms around me. “Well, if you don’t know that parents are a thing, you don’t really notice them missing, do you?”
I tilt my head, considering this, as Jackson goes on with his story, telling me about being a little boy growing up in a Community and sleeping in what was essentially a bunkhouse full of little boys just like him. The youngest babies, he knew, were raised in a nursery, and every year a new batch of boys was brought to the bunk house when they were very young.
And from that young age, they were trained to fight.
“Just every morning,” Jackson murmurs, his face distant as he remembers, “we’d troop out of the bunkhouse and get to work running, learning to fight, sparring with each other.” He shrugs. “It wasn’t so bad. As we got older, the guys who weren’t as good at it they stopped. coming to practice and I’d see them out in the fields and stuff, or training for a new job. But, I mean, I was…good at it. So. I just kept going.”
–
“You could see them?” I ask, trying to picture this world. “But not…talk to them?”
“The bunk house was for men and boys in warrior training,” Jackson explains, turning his face back to me. “If you were sorted out of that, you…moved to another bunk house, I guess. I could see our little
community- the main part of it, with the council house, and the mess hall. And the women’s barracks, too.”
My eyebrows raise at this but I press my lips together, wanting him to tell the story any way he wants to. He notices, though, and smiles.
“Yeah, the women lived all together too. And we could see them, from where we lived on top of the hill.”
“But weren’t you curious?” I breathe, fascinated.
“Of course we were,” he laughs, smiling at me. “Especially as we grew older and noticed them more. In a different way. But you have to understand it was forbidden. We were taught our roles very, very well, and we were never, ever supposed to talk to anyone in town, especially the women.”
I shake my
head, baffled by it, and especially by the fact that these kinds of attitudes towards gendered difference and communal living exist within my own nation. It sounds, like anything, more Atalaxian than native to Moon Valley.
But, honestly, who the hell am I to judge? Just because Jackson grew up differently than me…does that honestly make it worse?
“Were you happy there, Jackson?” I ask, my voice worried. Because while I desperately want him to have been…I just don’t see how a little boy could be, growing up in a world with that much restriction.
He takes a long moment before he answers. “No,” he whispers, shaking his shaggy head, and I raise my hands to his face, stroking his cheeks with my thumbs and murmuring soft nothings. “But you have to understand…I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t even know I was unhappy for…for a long time. I
thought that was just…life. I thought everyone lived like that, and that everything was hard, and…a little sad.”
“Did you have any friends?”
–
“Of course I had friends,” he replies, smiling at me. “They still live there Cristof and Zachary. I spent pretty much every day of my life with them until I left. They were…well, they were the best part.”
“Why did you leave?” I ask, fascinated. Honestly, I could listen to Jackson talk for days about this world and he probably has enough information to fill those days.
–
“Because I was assigned to,” he answers instantly, perfectly honest. “I was sent… um…” he hesitates now, glancing away, and I can see that he’s suddenly measuring his loyalty to the Community against his new loyalty to me, his mate.
I wait, trying to be patient, letting him decide what to tell.
“I was….sent to learn things,” he murmurs, hanging his head a little. “New fighting techniques, new technologies. And then, when I’ve decided that I learned enough, I’m
O
supposed to….desert. To go back and teach the Community what I learned.”
I tense in his arms, my hands again taking fistfuls of his shirt, suddenly terrified by the idea that he’s going to leave and go back to that…that place.
But Jackson just laughs and shakes his head. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to first one of my cheeks, and then the other. “I already decided that I’m not going back.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised, even as the tension lessens in my shocked muscles. “Why not?”
“Because,” he murmurs, “I learned….enough, in the few months that I lived in Capital, to understand that what they’re doing is…well, I mean, it’s a cult, right? They control people, give them no choice in their lives. They…take their children away.”
–
He sighs, shaking his head, and I press myself closer against him, wanting to fix it all – heal it all, instantly.
“I mean, I don’t know…anything about having a family,” he murmurs, raising his eyes to mine. “But I do know that if I had found you, somehow, when I lived there? They…they wouldn’t have let me keep you wouldn’t even have let me see you. And there’s something wrong about that, Ari wrong about all of it. It’s not right I can’t go back. I can never go
back.”
My eyes fill with tears as I study his face, as I see that his own heart is broken with the realization. And I’m overwhelmed, suddenly, with the strength it must have taken to come to that decision
To decide to leave, forever, the world in which you were raised? Everyone you’ve ever loved, no matter how badly they’ve treated you?
God, my mate, he’s…he’s so much stronger than me. So much stronger than I’ll ever be.
“You can have a home here now, Jacks,” I say, speaking fast and earnest, pressing a desperate hand to his cheek. “We’ll be really nice to you everyone will! And you can have my mom
–
she’ll take care of you, she loves being a mom –”
Jackson just laughs, his eyes crinkling as he turns his head to the side and presses a kiss to my palm. “You’re my home now, mate,” he murmurs, the words simple and true.
And I can’t help it. I sit up, and wind my arms around his neck, and hold my mate tight to me as he wraps his arms around my back, pressing me to his chest like he’ll never let me go.
“Damn right I’m your home,” I growl, possessive, ready to rip into anyone who’d try to say otherwise. He laughs, I think pleased by the ferocity of his little mate. I pull away then. looking into his eyes, willing him to see it and believe it. “You stay with me now, yeah?”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he replies, the corners of his mouth turning up as he raises a hand, stroking it down the length of my hair, letting his fingers get tangled in the rose–gold lengths of it.
And I can’t help it, then. Even though we’re supposed to be talking, even though there’s so much more I want to know, I kiss Jackson, wanting him to feel the promise in my words as well as hear it. Because he’s mine now, and I’m not letting him go, not for anything.
And as my mate kisses me back, I feel it happen – feel our perfect silver bond snap into place between us.
I can feel it, in my soul, shining just as pretty and bright as my other bond, that points…. oddly in the other direction.
Towards Luca, wherever he is, out there in the night.
While I’m wrapped up here, in Jackson’s arms.
Chapter 99
I worry about myself, a little, just passively, as Jackson kisses me. Because something about the way that his mouth moves against mine makes me…just…really, really stupid.
–
Honestly, all logic is gone from my head all thoughts, all sense, all practicality.
It’s almost like all of my wolf’s crazy impulses which I usually think are so ridiculous come to the forefront, and they all make a great deal of sense. Because the only thing I want to do right now is strip off my clothing, and climb on top of him, and let him do whatever the hell he wants to my body – just take…complete control.
I am all instinct and impulse now as I lose myself in Jackson, as he bends me backwards, slightly, in his arms, levering his body over mine even as he holds me tight, dominating me and demonstrating in the same moment how incredibly precious I am to him.
His hand moves slowly down my side as his tongue dips into my mouth, and my hips rise up against him, seeking friction, wanting to be touched as his hand moves lower to take a firm grip on my ass. I moan, deep and shuddering, as Jackson presses me tighter against him and then lets his hand dip further in, his fingers just barely tracing the hot core of me through the fabric of my cadet uniform.
My head falls back on my neck at this touch, a panting gasp escaping my lips.
“Fuck, Ari,” Jackson growls, tucking his face against my neck and then pressing his cheek to my chest. But he moves his hand away, back to my ass and then slipping down my thigh to tuck safely behind my knee.
I lift my head, confused, foggy. I frown to see Jackson’s frustrated expression, his clenched teeth.
Slowly he shakes his head at me as I blink at him, coming back to myself.
And then I laugh, covering my face with my hands, groaning a little as I do because I can sense his emotions now, sense just how much he wants to continue precisely what we were doing just a few seconds ago.
But…he’s right. We can’t do any of that right now. Nothing has changed.
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And we have we have got to find some semblance of self–control and resist getting lost in each other. This is the Examination, after all.
“You should sleep,” he murmurs, working to clear his throat.
I laugh at the idea, rolling my eyes even as I sit up in his lap and tuck my hair back from my face, pretending to ignore the hard, thick length of him that’s now pressed against my ass. [ do my very, very best to resist the urge to press myself more firmly against that length.
And I…fail. Just a little bit.
Jackson groans, suddenly grabbing me beneath the arms and lifting me bodily out of his lap, placing me gently beside him as if I’m as light as a kitten. I burst out laughing as he leans away from me.
“I cannot be the only responsible party here, Ari,” Jackson growls, glaring at me even as I can see the joy on his face, the temptation in his eyes. “You have got to help me out here.”
“But I don’t want to,” I murmur, leaning closer to him again, reaching to wrap my hand. around the back of his neck, wanting his mouth back on mine
But Jackson just laughs, deep and rueful, pulling away and then getting to his feet, shaking himself from head to toe like the wolf he is. “I am…going to take a very small walk,” he murmurs, turning away from me. “And when I come back, we are going to behave ourselves, yes?”
I grumble, discontent, even though I know he’s right. And then Jackson does precisely as he says – walking a little distance away into the woods with his hands on his hips. I smirk, my hearing straining a little to hear him giving himself a little pep talk about self–control, and then I lean over in our little space, reaching for an apple as my stomach growls.
How can you think about eating, my wolf murmurs, sprawled out in my soul in a satisfied daze. We have to strategize think about how to get him naked. Do you think, if we accidentally spilled the water all over him, that he…
But I smirk, shaking my head, knowing that I’m not going to ruin our only water source in what will be a vain attempt to get my mate naked. I bite into the apple with grim
satisfaction, staring into the dark after him, wanting him back right now.
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He takes his time, though time that we both probably need. And as my body unwinds a little bit god, I hadn’t realize how tense he’d made me – I wonder at myself.
–
I mean, sexually, I have been so shy with Laica- I’ve made him wait months to barely do more than kiss me in the dream state.
And then here, after thirty minutes with Jackson, I’m ready to just…throw down in the dirt? Let him have all of me, just after a couple of kisses?
A couple of really good kisses, my wolf counters, her eyes half shut and her tongue lolling from her mouth. I swat her little rump, correcting her, because Luca is one hell of a kisser
too.
So…what is different?
Has Luca just done all the hard work and Jackson’s here to reap the benefits? A little guilt twists in me at the idea.
Or, my wolf suggests, lifting her head a little, curious, maybe you just have…a more sexual connection with this mate. They don’t have to be the same. Luca brings his own particular set of appealing characteristics to the table.
But as I consider that…well, that doesn’t quite fit either, does it? Because it’s not like Jackson’s just some piece of meat with no personality, and it’s not like Luca doesn’t get me going.
They’re just….different.
I sigh, taking another bite of my apple, studying it, confused but…well, letting myself be confused, I guess.
Nobody I know has ever done this whole two–mate thing before, at least not that I know of. This is new territory for everyone involved, and I suppose I’m bound to feel this way.
Confusion wipes away, though, the moment Jackson walks quietly back onto our little plateau, apparently having gotten control of myself.
Unfortunately, my confusion is replaced by an immediate and undeniable sense of lust. God, has he seen himself? Does he know how insanely hot he is when he just…walks? The
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way
his shoulders shift, the grace with which he moves
“Ari,” Jackson moans, stopping a few feet from me and dragging his hand down the length of his face. “You have…you have got to stop doing that.”
I burst out laughing, suddenly terribly embarrassed, because I just sent every one of those emotions right down the bond, didn’t I?
“Okay, okay,” I say, turning suddenly so that my back is to him now. “Here, this is better, I can’t see you anymore-”
He laughs, coming to sit next to me again. “We have to be able to look at each other-
“No, we don’t!” I squeak, turning away again as he tries to peer at my face, leaning my shoulders back against him and facing the stone wall at the back of the tiny plateau. “I’ll just…stare at these rocks. And pretend that you’re….very, very ugly.”
“Well, don’t tell yourself lies, Ari,” Jackson murmurs, wrapping an arm around me and tilting me back so that when I open my eyes I can see his gorgeous face again, just…a little upside down now. “Honesty with one’s self is really important –”
I burst out laughing, shaking my head and turning back to him, letting him wrap an arm around me as I press my cheek to his chest. “You are very handsome,” I murmur, nuzzling a little and working hard to scold my wolf when she urges me to climb back into his lap.
“I know,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my head. “You’re so lucky to be mated to such a looker, Ari, honestly-
–
I squeak in protest, whipping my head up at his vanity, but he’s ready for me, cupping my cheek in his broad palm and pressing a sweet, chaste kiss to my mouth.
“Not as lucky as me, though,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “You’re the most precious. thing in the whole world. Do you know that?”
Everything in me just…melts at the insane sweetness of my big, scary Alpha mate. And I smile at him, a little dazed.
“Now, will you please try to sleep?” he pleads, stroking my cheekbone with his thumb.
“How can I sleep?” I ask, shaking my head at him, baffled at the thought, “when I just got you?”
“I’ll just be really boring.” he murmurs with a shrug, making me grin.
“Impossible,” I say, but I lower my head to his chest, wanting to please him and, honestly, feeling a little weak and tired after the insane day I’ve had, however short.
hair “Oh, very possible,” he replies, his voice soft and easy as he strokes his hand over my again and again, comforting and steady. “If you want. I’ll recount the hundreds of ancient battles they made us memorize for warrior track – that should put you out
I groan, shuddering at the prospect, which makes him huff a little laugh.
“Fine,” he sighs, continuing to pet me, his hand drifting over my shoulders, too, when it reaches the ends of my hair. “Let’s just sit here and…be quiet.”
“You’ll wake me?” I whisper, feeling my eyes drift shut despite myself. “The moment the sun comes up?”
“I will,” he promises. “The moment there’s light to see by, Ari. I’ll wake you. We have a lot to do tomorrow. We need an early start.”
And so I shut my eyes, letting myself rest a little, trusting my mate to keep me warm and safe through the short hours left in the night.
Chapter 100
It takes me a long time to fall asleep, overwhelmed as I am by my new bond, the closeness of my mate, the secrets that we’ve passed between us that still ring through my mind. But as the minutes pass I feel my eyelids getting heavier and heavier, encouraged by the steady movement of Jackson’s hand over my hair.
When I do finally fall asleep, my head pillowed against Jackso sleep of one who feels both weary and completely safe.
chest, it’s the deep, true
I sleep so deeply that when my eyelids flutter open in the morning, I have…no idea where I am. Even though I am…completely comfortable.
I frown, not understanding, and curl into the warmth of what I assume is my mattress, though it’s a little…firmer than I remember? I’m not sure.
There’s a light chuckle, though, that makes me look up, and my frown deepens as I stare into Jackson’s face before I realize that…
“Oh!” I murmur, sitting up a little. He smiles at me, his hand pressing into my back, encouraging me to lean my head back down against his chest.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, “take a second to wake up. There’s time.”
I lay my head back down against him, blushing a little as I realize that what I assumed was my mattress is just his body that I’m curled up in his lap, kind of sprawled over his torso, my face tucked against his pectoral –
God, is he really that big, that I can basically use his body as a bed?
Or am I just that small?
I peer up at him again, more awake now, taking a deep breath and raising a hand to rub at
my eye.
Slowly, a smile overtakes his mouth.
“What?” I mutter, shaking my head a little to clear it, a smile pulling at my lips as well
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because…..well, because he’s just staring at me. And it’s kind of nice.
“You’re just so pretty, he whispers, his voice a little awed as he traces his knuckles down the soft skin of my cheek.
I can’t help it then I burst into a brilliant smile.
Because my mate thinks I’m pretty.
His own smile widens, matching mine, and I squeak with happiness, reaching up and winding my arms around Jackson’s neck, pulling him close and pressing probably a dozen kisses to his check and neck. “Morning,” I murmur, after the fourth or fifth.
He doesn’t respond, just puts a hand beneath my chin after a moment and tilts my face up to his, bringing his mouth to mine and kissing me like he’s been waiting for hours to do it, like he can’t wait for it anymore.
And, obviously, I kiss him right back.
–
But we’re both more contained, now, in the light of the morning than we were last night. There was something freeing about the darkness about knowing that as long as it persisted, there was nothing we could do except explore each other.
Now that there’s light by which we can see?
We’re both aware that it’s time to move.
“Um, so,” I say after Jackson breaks our kiss. I stay close, speaking softly as I run a hand. through his messy hair, tucking it back behind his ear, “I lied to you yesterday. I can shift.”
“Really,” he says, his eyebrows going up, and I can tell that he’s pleased. “Little rose–colored wolf, by any chance?”
“How did you know that?” I ask, my eyes going wide.
“I think I met her,” he murmurs, his finger curling in a tendril of my hair, “a couple times. Dreaming.”
I tilt
my
head for a second and then burst into a smile as the truth hits me. All those nights,
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running along the cliffs with another wolf at my side-
Wasn’t just a dream, was it?
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But there’s no time to tend to that right now. “The only problem is,” I say, looking around the forest, “that my wolf is very obviously a girl wolf, and anyone who sees and smells me will figure it out.”
“We’ll keep the plan the same, then,” Jackson says, starting to stand up and ridiculously bringing me with him, setting me on my feet only when he’s fully standing. “We’ll only shift if we run out of time, yeah?”
“Do you think…” I bite my lip, looking up at him. “I mean, are we going to be too late?”
“Nah,” Jackson says, turning to look north. “The only people who would have made it to the mountain and been able to climb it in the night would have been…well, the best of Warrior Track. So, maybe Jesse and Rafe. But still, I think there’s plenty of reason to assume that there’s time left for us to make it.”
“So,” I say, smiling up at him and crossing my arms, “what you’re saying is….if I hadn’t been. weighting you down, you’d already be across the finish line?”
Jackson grins at me, not denying it, but scooping me up in his arms instead and turning met in a slow circle as he presses one last kiss to my mouth. “You can slow me down anytime. you want, tiny.”
I bite my lip, grinning at him, and I nudge my nose with his before I kick and wriggle, begging to be put down. Jackson laughs, but he puts me back on his feet and we begin to assess our plan and our few possessions. We quickly share the water, though I insist Jackson drink the majority of it – I got some liquids out of the fruit, after all- and then I lift my crossbow, twisting my lips at it.
“Do you think I need this?” I ask quietly. “If we’re going to rush, and climb…”
–
“Leave it,” he says, shrugging and making a snap decision as he likewise tosses his backpack into the brush. “We need to move fast now any extra weight is a detriment. Besides,” he bends over, scooping my discarded hat out of the dust where we left it last night and holding it out to me, “I’m your weapon now.”
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I snatch my hat from him, unable to keep the smile from my lips as I wind the majority of my hair onto my head and plop the hat over top of it. Because I quite like the idea of Jackson as my weapon.
Jackson smirks, helping me tuck the last strands of my hair beneath the brim. “Where on earth did my mate go? Now there’s only her boyish twin, Ari Clark, marksman and chemical mastermind…”
“Don’t forget powerful sorcerer,” I say, lofty, as we both turn away from the plateau, and start out in the blue light of the morning.
“Oh, how could I forget,” he murmurs behind me, “melter of very tiny pieces of glass…such raw power…”
I laugh, shooting a little glare over my shoulder, but I focus on my steps on the narrow path ahead of me, which is barely a path and more of a lucky outcropping of rock. I marvel again at Jackson’s sense of balance, as well as the fact that he found this in the dark.
When we get to the bottom of the cliff face, a little forest stretches out in front of us, beyond which I know is the bridge surrounded by cadets. I wonder, passively, whether those guarding it have crossed already? Or they’re still biding their time, hoping to take out more of their “enemies” before they shift and make their run for the mountain?
“I’m going to go check,” Jackson says, looking forward through the woods. “You wait here.”
“Okay.” I say, turning towards the forest.
47_
“Here,” Jackson says, frowning and grabbing my arm. “Wait here, Ari.”
“Um, I don’t know if not going to the bathroom is part of your supernatural prowess, McClintock?” I say, looking a little awkwardly up at my mate. “But it is…not part of mine.”
He stares at me for a second before laughing, shaking his head. Then he stills, looking around into the forest around us, clearly casting out his hearing to see if anyone is close by. “Yeah, okay. Whatever. Just…don’t go far, and return right here, yeah?”
I nod, ready to obey, trusting his senses more than my own.
He stoops closer, pressing a kiss to my mouth, and then as silently as a forest animal
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himself Jackson moves through the trees, heading for the edge of the forest so he can better see the bridge.
–
I wait until I can’t see him anymore before I move a few trees away, ducking behind a particularly big one and relieving myself in a hurry, silently cursing men – or maybe just men’s fashion for making this so much easier for men to do than women. But I finish up pretty quickly, quietly mourning the lack of toilet paper, before refastening my pants and heading back to the little spot where Jackson left me.
I grin as I see a black–clad form coming through the trees.
“That was fast,” I say quietly, smiling, my head dipping so that I don’t trip over any roots.
“Oh, did you miss me?”
I freeze and my head flies up as I recognize that voice.
A dark, sour voice and certainly not my mate’s.
My eyes focus instantly on Alan Wrights, on the ugly sneer on his face. “Because I certainly didn’t miss you.”
I stumble backwards, frantic, seeking a way out-
But as he raises his hand, and I see my crossbow held steady there.
And I know that…this is the end.
I open my mouth and scream even before Wright’s finger tightens on the trigger –
Even before the bolt flies from the crossbow, lodging itself deep in my thigh.