The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy Chapter 111

I’m a cadet, after all. If I can’t even survive walking from the classroom to the dorm, what chance do I have on the battlefield?

I consider that, a little, as I head for the brass elevator at the end of the hall, climbing in and pressing the button for the dormitory floor. Because today, in Marksmanship, I considered for the first time – perhaps naively – that we really are being trained for combat.

I don’t know why I hadn’t really thought about it before – perhaps I’m just naïve but…I don’t know. Something about running obstacle courses and getting class schedules and learning the chemical makeup of poisons had made it seem…theoretical. Part of a game, and a class, rather than preparation for the real world.

But today, shooting real weapons?

I don’t know – something about it made me really realize that…I’m being trained as a weapon myself. And that I’m going to be asked to kill people.

Especially if I become a sniper, as the school clearly hopes I will be. Am I prepared for this? For the reality of looking down a scope at a human being, and pulling the trigger?

A shiver runs through me as I consider it, and honestly I don’t know what the answer is to that question. I gnaw on my lower lip, troubled by it, as I cross the hall and head up the winding stairs to our top floor, still completely distracted as I work the key in our door and push into our room.

The only thing that breaks me out of my reverie is the…silence.

I look up and around the room suddenly, and realize that actually for the first time in weeks I am…completely alone. Like completely alone – not just in absence of my brother and my cousin, but by myself.

And a grin takes my face, even despite my troubled thoughts.

I push the door shut and lean back against it, heaving a long sigh. I’ll talk to Rafe later, I decide, about my bigger questions of what it means to be part of a military organization at war.

Because right now, for a few minutes? I am going to just be alone.

I immediately indulge, whipping my hat from my head and then stripping my shirt off, dropping it onto the floor before working at the clasp of my pants, stepping out of them as I walk towards the couch in my stupid boys underwear and the chest-flattening sports bra Daphne made me, my hands already unbraiding my hair so that I can run my fingers luxuriously against my scalp.

I sigh, collapsing onto the couch, my mind flashing – just a second – to the way that Luca’s hands felt in my hair, however briefly they touched it. But then I scowl at myself, and sigh, and will my mind to turn elsewhere, desperate to think of something else.

Because Luca – he’s being so weird. I mean, at least he didn’t blow my secret at breakfast, but what the hell is he doing, pretending it never happened?

I mean, is it possible? That he…actually forgets? We forget dreams all the time, but the dream state…it’s different, right? I, for one, remember everything.

But it was my dream – Alphas, they’re just the guest stars. Could he really have forgotten…

I groan, and shake my head, realizing that I’ll never know.

But that tonight, it’s my turn to corner him and make demands of my own. I absolutely need to know what he knows, and what he’s got planned if, indeed, he has figured out the secret that I’m a girl.

And not just a girl – the nation’s Princess, and his mate.