The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy novel Chapter 196

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 unicorns 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.

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!?