The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy novel Chapter 217

I’m well, well aware that I’m supposed to quail under the look my father is leveling at me now – that it’s sent many big tough Alphas running for the hills.

But, well, I’m my father’s daughter, aren’t I?

And I am not giving in that easily. No way in hell.

“I’m going back, dad,” I growl, my voice matching his own even though it’s several octaves higher. “You can’t stop me.”

“The hell I can’t –“

“I have worked too hard!” I shout, getting up on my knees and leaning towards him now. “I have been busting my ass at that school, proving myself! I –“

“And it almost killed you, Ariel!” my dad shouts back, leaning in so that our faces are only inches apart.

“I survived, didn’t I!?” I whip my finger up between us, a move I’ve seen my mom make a thousand times, but my dad just swats it away. “I’m proving myself, dad. I already beat twenty percent of the candidate class getting into the school, and now I’ve beat forty percent of the men who have been training just as hard as me! You cannot discount me and say that I haven’t earned my spot!”

“You were carried over the finish line bleeding and barely breathing, Ariel,” dad says, and his anger snaps a little as he speaks the words. He groans again as he pictures it, straightening up and closing his eyes against the mental image. “I cannot, in good faith, send you to your death – you are not built, physically, for this world –“

Cora gestures to me here, and another rush of joy pulses through me.

“Again,” my dad says, his teeth gritted. “She nearly died.”

“But I didn’t,” I say, seeing my opportunity. “Dad, check the rulebooks. If there’s a rule that says that you have to cross the finish line of your own power, then…” I bite my lip, not wanting to say it, but taking the gamble anyway, “then…I’ll go back to the Palace with you. But if other cadets have passed the Examination when they were carried across the line…you have to let me stay.”

Dad sighs, closing his eyes, and I clench my hands in hope because I know he sees the logic in that. I know that he’s a fairer man than he’s being right now – that he is, as mom says, acting on his dad instincts more than anything else.