The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy novel Chapter 241

My lip starts to tremble as I listen, tears again stinging my eyes, but Jesse leans forward.

“Rafe,” he murmurs, glancing between us. “Slow down a little, man. I mean, if we’re aware of what they’re feeling, then she’s aware of it double – she can feel it all down their bonds. And that, on top of her own feelings?” He shakes his head, holding Rafe’s gaze, willing him to listen.

Rafe takes a deep breath and sighs, pushing his cake around on his plate, clearly thinking it through. In the end, though, he looks up at me. “Can you seriously feel everything they feel?”

“Not everything,” I murmur, my voice tight as I look down at my plate. “Not unless the emotion is really intense, or they send it to me deliberately. And not…across great distances. Only when they’re nearby, or in the room. Like I can’t feel them now.”

“Weird,” he murmurs, quietly eating his cake as he puts his thoughts together for a second. Jesse does the same.

After a long moment, Rafe breaks the silence.

“I just wish, Ariel,” he murmurs, truly hurt, “that you’d trusted me enough to let me know. I’d have told you, after all.”

My nose starts to sting at the true sadness and hurt in his voice, and then my throat gets tight. I blink fast, not wanting to cry, because I know that they have every right to be mad at me, but…

Well, the tears start to fall down my cheeks anyway.

“Aw, come on Ari, don’t do that,” Jesse murmurs, leaning forward and putting a warm hand on my knee. “We can’t yell at you if you’re crying, and we’re not anywhere near finished.”

“I know,” I murmur, brushing frustratedly at my cheeks with the side of one hand. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry –“

And so, with a sigh, I unfold myself from Rafe’s arms and sit on the floor next to him, beginning to tell them the whole story.

“Well,” Rafe says, about an hour later, his eyebrows raised. “Actually, in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t know any of this. I would much rather have broken up one wolf fight after finals than have had to worry about this the whole term.”

“Such empathy in my big brother,” I say, lowering my eyelids into a half-hearted glare and reaching out my fingertips to give him a shove.

Rafe grins at me, chuckling a little, as Jesse lays on the couch next to us, staring at the ceiling, his head cushioned on a pillow.

“Honestly, Ari,” my cousin says, his voice more thoughtful than it usually is, “laid out like that I’m not sure you could have done it very differently. The only place you really seem to have fucked up was when you didn’t plan this evening – you just let both of them show up here, expecting dinner. It was a powder keg, ready to explode, but the rest of it?” My eyes are wide as I watch him shrug, desperate to know what he’ll say next.