The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy novel Chapter 617

“Why are you distracted?” he asks, frowning at me.

“Faiza,” I say with a sigh, stretching my tired arms up over my head. “She gave me kind of a weird assignment. Fun, but…weird. But I’ll tell you about that next – I kind of want your help with it.”

Luca’s face brightens at the prospect, but I just lift my chin at him.

“You, please,” I say, dropping my hands and beaming at my pretty mate. “What was your news?”

Luca’s face falls and he leans back on his hands. “After you left breakfast early, messengers came with notes. We’re having the second set of Games early too – crazy early. Draft tomorrow, Games the next day.”

My jaw drops open in shock. “But that’s…that’s ridiculous,” I say, shaking my head at him. “I mean, we haven’t even had time to learn from our mistakes the last game –“

“I know,” Luca says, his voice full of dread as he nods in agreement. “It is…it feels really bad, Ari. Like they’re doing it all fast because they want us to have as much experience as possible before they ship us to the front too.”

“Shit,” I whisper, my shoulders slumping as I cast my gaze down into my lap, terribly worried now. I wish quite suddenly for a phone so I could call my dad, ask him what the hell is going on. But none of the other cadets have that privilege and I guess if he really thought it was important, he’d get in touch with me and Rafe. He wouldn’t keep us in the dark – not really.

“Yeah,” Luca says on a sigh. “I think we all feel the same.”

I nod, forcing myself to move on from it and lifting my eyes again to meet his. “Are the captains the same?”

“No, actually,” Luca says with a grimace. “Heggardy and his co-captain are back amongst the general draft pool and there are four teams this time. Each only with one captain.”

“Unless Rafe or Jacks decides to throw their draft so the majority of us can be on one team…” Luca shrugs. “Yeah. Looks like it.”

“I hate that,” I murmur, staring into space a bit as I think it through. “We shouldn’t be split up. We’re not going into an actual battle without each other, so why would we practice without each other?”

“Ariel,” Luca says, his voice full of doubt. “How do you know we would go into a battle together? As a group?”

I turn my head to him and blink once, as if it’s obvious. “Because I won’t let us.”