The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy novel Chapter 909

And as he knew she would, Daphne tilts her head back and laughs – long and peeling. He smiles a little, watching her, relishing that. Daphne – she’s not easily offended, and she has enough self-confidence not to let herself be hurt by such a deeply untrue judgment.

“Oh, god,” Daphne says, still laughing and wiping a little beneath her eye. “Maybe…let’s not introduce this one to my mother.”

“No problem,” he sighs.

Daphne smiles over at him, soft. “You’ve had some serious adventures, your Grace.”

“You’re avoiding the question, seamstress,” he murmurs, his mouth turning up at the corners.

She raises an eyebrow in challenge.

“What do you think?” he asks, wanting to know her true opinion on the whole situation – all of it.

“I think,” she says with a little sigh, looking down at the kitten, understanding it all. “That…we had a good run, Jess. But I can’t keep loving you if you have a mate, bond accepted or no.”

“Are you in love with me now?” he asks, quietly.

She raises her eyes to his. “Please don’t make me answer that.”

He swallows rough around the lump in his throat. “But, given time –“

She shakes her head. “Jesse, given time, your strange traumatized little mate is going to become accustomed to the world. And she’s going to want you, and you’re going to want her. Even though you’re not in love with her now, given time? You will be. And then where will I be?”

“Midnight is…never going to be normal in this world,” Jesse murmurs, covering his eyes with one hand.

“Do you think she’s pretty?” Daphne asks, her voice deceptively calm.

He moves his hands from his eyes to look at her. “What?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me, Sinclair,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him, making him smile.

He laughs a little but then sighs. “Yes, Midnight is pretty, Daphne.”

“The Goddess picked her for you, Jess,” Daphne whispers, leaning forward towards him with a smile, acting her heart out, pretending to be happy and peaceful and beatific about it all, while inside her wolf howls in agony to be letting him go. “She’s your mate. It’s going to happen someday – you’ll love each other. I don’t…want to be drug along for weeks or months or years just to be left at the end. Leave me now, in peace and…we’ll have had a good run.”

Jesse’s heart breaks a thousand times as he stares at her, unable to believe it. Unable to accept it. He sits up, leaning close, looking steadily into her eyes. “You know that there’s more to us than that, Daphne – than just a good run. That we have a connection that is deeper and that neither of us fully understand.”