The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy

Chapter 98

Jackson works hard for a smile when he sees my reaction to my story, though he kind of fails at it. “I take it,” he murmurs, “that you have parents? And you like them?”

“Well, yeah, Jacks!” I reply, staring wide–eyed into his face. “They’re kind of great!”

Jackson laughs a little, tightening his arms around me. “Well, if you don’t know that parents are a thing, you don’t really notice them missing, do you?”

I tilt my head, considering this, as Jackson goes on with his story, telling me about being a little boy growing up in a Community and sleeping in what was essentially a bunkhouse full of little boys just like him. The youngest babies, he knew, were raised in a nursery, and every year a new batch of boys was brought to the bunk house when they were very young.

And from that young age, they were trained to fight.

“Just every morning,” Jackson murmurs, his face distant as he remembers, “we’d troop out of the bunkhouse and get to work running, learning to fight, sparring with each other.” He shrugs. “It wasn’t so bad. As we got older, the guys who weren’t as good at it they stopped. coming to practice and I’d see them out in the fields and stuff, or training for a new job. But, I mean, I was…good at it. So. I just kept going.”

–

“You could see them?” I ask, trying to picture this world. “But not…talk to them?”

“The bunk house was for men and boys in warrior training,” Jackson explains, turning his face back to me. “If you were sorted out of that, you…moved to another bunk house, I guess. I could see our little community- the main part of it, with the council house, and the mess hall. And the women’s barracks, too.”

My eyebrows raise at this but I press my lips together, wanting him to tell the story any way he wants to. He notices, though, and smiles.

“Yeah, the women lived all together too. And we could see them, from where we lived on top of the hill.”

“But weren’t you curious?” I breathe, fascinated.

“Of course we were,” he laughs, smiling at me. “Especially as we grew older and noticed them more. In a different way. But you have to understand it was forbidden. We were taught our roles very, very well, and we were never, ever supposed to talk to anyone in town, especially the women.”

I shake my

these kinds of attitudes towards gendered difference and communal living exist within my own nation. It sounds, like anything, more Atalaxian

Jackson grew up differently than me…does that

Jackson?” I ask, my voice worried. Because while I desperately want him to have been…I

shaggy head, and I raise my hands to his face, stroking his cheeks with my thumbs and murmuring soft nothings. “But you have to understand…I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t

have

–

replies, smiling at me. “They still live there Cristof and Zachary. I spent pretty much every day of my life with them until I

I could listen to Jackson talk for days about this world and he probably has enough information to fill those days.

–

“I was sent… um…” he hesitates now, glancing away, and I can see that he’s suddenly measuring his loyalty to

to be patient, letting him decide

fighting techniques, new technologies. And then, when I’ve decided that I learned enough,

O

back and teach the Community

fistfuls of his shirt, suddenly terrified by the idea that he’s going to leave and go

forward and pressing a kiss to first one of my cheeks, and then the other. “I already decided that I’m not going back.”

tension lessens in

is…well, I mean, it’s a cult, right? They control people, give them no choice in their

–

myself closer against him, wanting to fix it all

do know that if I had found you, somehow, when I lived there? They…they wouldn’t have let me keep you wouldn’t even have let me see you. And

back.”

I see that his own heart is broken with the realization. And I’m overwhelmed, suddenly, with the strength it must