The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy

Chapter 0480

"It happened just how you described, Ari," he murmurs, shaking his head as he recalls it. "Of all things, it seriously felt like someone threw a damn brick at my wolf."

I smile a little, remembering telling him that metaphor at the club after Luca's boxing victory but hating that it feels so accurate for my friend.

"It happened the first time at the boxing match. I knew he was there... instantly, as soon as he walked in."

"Did you know who it was? Like, you could pick them out of the crows?" I ask, a little breathless with interest but not wanting to push him too far.

"I knew...the area...in the crowd. That something in me had suddenly turned to the Atalaxians. But I couldn't pinpoint it at first." Ben raises his hands to his temples and rubs them in soft, worried circles as he remembers. "But I wasn't sure what precisely it was - my wolf insisted, of course, that my mate was there, but I mean - what the hell does he know."

I smile a little as my wolf bristles inwardly, appalled that Ben would ever doubt his wolf. I smooth a hand over her fur and she turns to give my fingers a fond lick.

say, hesitant. "What

raising his head and meeting my

we had to go have that first hand-to-hand fight." I grin at the memory fondly, even though I wasn't so happy at the time. "I think Rafe was worried I had a

no wonder you lost so spectacularly," Ben says, laughing a little. "But it sounds about the same, though - both

and Luca felt the same and make a mental note to ask them. "So, when did you figure

laugh a little, and he

spent my time instead," Ben continues, "scanning the Atalaxians, trying to catch a scent. It was too hard, though. There was one that I...wanted it to be, maybe?

you right?" I ask, anxious, wanting Ben to have the boy he wanted it to be with a desperation that almost surprises me. Ben, he's

"I knew for sure at the smaller meeting when Atalaxia declared that they were going to destroy us all. I mean, it was a shit day for everyone else, but my wolf wouldn't settle down in my heart. We could smell him, in that small room, and we knew for sure that it was..." he laughs

and Ben goes along